In The Emergence of Everything, Harold Morowitz ‘emphasi[zes] […] emergences in nature as distinguished from examples that can be generated almost without limit in computer modeling of complex systems.’⁶²⁰ His ’28 examples of emergence’ occur without really being planned or intended, and until 23–28 (Toolmakers, Language, Agriculture, Technology and Urbanization, Philosophy, and the Spiritual), humans weren’t much involved — all the more reason to conclude we are speaking of what cannot be “planned” only “prepared” for indirectly.⁶²¹ ⁶²²

‘The 28 emergences represent a continuous series going from the reductionist core of particle physics to the most noetic aspect of human thought. The first seven emergences are studied by cosmology, high-energy physics, astrophysics, geophysics, and geochemistry. After each of them, the universe or some part thereof is radically changed. Something novel has happened. There is surprise.’⁶²³

History provides evidence that “the unplanned” can occur, and perhaps a 29th emergence is possible thanks to human intention that couldn’t be possible without it, not because we directly intend the emergence, but because we are intentional about environments, conditions, and the like so that “the conditions of possibility” are there for emergence to occur. Hayek stresses that the economy is too complex to effectively coordinate top-down, hence the need for “a free market,” and that’s true, but we have also argued that “free markets” tend toward Stagnation without “Events of Creativity.” We have also argued that State intervention cannot readily fix the shortcomings of Capitalism, which seems to mean we’re doomed, unless instead the Social might be our hope and if regaining it follows more from taking Morowitz seriously than it does petitioning the State to act (with its “shut way”) or “nudging.” It does not follow that the complexity of the economy means there’s nothing we can do to increase the probability of Creativity, and in increasing that probability, change how people might act, changing what might occur, changing how people might act — a positive feedback loop.

‘Emergence is […] the opposite of reduction. The latter tried to move from the whole to the parts. It has been enormously successful. The former tries to generate the properties of the whole from an understanding of the parts.’⁶²⁴ We could say that in Reductionism, x is found to compose z, so x = z, while in Emergence, x is found (perhaps with y) to generate z, and yet x ≠ z. In Emergence, x generates z, and yet that does not mean x controls z, that z doesn’t exist, or anything of the sort. We might say that x entails the potential for z, but without the right conditions (notably “limits”), it is “practically impossible” for z to emerge (hence a need for changing “starting conditions,” placing constraints, negations, etc.). Emergence as a study might consider conditions that make it increasingly possible that x generates z, when otherwise z would be “practically impossible” for x to generate. Perhaps there is a z that requires an interaction between x and y to generate, but that z too might be “practically impossible” for x and y to generate without their interaction occurring in particular conditions, environments, etc. Emergentism suggests these kinds of questions, and an “Emergence Economics” or “Complexity Economics” might honor Hayek while at the same time stressing environments, limits, constraints, and “incubation” more generally.

(Dr. Alicia Juarrero is also remarkable on this topic)

From Morowitz:

‘In another class of problems, the interaction rules are known, but the complexity is so great (or number of possible states so great) that the problem surpasses the capacity of any known computer or even any conceivable computer. Rather than give up on such problems, scientists have looked for ways of pruning the space of possible solutions or sets of allowable solutions. This may lead to surprises in the system trajectories, giving rise to novel behaviors. These are the emergent properties of the system rules but cannot be predicted from properties of the components that make up the system. The individuals that make up the whole are designated agents. For example, interaction rules of individual insects (the agents) may give rise to the configuration and behavior of swarms (the agents at the next hierarchical level).’⁶²⁵

The internet and SCM might limit options of operating without encountering Otherness — other worldviews, “maps,” subjectivities, value-forms — they can remove means of avoiding Global Pluralism. But isn’t Global Pluralism “our problem” in Belonging Again? Yes, but also because we lack the infrastructure (which lowers “transaction costs” for the average person) so that we can be saturated enough by it (to borrow language from Alex Ebert): there are still too many options of avoiding and not being formulated by Pluralism (in “surprising encounter”). Couldn’t this overwhelm, like Love(craft)? Yes, hence a need for the process and development to “spread” naturally on its own time versus through direct intention and engineering: it must grow like a garden. What we need is an infrastructure so that this growth and garden might blossom — the SCM. But might all this come too late and too slow? Yes, but that very fear, in the spirit of a “perpetual emergency” with Paul Virilio, is a reason ironically why we are behind. Speed can waste time.

Global Pluralism with “the loss of givens” and “spread of philosophical consciousness” is in a sense a loss of the option of not “encountering Otherness,” and that itself is a constraint, and limits can afford emergence (note I will use “constraint” and “limits” more interchangeably, though some may argue for distinctions). This is critical: Morowitz argues that emergence can happen when options are more removed versus added (entropy is not violated), and/or when there is a response to a constraint (or at least that is how I understand him; if I am wrong, I apologize). Also, complexity isn’t necessary “adding” anything or violating the Laws of Thermodynamics; to quote Jim Rutt from his excellent conversation with Alex Ebert (titled “EP 269: Alex Ebert on the War on Genius,” which considers Ebert’s work, “Suboptimal Revolutions: In Defense of Inefficiencies”):

‘[…] what is the actual physic’s purpose of complex systems is to dissipate energy more effectively […] it’s [an] unfortunate truth that the universe is just trying to burn itself down and reach heat death more rapidly […] all this cool complexity that we think we’re part of because it’s you know Nifty […] just the […] way the universe to accelerate its heat death a little bit and so hence that if we don’t try hard the universe wants to just be absolutely as efficient it can be in dissipating its energy […]’

Ebert and Rutt also discuss the relation between complexity and constraints, and for those interested in Complexity Science and Emergence in general, the Jim Rutt Show is invaluable, and may its legacy live on and inspire many. Is all complexity a result of a “pruning” or “subtraction”? I don’t know, though admittedly that is my impression, but negation can at least be a cause of complexity, even if not the only cause, and it is negation as such that we will focus on for the SCM. The SCM aims to remove the option of operating according to a single value-form or logic (A/A), of holding values without (knowing there is) Value-Form Competition, of avoiding “surprising encounters with Otherness,” etc.

Oddly, a problem with Global Pluralism today is that most people are not Globally Pluralistic enough: it has not generally become sufficient as a (kind of) limit to generate complexity. Pluralism with Otherness has not “saturated” people, meaning they live split between a local world and a global world that seem to contradict and not relate: the Christian for example might locally believe only Christians are saved and everyone without Christ is doomed for hell, but then the Christian at work surrounded by nonbelievers or online does not really act as if these people are vulnerable to eternal damnation. This is not a bad thing, and arguably necessary socially — a tension. But one day the Christian might realize this “split” and try to compensate by then constantly telling everyone about hell, alienating those people and relationships. Or the Christian might see Christianity as a scam and abandon it — hard to say. A similar logic can apply to the Atheist, the Communist, the Capitalist, the believer in Global Warming — on and on (see The Map Is Indestructible for more). There is a “split” in people, between “the immediate” and “the global,” and though people try to navigate it best they can, they can feel full of inauthenticity, anxiety, and more.⁶²⁶ What is needed is for the subject to be fully “saturated” with Global Pluralism, to the point where he or she sees their particular worldview of say Christianity as justified as itself in Pluralism versus despite it. The Christian needs to see Global Pluralism as a limit that Christianity needs, not a force that threatens Christianity and that needs to be overcome (a “removal of limit” like Technology, as we’ll discuss, a logic the Christian can ironically operate according to in the name of Christ). But this is not something the Christian can just choose to believe: the Christian must experience and encounter it regularly so that there is habituation, and until the SCM that was not possible.

Limit and constraint (which I am using interchangeably here, but distinctions might be warranted) can make possible emergence and complexity, and Global Pluralism could be an opportunity for a generative limit, if only we could rise to its occasion—but this would require us to think differently than according to the value-form of A/A, which through technology made Global Pluralism possible in the first place. This means we need a negation/sublation, and our argument is that this makes the SCM necessary. But now we need to say more on “limits” in general, and make a distinction between actual-limits, contingent-limits, and excess-limits, to further understand that what the Pricing Mechanism is to commodities, the SCM is to limits.

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II

There is a paper on Alex Ebert’s work in The Absolute Choice titled “Limits are Limitless” that will be channeled in this section, to the point I was tempted to incorporate that paper into II,2, if not for space and printing restrictions.

What we will argue is that the SCM is a coordinator and tester of limits, which is necessary because we do not know ahead of time which limits are actually limits or only appear to be such. We also don’t know which limits follow from an excess we cannot handle all at once (as a map can’t perfectly describe a territory, as eyes cannot look at the sun directly forever), and so that too requires testing and coordination. And our argument is that without a means of testing and coordinating limits, we cannot determine which limits are the best possible constraints for affording complexity and emergence, which are necessary in a world where all available options and options we can “plan” for our address are insufficient. If our “new address” requires what cannot be engineered, then our “new address” must emerge, but if there is no way for us to increase the probability of this emergence happening (without guarantee), it is more probable entropy will prevail and lead to equilibrium and autocannibalism. Equilibrium is currently the most likely outcome, given our paradoxical constraints (which follow from “unlimited” Capital, oddly; we are limited from having limits, and so nondynamic and “flat”), but there are things we can do to change the probability distribution — but only with the SCM.

(Moving forward, please note that I am using the term “emergence” more generally and loosely, and thinkers like Alexander Bard might make distinctions between “Transcendental Emergence,” where say Chemistry gives rise to Biology, versus a more general emergence say in how a flock of birds collectively form a swarm together. However, I believe different forms of emergence entail similarities, and so describing the behavior of one can help us understand the other. Regardless, the kind of emergence we are discussing, constraint and limitation can play a role.)

I am going to make a distinction in this section between “actual-limits,” “contingent-limits,” and “excess-limits,” which is not language regularly used in O.G. Rose, but here it would be useful. “Actual-limits” are indeed, actual limits: they are limitations that cannot be overcome and that will always be with us. “Contingent-limits” are limits that we might have thought were actual but turned out not to be: to borrow an example from Thomas Jockin, consider flight, which for most of history was a dream until suddenly it wasn’t, and then it was “always already” the case that flight was never an actual-limit, but instead “always already” a contingent-limit (though we couldn’t know that ahead of time without testing and experimentation, as we’ll discuss). “Excess-limits” are limits due to overwhelm, abundance, and the like, and they can arise due to a “lack” in ourselves (“lack” and “excess-limit” are strongly connected). To borrow again from Jockin, we cannot look at the sun indefinitely without going blind, because our bodies “lack” that capacity (and in the act of looking at the sun, we experience that “present absence” vividly) (we might associate this thinking with Nick Land’s “fanged noumena” and language of “intensities”).⁶²⁷ However, “lack” is not a “privation,” because there is a difference between how working eyes cannot see the sun for long and how the blind cannot: the blind cannot see the sun due to an actual-limit. The inability of a map to be the territory is an excess-limit, as is Beauty and even Dialogos.

We are actually-limited when the limit is impossible to overcome (without destroying ourselves, at least), while we are contingently-limited when the limit can be overcome (but should it be, and who decides?). We are excessively-limited when the limit is ever-more, per se (as with Mystery according to Flannery O’Connor: the more we learn, the more we find to learn). Aren’t excess-limits just actual-limits? There is a certain point where I can’t eat anymore food, but is this an excess-limit with food being the excess, or is it an actual-limit based on the realities of my stomach? That’s a good question, and clearly there can be overlap, but a factor that can help us tell the difference is time. An excess-limit is that which I find myself limited by time more than the thing itself: there are infinite books I can read, but the reason I don’t read them all isn’t so much because I can’t in capacity, but because I don’t have time to do so, and trying might somehow damage me. Similarly, I can look at the sun, just not indefinitely without grave consequence: I can look for a moment here, then again a bit later — just not all at once without limitation. Perhaps I could look at the sun indefinitely with the right “eclipse sunglasses,” but then we’ve arguably moved to an actual-limit, because I can only do this with the technology of the sunglasses (as an extension of myself). This also makes “looking at the sun indefinitely” a contingent-limit in a way, because I am only so limited from doing so if I don’t have the right sunglasses. Perhaps I should make the sunglasses part of my body? Ah, that might be a Transhumanist move — is it right; is it wrong? Constant and effective testing (without State intervention that manipulates “the market”) might be needed to tell.

Again, looking ahead, time can help us identify if we are dealing with an actual-limit, contingent-limit, or excess-limit, and to what degree and in what proportion, but the rate by which time does so help could be too slow (to address entropy with negentropy, to bring about change before WWIII, etc.). Oddly Landian, I believe we want to accelerate the time it takes to coordinate and test limits, which is what the SCM could enable. We might in this be “Limit Accelerationists,” or “Social Accelerationists” or “Sub-Conscious Accelerationists” — there are different lexicons. Why accelerate the process by which limits are tested to be actual, contingent, and/or excessive? Because currently the movement of Capital is faster, and we need “the coordination of limits” to be competitive with the coordination of capital, or else we will suffer the autocannibalism that follows from a “practically monopolistic” value-form. We need to become better at identifying the qualities of different limits, and if we fail, “flattening” and “equilibrium” will occur quicker, because limits are needed for dynamism and negentropy. If the erasure of limits is faster than the realization of new limits to replace them (actual or excessive), then entropy will prevail, as arguably is happening under capital (for all its benefits). Capitalism is “practically unstoppable” at overcoming limits, and we are not equally as effective at finding and testing potential new limits to replace them. Hence, “flatness” prevails — but now we have gotten too far ahead of ourselves…

Perhaps food is an excess-limit, because with time, I’m able to eat more, but it also seems more on the side of actual-limitation. Eating might be excessive and actual in different ways, while reading entails actual-limits (I can only read so much before I fall asleep) but then again perhaps more so excess-limits. It’s hard to say, and the answer could change between people — but that’s the point. There is no single “fit,” and so we need a means to constantly experiment with limits to test their qualities. Ultimately, we will argue the SCM is that very tester and perhaps uniquely able to find excess-limits, which is what we need for a Creativity distinct from Productivity (even if overlapping). If x is 50% actual-limit and 50% excess-limit, while y is 10% actual-limit and 90% excess-limit, the SCM might select for y and direct more time, attention, and resources toward y than x. Why? Because the SCM might select for what develops Childhood, which is what can handle encountering “The Real” of the (Social) Sub-Conscious ((S./Un.-Conscious), which is necessary for Creativity — but more on that later. And while the SCM could select for excess-limits, the PM could select for actual-limits that are thought to have a high chance of just being contingent-limits, and another reason the SCM could select for excess-limits is because it leaves the PM to take care of the others. We need both the SCM and PM so that limits are not a problem or disordered in their abundance and our inability to respond to them, but today our problem seems more on the side of not having limits at all. We do not want a world of “all limits,” as we don’t want a world of “all givens” (pointing to Rieff) — we need “releases” — but also we don’t know what constitutes “too many limits” or “the right order of limits” or “the right proportion of different kinds of limits,” etc. ahead of time, and what is “best” today might not be best tomorrow — on and on. Hence, we need a means of constant testing, (re)coordination, a lowing of “transaction costs,” etc. — “a renaissance of coordination infrastructure,” we might say.

The SCM might uniquely (though not exclusively) aim for us to encounter constraint in the excess of Otherness and Determination, and in that way have us “naturally select” them. The map is limited from being the territory not because there is a “Big Other” who declares such, but because the map can’t be the territory: the very limits of intelligibility and finitude do not allow it (hence there can be limit without the Neurotic). But note that the map can expand and be added to even though it isn’t the territory: the “limit” enables a horizon and work of creative possibility. Because the map isn’t the territory, there is always creative work to be done updating the map. Also, though technology can lessen the problems of scarcity like an absence of clean water, it is imaginable that there could be a world where nothing technology did could address the problem of clean water. However, it is hard to imagine a scenario where “the map was the territory” entirely, and so there is no potential for the creative work of ever-updating the map to end, and thus there is good reason to believe this is “a limit that will always be a limit” versus only for now. If humans need limits, this kind of limit would be a better foundation than a limit that was contingent, but for most of history we have not been able to effectively test limits to better identify which limits would be best for foundations. We’ve done our best and gotten far, but now we must become better.

We have said with Alex Ebert that a limit must surprise us to be a limit versus just a technical problem, but it is also possible that a limit that surprises us could be one that, in the long arch of history, is actually just a technical problem. Again, consider how the inability to fly for most of history seemed to be an “essential limit” that was best for us to honor, but then ultimately it turned out to be a “contingent limit,” and yet in a sense it was “a real limit” for most people that they needed to integrate with, and yet if everyone did such, we would have never developed airplanes. Hence, we need a diverse ecosystem, and there is a need for many different people to take on many different risks regarding which limits are contingent and which are essential, and out of all this collective risk-taking there can “emerge” a result that we will have “good reason” to believe is best (at least as far as we can tell) — a “free market” argument against top-down planning that stands is not necessarily sufficient without the SCM. We must test limits not only in materiality (PM) but metaphysically (SCM) (“in the way we refer to physics”), or else there will be a monopoly in metaphysics and metajudgment (A/A) that orientates us “toward” a trajectory where all outcomes are range-bound according to that metaphysics (A/A). There might be a billion outcomes possible in an A/A-monopoly, but all of them will be A/A. However, if in our “initial conditions” we include the SCM and so the possibility of A/B thinking, there could then be far more outcomes which are under A/A, A/B, and A/A-with-A/B (and hence greater chance to “spread Childhood” before our AI-Causer). If “the new address” of Belonging Again is correct on how to “spread Childhood” and it’s necessity, we should expect, in the environment of Global Pluralism, that there will gradually be a “natural selection” (or “meta-natural selection”) favoring A/B (until there are market distortions, perhaps due to an intervening State that believes A/A is best, only able to think A/A…). What would cause this selection? Encounters with Otherness, the Sub-Conscious. Children will be selected for by these encounters, as will be the worldview(s) or “map(s)” that best enable(s) Childhood. And so Childhood might spread…

When Julian Benda discusses a need for universities to defend “the useless,” when the Counter-Enlightenment emphasizes the need for something beyond the reach of rationality — all of these are can be seen as traditions which tried to maintain a diversity of metaphysics, of value-forms, of logics — efforts which are ultimately tied to “a defense of limits.” As that diversity died, then there was a monopoly of A/A, and with that there has been Stagnation, autocannibalism, and a technology that is more manipulative than convivial. As Capital became the Capital-Nation-State, A/A came to “practically define” all areas of life with Capital, dissolving all “givens” until everything was unified in Capital, and so a diverse metaphysical environment was lost. As a loss of diversity in “physics” leads to failing and non-dynamic ecosystems, so a loss of diversity in “metaphysics” leads to failing and non-dynamic meta-ecosystems. But if everyone has a different value-form, aren’t we doomed to chaos? Only if we don’t have an infrastructure which can maintain “flows” and encounters, sustained by Capital in the Pricing Mechanism (Sociallity vs Socialism as a sublation of Capitalism, perhaps). The market with all its products could lead to fragmentation (and has), but the competition and “encounter” maintains intelligibility — so it could go between worldviews and value-forms thanks to the SCM. And where excess-limits are effectively coordinated, there will always be ever-more, and that “horizon” itself could keep us going and driven.

Clean water is likely a matter of scarcity that technology could correct with abundance and not cause pathologies, while the problem that “the map isn’t the territory” is likely a matter of excess-limit that technology couldn’t correct without causing pathologies and problems (even in just trying). Maybe not, but this is why we need the SCM: we need constant testing because we need limits for complexity and to avoid autocannibalism, but it is not self-evident which limits “ought” to be overcome, and which limits are essential and “ought” to be honored (say in “integration with lack”). And if we only have the Pricing Mechanism (ergo Capital) in a position to (indirectly) decide because it has the advantage of an infrastructure that nothing else has, it might by definition (according to its own internal logic) treat everything as a contingent-limit that technology can overcome. It must. To think alternatively (A/B) collectively (and recall that if it is metaphysically “individualist” it serves A/A), a new infrastructure is needed so that we can even think the possibility that there are some “essential limits” needed for the development of the subject.

Drive is excessive and never stops, and we have spoken about the importance of “intrinsic motivation” throughout O.G. Rose. In order for us to rise to the occasion and realize the fullness of excess-limits (as value-form), we need Drive, and arguably only excess-limits can “address” and fulfill Drive (see “The Impossibility of Fulfilling Desire Is the Possibility of Intrinsic Motivation”). We might have Drive within us precisely so that we can benefit from excess-limits, but it also seems that without excess-limits, Drive can destroy us. It is critical we find excess-limits, but we will argue, that until this moment in history and the SCM, we’ve not had effective means to coordinate the finding and testing of excess-limits, and so we have not been effective at coordinating Drive to avoid autocannibalism. The Pricing Mechanism is remarkably good at coordinating and fulfilling desire (and desire and Drive overlap, so I’m not drawing a hard line), but there is a limit to how much the fulfillment of desire can satisfy Drive. Drive must be addressed on its own terms in its indestructibility, but we have not had a means to do so (beyond randomness, basically), because we have not had the SCM to find, experiment with, and test limits to better determine actual-limits from contingent-limits from excess-limits and their overlaps. And so we have perhaps tried to conflate “desire” and “Drive” (as we’ve conflated “Productivity” and “Creativity”) to hide from ourselves the problem, and perhaps this worked for a time (1990 to 2008, perhaps), but now we have exhausted that strategy while training us into habits and “horizons” that make thinking beyond it difficult. We must change. (Land waits.)

III

As of this moment in history, there is a limit to the amount of clean water available, and this scarcity seems like (as in “there is reason to think is”) an actual-limit. While clean water is an actual-limit to us (in this moment in history, at least), it’s coordination will primarily fall on the side of the Pricing Mechanism (which admittedly I have been using in Hayek’s honor as a catchall for the whole logistic and coordinating “apparatus” of Capitalism). But it is possible a technology will be invented that can make clean water so abundant that it is “practically unlimited” (even if technically still limited, that limit is “practically inconsequential”), and at this point coordinating clean water with the PM will not so much be about overcoming the limit of “not having clean water” but the limits of getting the clean water to the people who need it effectively and consistently. Humans must continually drink clear water to survive, so that limitation is another reason the PM is needed, and this alongside distribution problems, even if clean water somehow became infinitely abundant in itself. But nevertheless we can imagine a world where all distribution problems for clean water are overcome and every person in world has abundant access to it. What limitation will the PM continue to operate according to then? Well, we must then maintain the infrastructure that makes clean water and distributes it, and there is a limit to how much these systems can operate without maintenance; hence, the PM will still be needed. But could technology be invented that never needed maintenance? Maybe, but that also could be impossible. But how could we know until we tried? Well, we couldn’t.

“The need to maintain clean water infrastructure” itself might be an actual-limit that can never be entirely overcome, but then again perhaps not — there will always be incentive for an entrepreneur to “try the impossible” for great reward — though the entrepreneur will fail if the task is actually impossible, of course. Once we are stuck trying to overcome an impossibility, we could be doomed (which for me includes trying to overcome the actual-limit of “humans being limited,” the great mistake of Dream-Equality). Trying to overcome an actual-limit doesn’t create value, but how can we know if something is an actual-limit without trying? We can’t, so we need “a free market of limit-testing” to better determine which limits are actual and which are only contingent. There is always risk, but risk-takers can be heavily rewarded. And that is a good thing, or else people might not be willing to take on risk, and without risk and challenging limitations, “great enrichments” wouldn’t occur. There will always be some who, in their effort to find and overcome limits, encounter actual-limits that cause failure, but that is a reason why the market can reward entrepreneurs so heavily: there is indeed real risk. But as long as there are limits to test, humans can develop and civilization prosper. And yet if there are no limits, humans suffer — a tricky problem (which the PM without the SCM cannot adequately address).

Also, there are some limits that the costs of even trying to overcome might not be worth it (at least for the time being) and/or that overcoming might not be consequential. For example, I cannot at will turn into a lizard, but this limit seems inconsequential and random, and there are infinite limits like this that I could try to overcome, but why? And if everyone on earth could turn into random animals at will (thanks to CRISPR, deconstructing all social constructs, etc.), would that add value and contribute to beneficial complexification, or just lead to chaos and threaten human society (“Cheap Deleuze”)? No one can know for sure, but it’s reasonable to wager that overcoming this actual-limit would not be worth it, and so no entrepreneur might take up the challenge. However, once VR is perfected, perhaps this limit can be somewhat overcome (at least online), and the likelihood this generates a profit for an entrepreneur could be higher than trying to do it in real life. Again, the test must be run. And even if the inability to turn into a lizard at will is an actual-limit, it does not follow that this limit is enough or of the quality (by itself, at least) needed for a subject to develop, and so more actual-limits of different qualities are likely needed — again, experimentation is necessary, and as we shouldn’t assume overcoming a contingent-limit is a good thing without tradeoffs, so we shouldn’t assume any and all actual-limits will meaningfully contribute to our development. Some might and some might not: “the marketplace of limits” is needed.

The SCM (with the PM) allows a negotiation, test, and experimentation on limits to determine their contingency and so something technology can handle, or their essentialness and so something that humans need in order to complexify and develop Childhood. But what if we develop a technology that allows us to access one another’s inner thoughts, like Neuralink? What if we release CRISPR gene-editing technology? Would that mean genes are contingent-limits? Well, there will be some people who treat genes and “the inaccessibility of other minds” as contingent-limits to be overcome by technology, and there will be others who treat them as actual-limits to be honored or else we will suffer self-effacement. And then we will run the experiment. There will be pressures on parents to gene-edit their children, but not all will, and then based on how the different parents respond to the Social Sub-Conscious and how they develop in their own lives (as we’ll expand on), we will see who are “selected out” and who thrive. There are no guarantees the results will be “the best of all possible results,” but they will still possibly be the best results we could possibly hope for or meaningfully consider as such. But without the SCM, the likelihood of a sufficient number of people being able to even think according to a value-form that would resist gene-editing and the “technological essence” would be low, and so it would be unlikely that the collective effects of gene-editing would be the best possible — the value-form competition would be too limited. We might get lucky, but luck is not an address.

We spoke in II.2 about Productivity and Creativity, and our thoughts here could help us better understand that distinction. In my view, efforts that unveil a supposed actual-limit to just be a contingent-limit will be a gain in Productivity (which will be “practically like” Creativity in terms of growth, even if they are still distinct), and so long as there are limits to be realized as contingent, there is Productivity gains to be had to increase growth (though not necessarily “spread”). But let us say in sector x “all possible” limits that can be made contingent are made such and all that are left are actual-limits; at this point, Productivity gains could fall with growth. But since we cannot know for sure which limits are “actually actual” (assuming any actual-limits even exist to some relevant degree) versus only contingently such, there is the possibility we nevertheless keep trying in x to overcome “the actual limits” there forever (causing autocannibalism) — a possible trap of Capital. Considering this, we can say there are at least two traps that Capitalism with the PM can fall into, notably without the SCM:

1. Forever trying to turn limits into contingent-limits which are actually actual-limits (which we might never be able to know for sure are actual-limits, hence why we could get stuck forever trying to make them contingent).

2. Removing all limits to such a degree that subject cannot develop to avoid self-effacement.

(We discussed in II.1 Systems and Subjects by Cadell Last and how “tension” is necessary for subjects to develop, and we can align “tension” with “limit.” ‘The ultimate lesson for performing in tension is that tension is itself a type of absolute condition for being a form of subjectivity,’ Cadell writes, and so it goes that limitation, and ‘there is really no choice when it comes to experiencing and moving through tension in the sense that the end of existence (death) is the only state when tension will be, presumably, removed from internal experience.’⁶²⁸ As we noted in II.1, it is arguably an “axiomatic belief” that we need limitation to become Children, but also we cannot meaningfully test axiomatic beliefs without the SCM and sufficient exposure of all possible worldviews to the (Social) Sub-Conscious, and so arguably we can’t say meaningfully either way without the SCM.⁶²⁹)

If 1 occurs, Productivity might eventually collapse with growth and Stagnation set in (at least relative to a sector of the economy), and if 2 occurs, subjects under the system won’t develop and could rebel or go out hollowly with a whimper. Avoiding both of these requires the same thing: Creativity. When we are testing limits and unveiling them to be contingent-limits, relative to the market and growth, Productivity and Creative are “practically the same,” and in a sense the distinction is not needed. But once we “surprisingly encounter” an actual-limit, the distinction can become clearer and more vivid. But at this point we might have been trained and habituated out of the capacity to even think the idea of Creativity as distinct, as we might be habituated to only operate in a way that increases Productivity (treating all limits as contingent and “practically always denying” actual-limits). What then? Well, we need an infrastructure like the SCM so that we could habituate ourselves differently, and/or so that we could find a sector where there were still limits to be tested that we had good reason to believe were contingent-limits not actual-limits (which requires risk-taking). This is a logistic and coordination problem, one the PM might help with but not as well as it would when paired with the SCM.

When Stagnation sets in and Non-Zero Growth lessens, there is reason to think that there is a lack of Creativity and so excess-limit. We cannot know for sure, and in fact if we simply “wait until numbers come in” showing we need more Creativity, we have quantified it and try to engineer outcomes in a world of complexity where emergence must be honored. Instead, just knowing in general that (it is reasonable to think) there are possible situations where Productivity can no longer generate Non-Zero Growth could be enough to justify taking the steps to put in place infrastructure that will increase the probability that there is a sufficient amount of Creativity in the system so that the “ecosystem” stays healthy. Our argument is that the SCM is our best bet to incubate that Creativity, and keep in mind that the SCM is not so much a matter of outcome but “starting constraints” that change the distribution of possible outcomes, and though we don’t know exactly what the future holds, the idea is that if there is an SCM and PM, the likelihood increases of a future where “Childhood spreads.” How exactly it does so and what that means cannot be known: our aim is only to put in place an infrastructure and means of testing limits to better determine actual-limits, contingent-limits, and excess-limits, for our argument is that the quality of our relation to limits impacts the quality of possible emergences. If there are no limits at all, the aim of Dream-Equality, we suffer self-effacement.

If a day comes when all contingent-limits are overcome and all that is left are actual-limits, we will have had remarkable Productivity gains, but then Productivity could drop and flatten (even if humans in themselves are better off in other ways, because they have actual-limits according to which to develop and gain Enablement) (optimally, we’d have both Productivity and Enablement growth, but that requires excess-limits). Perhaps that day of “flat equilibrium” never comes, but the very fact it is possible is reason to put in place conditions now which are afforded by the SCM, so that there is Creativity as a backup if needed. Also, I would argue that SCM could make us better at both Productivity and Creativity (in the SCM, we gain the benefits of S&G too), and so if Productivity is ultimately limitless, the SCM will help us realize its fullness, and resulting Creativity will either contribute to that somehow or perhaps have neutral impacts. Still, there is good reason to believe that Productivity is not unlimited, that there are actual-limits (at least relative to significant stretches of history, in which social upheaval might arise, as concerned Keynes), and evidence for this is Stagnation and falling Non-Zero-Sum Growth (“R” at the expense of “G”).⁶³⁰ But perhaps this Stagnation is only “apparent’ and itself contingent, as Deirdre McCloskey might argue? Well, I would argue increased Creativity will make us more efficient at recognizing this and breaking out of “growth plateaus” to the next upward slopes. Productivity could tend to flow then concentrate, like an estuary, but then something happen where Productivity gets stuck and doesn’t flow on (the estuary becomes a pound). “The waters” quiet, still, and begin to dry up under the sun (bureaucracy, management, systemization…). But then something opens up or breaks in “the boundary condition,” and the water flows again, and so Productivity increases. That “opening up the boundary” is an act of Creativity, but when it occurs it can be experienced as (if) Productivity (and Creativity are similes): distinctions are blurred.⁶³¹ We could say that increased Creativity in the system increases the likelihood that “boundary conditions” for and of Productivity are like membranes versus walls (as Alexander Bard discusses), and increased membranes (versus “walls”) can correlate with increased Non-Zero-Sumness. The likelihood we end up with “walls” versus “membranes” (even if we don’t want “walls”) is higher without an SCM.

Where there is an SCM, the distinction between Creativity and Productivity can be clearer, which could make us better at “opening boundary conditions” and membranic when so needed (versus basically getting lucky), and so keep growth on the side of Non-Zero Sumness more often than not. Right now, without the SCM, we could say the market is perhaps efficient at increasing GDP (though that might just reflect “R”), but not efficient at keeping growth Non-Zero-Sum versus Zero-Sum. And our hope is that the SCM could increase the presence of Creativity in the system to avoid concentration due to boundary conditions that don’t efficiently open and close (due to a lack of testing, flexibility, experimentation, etc., and even the very habituation needed for us to think this condition). But what if there are always new sectors for Productivity to increase which could pull the whole market up with it? Perhaps in x Productivity gets concentrated and eventually dries up, but if there are always other sectors like w, y, and z, what does it matter (and why worry about Creativity)? Sure, that’s possible, but then the benefits of the growth will only be readily afforded to those involved (either as owners, employees, customers…) of w, y, and z, and that in of itself could lead to inefficiencies (if people don’t have access to the sectors, can’t recognize their value due to habituation, there isn’t “spillover,” etc.). There is nevertheless risk of Zero-Sumness, and our aim is to reduce the chances for Zero-Sumness as much as possible: our argument is that the PM without the SCM is more likely for Zero-Sumness than the PM with the SCM. Hence, we support the SCM (a matter of modal logic), even if it is theoretically possible that is not needed and thinkers like Deidre McCloskey are more right than others. (So we are arguing for the PCM according a “precaution principle”? To a degree, but I would also argue it at the same time increases our quality of life in helping us gain Drive — it’s better to be a Child than not — so precaution is only a secondary justification.)

The unveiling and realization of (supposed) actual-limits to only be contingent-limits is a generation of value according to the logic of Capital, and it has contributed to our Great Enrichment and modern world. However, if we come to treat all limits the same way (according to a single value-form), and/or begin trying to overcome actual-limits that are indeed actual-limits, growth could stall, productivity fall, and pathologies set in (denial, obsession, etc.) (and if this mistake is made, it might be hidden by speculation and various “tricks” to maintain and even grow capital-return (“R”) all the same, which is perhaps only sustainable (in some sense) if there is a Global Debt Bubble that is “too big to fail,” as discussed in Second Thoughts, but I’m not sure). But it is of course possible that we never have to worry about this problem of “only having actual-limits left,” for to the degree this occurs is contained and rare — we can’t know ahead of time. But critically, even if this is all so, Artificial Intelligence is key to incorporate into this discussion, for it will easily master Productivity, and even if there is always Productivity to increase (say because there is always a “practically infinite” amount of limits that seem actual to realize as contingent-limits), AI could replace us as best at carrying out those Productivity gains. To elaborate:

1. There are no or “practically infinite” limits to realize are contingent-limits, and so Productivity without a clearer distinction with Creativity is all we need for Growth.

2. However, if AI is better than us at realizing and even “capturing” the value afforded by overcoming contingent-limits (which are “practically infinite”), then there will be “practically infinite” opportunities for AI to direct value toward itself.

3. There will be no point at which the market will necessarily select for humans over AI, because there is “practically no point” at which AI stops generating value.

Even if “the problem of running out of limits that are contingent” is not a real problem, which seems optimistic for humanity, this could actually increase the probability we are replaced by AI, for AI could be more effective at overcoming “(contingent) limits” than we are, and so the PM and market will select for AI over us. Yes, we won’t have to worry about Productivity gains exhausting themselves and growth collapsing, but we will still have to worry about the role of humans in that Productivity and in terms of how humans will benefit from it. This is yet another reason why taking time to put in place an infrastructure to generate Creativity is important, even if the market itself doesn’t need Creativity as distinct from Productivity for growth (though I think there is good reason to believe this could be the case). The point needs expansion, but Creativity could provide humans a role or at least something to enjoy outside the market, and without that humans might rebel against technology and the State, causing trouble. Also, Productivity gains could be captured and narrow, so Zero-Sum: if AI is not “owned by everyone” somehow (say via equity), then the enrichments of Productivity could be concentrated, and so the growth enabled by “practically infinite Productivity” could be narrow, concentrated, and/or Zero-Sum. If AI was somehow owned by everyone, then the growth might be more Non-Zero-Sum, but that might be unlikely if the Capital-Nation-State is “captured” by special interest groups, corporations, etc. (considering Mancur Olson). Because a future is possible where growth is Zero-Sum, it is wise to focus on the SCM.

Ultimately, the question we are asking is: “What are the conditions and (starting) constrains of Capitalism that maximize the probability distribution favoring Non-Zero-Sum Growth?” For most of history, the failures of Capitalism for consistent Non-Zero-Sumness have been used as evidence for State intervention, but we are arguing that will likely prove inadequate and is uninformed by Complexity and Emergence. What is needed is the Social, as afforded by the SCM. Gesturing back to Keynes in II.1, Creativity is “creating Demand” versus just “stimulating Demand,” and Creativity will arise from dialectics of ideas and energy. If the SCM uniquely enables ideas and energy, and does so better than the PM, it will uniquely generate Creativity and Demand. And if the State cannot do this and the market eventually gets stuck “stimulating demand,” the SCM is necessary for the free market to generate Non-Zero Growth and favor something more Austrian. Capitalism can prove “incomplete” and that not necessarily mean the State should act; it could instead mean the Social must be regained.

IV

It requires elaboration, but if we consider Post-Liberalism and thinkers like Philip Pilkington, we could say that Liberalism is the starting assumption, until forced to acknowledge otherwise (which practically might never happen), that all limits are contingent-limits, and/or that such a small number of limits are actual-limits that is not very productive to really even think about them (the costs of the mistake of treating an actual-limit like a contingent-limit is lower than the average gains). Also, Liberalism is not against excess-limits necessarily but also doesn’t know what to do with them (they become more private and random matters); excess-limits don’t seem readily intelligible to Liberalism, and as such Liberalism might (accidentally) deny, ignore, or even (try to) destroy them (which arguably the Scottish Enlightenment warned would be a disaster). As discussed on the Hermitix Podcast, Pilkington describes Liberalism as the deconstruction of all arbitrary hierarchies, and I think that is getting at it, though I would want to emphasize “limit” more than “hierarchy” (even if the results are similar).⁶³² It is true that Liberalism is “toward” erasing (what it judges as) arbitrary hierarchy, but I think it is more essentially “toward” erasing limits (as contingent), while ill-equipped to identify differences between actual-limits, contingent-limits, and excess-limits. Even if Liberalism knows “erasing all limits” is impossible, in its own logic, it cannot “practically stop” itself from trying (due to its inefficiency at determining the qualities of limits, being itself more “toward” quantification than quali-fication), as it cannot “practically stop” itself from ignoring the excess-limits needed to “address Drive.” It is “captured” by its own value-form (A/A), and unable to form-ulate itself beyond it. Liberalism can (intellectually) “know better” all it wants, and it will not necessarily act differently (a grave lesson we have stressed from Sociology). It cannot necessarily stop its own autocannibalism as it knows autocannibalism must be stopped. (Land waits.)

Though Louis Dumont profoundly influenced me, a reason I want to stress “limits” over “hierarchy” is because I want to highlight that Liberalism and Technology (which I’ll capitalize to suggest “a movement of history”) can be on a continuum.633 Liberalism and Technology can be the same “in essence”: wherever we personally view the start of Liberalism, whether in Locke or back in the Greeks, that was arguably also the start of “The Technological Essence” (Heidegger, and (so) some might say “nihilism”), and in that sense the start of Liberalism was the start of Capital which was the start of Technology, all “toward” Dream-Equality (as realized and made “vivid” by our AI-Causer; we can now “see” the movement of history). Why this assertion? Because “the working assumption” of technology is that all limits are contingent-limits (until absolutely forced to acknowledge otherwise, which might be “practically impossible,” because certainty is impossible), and this is a metaphysical posture, assumption, and orientation, which has been at the heart of what has made the Modern World and Great Enrichment possible. We have greatly benefited from this “working assumption,” but now there is reason to believe it is “overfitting” (“The Meaning Crisis”), and this “working assumption” has arguably habituated us and trained us out of the capacity to not assume it. And so we are overfitting it. And so we are suffering autocannibalism.

However, even if all (practically) actual-limits are ultimately just (technically) contingent-limits, this would not mean that there are no excess-limits.⁶³⁴ And that is key, and it is excess-limits for which we need the SCM to especially coordinate effectively and that humans need to properly develop. However, technology is precisely based and motivated by the working assumption that “all limits are contingent,” and so it cannot easily make intelligible excess-limits and will easily try to overcome them and/or discount them. But this means it could discount “excess” (the “supra-fluous,” gesturing toward D.C. Schindler), without which humans suffer (Heideggerian “shepherds of being,” of excess-limits). Life empties out. Everything becomes intelligible and boring (Blondel). Everything can be “captured” (shrug). AI wins (and saves us from ourselves). But we do not know ahead of time which limits are contingent, actual, and excessive, and if there are ultimately any actual-limits at all or if technology can ultimately unveil every “actual-limit” to only be contingently such, skyrocketing the need for excess-limit, or if excess-limits can all be made “practically non-excessive’ somehow — it all requires testing that the SCM could afford.

To slow down: we require first principles and assumptions to operate; otherwise, nothing would get started. The “first principle” and “working assumption” of Technology and Capital more generally is that all “actual-limits” are only apparently such and ultimately just “contingent-limits,” and/or that this is the case the majority of the times (perhaps 99%). Capital will not accept a limit as actual without a constant and deep “fight,” and it will continually try to overcome the limit as long as it can (for there is always money to be made by the entrepreneur who can, for one, as it is the case humans always have desires and dreams, hence there is always incentive to try). Before a technology is invented to unveil that x was (“always already”) just a contingent-limit, we could “practically live” as if x was an actual-limit, and so x could be a genuine means of our development as subjects and in what we might find “freedom in.” But once a technology unveils an actual-limit to actually just be a contingent-limit, that limit can no longer function as a limit for us like it did in the past, and so it cannot help us develop like it did (as it goes with “givens,” for the topics of “givens” and “limits” strongly overlap). If we try (to relive the past), our development could stifle and we suffer problems (Illich’s “critique of scarcity” was “an elevation of limits”).⁶³⁵ ⁶³⁶ But then if we see Technology has unveiled all the Determinations around us just to be contingent-limits, what do we do? Are we doomed for Disablement and to lose Childhood? If there are no excess-limits to “fill the voids,” yes (we become the voids).

To assume (basically) all limits are ultimately contingent is the Essence of Technology, and if Reason chooses this metaphysic (perhaps so habituated by Technology), then we can end up with an “autonomous rationality” that’s working assumption is that it is unlimited (and only limited to the degree it is forced to acknowledge this, though perhaps it is never so forced). This is the spirit of Dream-Equality, a world where all “apparent” limits and Determinations are only contingently such and actually expressions of the subject. Everything in a dream is under our control, even if we don’t realize it and it terrorizes us in a nightmare (we just need more information, more reason…). Dream-Equality is the dream of making “the waking world” and its Determinations equal: all expressions of (the same)/one will. And us awakening, lucid, and realize it. This is, in essence, the spirit of Technology. Autonomous rationality, technology, and dreams — it’s all the same, in essence. As we might elaborate on in II.3 or Part III (I’m not sure), the Story and History of Rationality is a movement toward “groundlessness” (“nihilism,” “the loss of givens”), a trajectory that follows the growth of “encountering Otherness” (“Globalization”), and technology is a continuation of that story. Once technology is “unleashed,” it is “determined” to test all possible limits to see if they are “actually actual” or ultimately just contingent, and it has been remarkable in finding out how many supposedly “actual-limits” are actually just contingent — this is the legacy and marvelous success of “The Great Enrichment.” But this spirt cannot stop itself (A/A), and the speed by which limits are removed from our lives now seems faster than the rate by which we are replacing those limits with new ones (unleashing Disablement, “The Sub-Conscious,” “The Real”…). And we arguably don’t even know that we need limits (it’s nonrational and hard to think), so we’re not even trying to replace what we loss, and even if we do try to replace the limits, we tend to do so with limits that Technology can deconstruct, so the effort is like “returning to givens” — it doesn’t work or requires a certain level of isolation and possibly repression (this is perhaps highlighted by trends toward extreme sports, “Trad Wives,” admiring of the Amish, movements regaining masculinity and femininity, luddite spirts, etc.). But if the choice is between “no limits” brought about by technology, which causes autocannibalism, or “trying to treat contingent limits as actual,” the second option is easily better, so I am not critiquing these movements: they are natural and understandable responses to the loss of limits. My point is only that these will not alone ultimately function as “a new address” — their success will be inadequate, and in the limits being contingent, their potential for emergence and complexity less.

Anyway, a key claim I am making (and it could be wrong) is that the potential for emergence and complexity is relative to the degree the relevant limits and constraints are actual versus contingent.⁶³⁷ But there might not be any “actual-limits” in the end, after Technology is through with us (we don’t know), in accordance with its “working assumption,” or at least there are not many and/or enough, and that would suggest Technology is removing our potential for emergence and complexity (even if an emergence itself). Without such, there is flatness and equilibrium — autocannibalism. Are we doomed? Well, not necessarily if there are excess-limits, and a key question — perhaps the question of questions for our “new address” — is if the human is uniquely capable of “encountering” and “orbiting” excess-limits (“Lack”). If our technology is able to relate to excess-limits like we are, then humans might be replaced by AI, but if excess-limits are what humans are uniquely orientated to relate to, say because we can “apprehend gestalts” without calculating them all (Sam Green, Zwicky, Aspasia…), then humans will not be replaced by AI to the contingent degree we choose to orientate ourselves “toward” excess-limits. AI and Capital can be free to go about and deconstruct as many limits as they can, which could be a terror if we are ignorant of excess-limits, but if we’re not, Technology could help us find excess-limits. By deconstructing limits that are contingent (which we can associate with “(de/re)territorialization” in Deleuze and Guattari), Technology with Capital can help us focus on excess-limits (“what matters,” even). Technology and AI are not innately bad, but they must ultimately be “toward” excess-limits, which arguably only humans can so orientate them (“a lynchpin,” “steward”…), and excess-limits are real limits that could afford emergence and complexification. (Perhaps Technology was historically necessary for us to ever get to the place where the reality and role of excess-limits was undeniable, where all “plausible deniability” against them was lost.)

Again, humans require limits to function and be “fully human” (and avoid being “cancerous,” as Ebert discusses), and yet Capital and Technology are actively and “unstoppably” removing all the limits it can, meaning the availability of (supposedly) “actual-limits” in our immediacy is vanishing, paradoxically worsening Disablement and autocannibalism. Liberalism with Technology naturally deconstructs all the limits it can, as it does all “givens,” and without effective coordination and testing of excess-limits (which can function as “gifts,” sublated “givens” perhaps), Liberalism seems in trouble. If only the Pricing Mechanism, ergo Capital, is in a position to (indirectly) decide “what is to be done about limits,” because it has the advantage of an infrastructure that nothing else has, it will by definition, according to its own internal logic, treat everything as an “accidental limit” that technology can overcome. It must. To think alternatively (A/B) collectively (and recall that if it is individualistic, it serves A/A), a new infrastructure is needed so that we can even think the possibility that there are some “essential limits.” Indeed, if we only have the PM, even if we don’t want it to be the case, we’ve likely “always already” been indirectly trained (by MetaAesthetics, the value-form of Capital, our own orientation to Dream-Equality…) to treat all limits as contingent, and it’s very difficult for us to even think the nonrational thought that “there are essential limits.” Some people can think this, but arguably not many, especially not on the collective level, and so we cannot enable a competition of value-forms and ideas are limited. “The logic that all limits are contingent” has a monopoly and wins by default: even if there is a “free market” where products, services, etc. compete, this all hides a lack of competition for logics, subjectivities, and value-forms (“behind” our choices). That second (meta-)layer of competition is missing; there is a monopoly of A/A and “the technological essence” that cannot think “lack,” as necessary for us to really believe (emotionally and plausibly) that there are “essential limits” we need in order to avoid self-effacement. And we are arguing that without limits and constraints, there will not be complexification or emergence; hence, in the name of removing limits to become unlimited, we can limit what we can become. Stagnate. Should we just listen to the Post-Liberals, then? They are not entirely wrong, for they seem aware that the Collective Sub-Conscious, enabled and unleashed by Technology in Globalization and Pluralism, is overwhelming us. Christians who gather with other Christians will have to face the inevitable negativity and Sub-Conscious that emerges there, and that is more than enough without multiplying the Sub-Conscious profoundly with the presence of countless other worldviews — that’s just too much. Global Pluralism is doomed, or so the Post-Liberal warns. Can we really “address” their concerns? And what do we mean by “The Sub-Conscious,” and how does that relate to Globalism and Global Pluralism? Good questions, but let us first talk for a moment why, in the SCM, “the indestructibility of maps” might function in our favor.

V

Limits, constraints, and negations seem at the heart of what enables emergence, and in a world where nothing we can think is enough, we need to focus on setting “the conditions of possibility” so that we can think what we cannot imagine. This seems impossible without the SCM, as it seems impossible considering “the problem of internally consistent systems” (or “maps”), as described in The True Isn’t the Rational trilogy: everyone seems stuck inside ideologies and worldviews that “do their thinking for them.” Yes, the challenge is great, but if we combine “maps” with the SCM, then suddenly the very “indestructibility of maps,” currently a deep problem, could actually be negated/sublated into part of our “address.” Because “maps” are not arbitrary, because our worldviews are profoundly “sticky” and “indestructible,” they can function as real constraints and actual-limits (“practically” and for now, at least) which could afford emergence. The very ideologies we cannot escape could enable us to sublate ideology.

Every “map” constrains us, and where there are no constraints, emergence cannot readily occur. But if the constraints are too strong, that too might hinder emergence, but who can say when “limits” are too strong and when they are too weak? Well, no one: that requires constant testing and experimentation. But I would submit that every “map” entails a Gödel Point, and “maps” might not be too restrictive (or open) in those Gödel Points, which means each and every worldview needs to do the work of realizing their Gödel Point, their “point of incompleteness,” and “dwelling” there: in this condition, emergence can occur. Creativity can arise. And what otherwise couldn’t be thought could be thought, as necessary in a moment in history when “our good ideas” are not enough.

The SCM is needed for us “to get good at” collective thinking and to be enabled into mentidivergence and a diversity of value-forms, as collective consciousness needs to avoid Game Theory Problems (as we discussed with Lorenzo, Ep #10). But how it accomplishes that will not be by “lifting us over differences” or “overcoming worldviews,” but by helping us be more deeply embedded in them so that we can come upon our Gödel Points, which is when something like emergence could be possible. In this way, we need to be more limited if there is to be hope for excess-limits, not less, and an emphasis on “transcendence” with emergence could hinder that work. Though there is something “transcendent” about emergence, emphasizing that could ironically orientate us as subjects away from the constraints needed for emergence to occur: if we speak as if we need to be “over” worldviews, for example, versus “commit to a worldview to the Gödel Point,” then our hopes for emergence could be liabilities. “Negativity” must lead, and with it the possibility that suffering this negativity won’t lead to any emergence at all (there cannot be guarantees). Will this feel like “transcendence”? No, and yet it could be the road to transcendence; nevertheless, it matters what language we use and what we emphasize, for that orients us as subjects and can impact our expectations and resolve. Yes, constraint can lead to emergence, but I would emphasize the constraint so that are better “prepared” for what is demanded of us. If we’re constantly discussing “transcendence,” when we suffer “negativity,” we might conclude we’re doing something wrong and quit.

For Mind (as a Vector) to undergo emergence, it will require limits and constrains, and this is a “hope of maps”: Mind couldn’t help but generate “internally consistent systems” in order to make sense of the world and not be overwhelmed by “combinational explosiveness” or “The Real,” and since those “maps are indestructible,” they can function as actual-limits on Mind. Mind naturally is “toward” Dream-Equality and the denial of limitation (A/A), meaning Mind is not naturally orientated to contribute to its complexification (A/B), but nevertheless Mind had to generate “maps” in its effort for Dream-Equality (at least until it could finish that work in AI). But now in our “Age of Maps” (after our “Age of Givens”), we are left with the Absolute Choice of what to do with “maps”: use them for their Gödel Points and as constraints for emergence, or seek to transcend them with AI into Dream-Equality (it is with Lewis a “First Things First” Problem: negativity to emergence or straight to transcendence?). Our “new address” will require us to choose the negativity first, the work of finding and “dwelling in” Gödel Points. For this to change, we will have to be intentional about it, but how? We cannot just flick a switch and make it thus, nor just consciously will such change; we will have to build an infrastructure, aesthetic, etc. to indirectly so train us. This is the SCM; this is how we accomplish what cannot be accomplished directly, how while habituated according to “planning” (A/A) we begin moving toward “preparation” (A/B).

The constraints and limits of the SCM could be “maps” and “Otherness,” but since we cannot know ahead of time how to make them function in service of emergence, we must constantly test them, as the SCM makes possible (the limits of the SCM are what the SCM uniquely makes possible encountering). Overall, what is needed is a radical increase in movement and “flow” to find and test all possible limits, and since there must be worldviews which are “internally consistent,” then there must be worldviews that can help us realize limits needed for our development. There was historically a dream that only one worldview would be “internally consistent” (“the right one”), but that dream has been shown false (and perhaps if that was true, there wouldn’t be a diversity of constraints needed for emergence, and that would be a “Creative Tragedy”). There has been hopelessness with the death of this Enlightenment Dream, but where a seed dies, much can blossom (where the Enlightenment was humbled, so Emergence might transpire). But “flow” (Deleuze) without “roots” (Weil) is psychotic and “toward” self-effacement, but fortunately “indestructible maps” can provide “grounding” in any and all possible circumstances or “intensities” (“A Thousand Weils”), precisely in being “indestructible” (though that doesn’t mean they can’t lose “stickiness” or not be “selected out” due to lack of reproduction, spread, etc.). And so “flows” of Globalization and Pluralism, which can help “naturally select out” worldviews which are not “internally consistent” (and so not actually “maps” just “notions”), will ultimately not overwhelm “maps,” and then those “maps” will have the choice of “dwelling in the Gödel Point” (and facing the next evolutionary test, “The Sub-Conscious”), or identifying with their “indestructible map” (an neurotic, and extraordinary Big Other) (which though will leave us defenseless before our AI-Causer). The Absolute Choice. Lack is (not) nothing.

People who stress Science to deal with Pluralism can argue that the only thing strong enough to bring Difference together is “the real world” — testable claims, facts, etc. — and though there is truth to this, Science can prove inadequate to deal with psychoanalytical concerns by itself (desire, belonging, meaning, etc., as we’ve discussed throughout O.G. Rose), but what beyond “facts” and “actuality” is strong enough to sustain itself in any and all possible circumstances and intensities? The indestructible. “Maps.” But that means Difference is indestructible, yes, and so “Religious Wars” inevitable? Likely, perhaps, but not inevitably, for all “maps” must entail Gödel Points to be indestructible, and those points can be “dwelled in,” making possible a universality in particularity and singularity, that affords us the unifying potential of Science alongside a psychoanalytical address (anything short of this will fail). “Incompleteness” is also “indestructible,” but without “maps” it is “practically nothingness” and so irrelevant. But in “maps” and between them, “incompleteness” can function as “an indestructibility” which can handle all possible “flows” and “intensities,” and in so doing so enable emergence and complexification in any and all possible worlds. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy. What is possible is not inevitable, and so possibly meaningful and free.

Without Technology that has made possible the AI-Causer which threatens us, there would be no hope for an SCM, and so no hope for effectively coordinating actual-limits, contingent-limits, and excess-limits, as there would be no hope for a “Harmony of Global Pluralism” that doesn’t ignore the psychoanalytical and Sub-Conscious. Our threat is our hope. The problem is using Technology and even Science against any and all limits, versus use Technology to effectively identify qualities of limits “toward” excess-limits which Desire needs for negation/sublation into Drive. Before Technology though, limits we developed according to which were easily contingent, and so the development they enabled for us was easily not as high in quality as possible had those limits been actual-limits or excess-limits; furthermore, all of our development would have had a fragile foundation, and could have been lost just as soon as the limit was unveiled to be contingent (incentivizing repression, anti-technology impulses, etc.). But if there is Technology and the PM without the SCM, our rendering limits contingent could be faster than our ability to replace them, as needed for our development, and so that could lead to trouble as well. To lack Technology is a problem, but to have Technology without the SCM is also a problem, hence our moment.⁶³⁸

Without the SCM, even if we wanted to “choose limits” for our development, we couldn’t do so effectively, and the speed by which Technology is unveiling limits to be contingent only makes the work increasingly impossible without the SCM. In a way, we could say that as the PM helps us find “real value,” so the SCM helps us find “real finitude” — and “value” and “finitude” are two-sides of the same coni. Finitude is infinite it its definitiveness, if only we could train ourselves into the right orientation to experience it as of excess-limitation. That is our work, and paradoxically it is the very “indestructibility of maps” which equips us to do this work well, emergence by emergence — infinite finitude. Without SCM, we cannot effectively realize “The Limits of Finitude,” and so we cannot effectively realize value. The PM is effective at realizing some kinds of limits, but not all finitude limits, and so we are overly-habituated in light of limited value-formation. Isn’t that a good, being limited? Not so much, for it is a contingent-limit: it is ineffective at our formation, especially now when our historic moment can move beyond it, as suggested by how Capital is overfitting. When we form according to a contingent-limit and cannot do better, that can be historically justified, but history in this way is no longer on our side but AI’s. For Absolute History, we must value-diversify. And so we need Technology to find and test essential limits, but when it overidentifies with, and overly-trains us “toward,” limit-eradication (as a metaphysical assumption, A/A), there will be pathologies. When these arise, it is not evidence we made a mistake in history or need to erase Technology, but evidence we need a negation/sublation in the SCM. And if Beauty uniquely requires effective coordination for excess-limits, perhaps it wasn’t until our age when we could meaningfully approach Beauty.⁶³⁹

Every worldview can become more so itself thanks to the SCM, for when “internally consistent systems” are forced by their environments and even competition to realize the fullness of themselves, they can realize both their “indestructibility” (in themselves) and their Gödel Points, which affords creative possibilities for the worldviews which otherwise would have never been realized. The SCM can make the Christian more Christian, the Muslim more Muslim, the Atheist more Atheist, Rationality more like Rationality, Capital more like Capital, Science more like Science, etc. — and as all worldviews are made more fully themselves, they will also be exposed to the Sub-Conscious to test which worldviews, in their fullness, are actually able to energetically and psychologically survive this extraordinary environment of interconnectivity and Globalization (which I would argue is observable). If all worldviews were not fully themselves when they came into this great test, we could more so question the results, but the results of the SCM are more reliable. The worldviews that “surprising encounter” one another are more likely to be their full selves; the results are harder to dismiss as “accidental.”

Complexity needs increased “flow” and “constraint,” with “encounters” being opportunities for complexification, and all of this is what the SCM enables. It has been historically very hard for fully developed worldviews to encounter one another; usually, when they did, it was through businesspeople or politicians, but now a worldview can encounter another through the husband of twenty years, “framed” in his daily concerns. The kind of thoughts this encounter generates could be unique and exactly what we need to think, and also the development of worldviews can more easily “spread,” not restricted to university spaces (not that universities are bad). With quality thought and unique “encounters” now possible, we might finally have the environments where worldviews can fully blossom into themselves, precisely because of “the problem of internally consistent systems” which enables emergence.⁶⁴⁰

VI

But doesn’t the Child choose to make something Absolute? Isn’t that then a contingent-limit? If I follow Nietzsche and “hang a law around my neck,” haven’t I simply chosen to choose something contingent as if it wasn’t, arguably an act of repression and “bad faith,” doomed to fail? An excellent question, which leaves us to ask the difference on the formation of the subject who develops relative to a limit that is only an actual-limit for now, in this moment of history, versus a limit that the subject has chosen to function “as essential and/or actual” to them. When we choose a goal, that is a limit we are seeking to overcome, and we have argued that this is a matter of Desire more than Drive. Here, when we discuss “choosing a limit as essential,” we do not mean merely “having a goal” (not that goals are bad, but goals must ultimately serve an excess-limit); instead, we mean “organizing our lives around that which we never exhaust.” It is also possible we choose something to function as “an essential limit” that ultimately turns out contingent, so we need to choose wisely, but still the question remains: “What is the difference between a limit which a Child contingently chooses to be essential, versus a contingent-limit insufficient for Childhood?”

To start, there is a significant difference between “going through” contingency to the essential versus thinking something is actual only to later (be forced to) realize it is contingent. In the Child, out of all the things we could choose, we choose x, which though this choice itself is contingent, with this commitment, our relation to x is very different from all the other options we did not choose. We come to treat x as absolute, and even if it is only at “this” moment that x came to be absolute to us, it can be as if it was “always already” such (or “destined to be”), and the fact we “choose x” now doesn’t mean it couldn’t have always have been “absolute” somehow (“a real choice” like this could actually be more like a “realization”). We choose to make x actual to us, and in that way the actuality of x can be more antifragile, for if something unveils its contingency to us, we already knew it was contingent, and so what x is to us does not change. But if we think y is an actual-limit and Technology suddenly unveils it to be contingent, that can be a profound shock and deconstruction. A Child faces contingency on the front-end while Technology unveils it on the back-end: the Child accepts contingency as actual, while Technology treats actuality as contingent.

Let us say we seek to be “a great writer” — is that a contingent-limit or an excess-limit? It could entail an actual-limit (at least “practically”), for we might not know how to write; similarly, “being a professional athlete” might be impossible because of my genes (and remember that what is impossible isn’t really a limit, and so won’t effectively develop the subject) (but also perhaps “being a professional athlete” is only impossible if I’m particular about which kind of athlete I am…?). But those possibilities aside, it can seem like “being a writer” is a contingent-limit, because one day I could get published and so achieve my goal. And yet in another way it seems like an excess-limit, because arguably I become a writer just as soon as I start writing, and yet no matter how much I write, there is always more to write and more to learn. “Being a writer” in that way, more qualitative than quantifiable, is ever-deepening, and so could profoundly develop the subject. Arguably, many of the things that might seem like goals — being an engineer, being a CEO, being this or that — might actually be more like excess-limits if we treat them more like artforms. If our goal is to be paid for engineering and recognized as an engineer, then we might be dealing with a contingent-limit, but if we want to be an “artist of the field,” a true master, then we could be dealing more with an excess-limit. Only we can know our relation to our actions, and perhaps we ourselves need to be tested to find out what something really is to us. All the same, the point is that what is a contingent-limit to one could be an excess-limit to another, and a Child is someone who chooses contingency in order to make it actual — but notice here that a Child might only be able to be a Child when what he or she “Absolutely Chooses” is ultimately an excess-limit.⁶⁴¹

“Being a writer” can be an excess-limit, as can be Beauty: we glimpse it, but there is always more to glimpse; we publish something, but there is always more style to master, more description to honor. The Child is not surprised by contingency but chooses it to be “prepared for surprising encounters,” and being so “prepared” might require continual habituation according to an excess-limit. If Technology unveils an actual-limit to be contingent, the Child is ready for it and not deconstructed, while those lacking Childhood can be overwhelmed by the deconstruction and instability of Technology. A Child chooses x knowing it is contingent, while others can choose computer programming, Christianity, etc. because they believe it is absolute and won’t be destabilized — but our age before our AI-Causer is one where everything is fluid and unpredictable (as we discussed with Cadell Last). A reason we need the SCM to better coordinate excess-limits is because I doubt someone can become and/or stay a Child unless they experience what they “Absolutely Choose” as ever-deepening. We must be able to relate to things as ever-excessive and not be dismayed by our “lack” before them, as we must be satisfied with our work and development never ending. A Child accepts this and is glad in it, while others can be dismayed, and so selected out by the Sub-Conscious. “The Sub-Conscious?” We must expand on that — what role does that (dangerous) excess-limit have to do with the SCM?

VII

We have talked throughout O.G. Rose about “Love(craft),” which is a term combining Dante and H.P., and it can be associated for me with “The Real” of Lacan. There are forces, events, relationships, and occurrences in our lives which we cannot predict, that surprise us, and might devastate us. A hundred amazing things can happen but one bad thing, and all I’ll remember is the bad thing: we seem “toward” the bad in life “sticking.” But many bad things are not of a great magnitude, and so they might “stick” with us, they don’t “dig deep,” take up residence in our minds, and control or devastate our lives. “The Real” can do that, and the phrase “Love(craft)” is supposed to signify how experiences which can “reduce us to ash” can at the same time be the very experiences which call us to “a higher life.” Thomas Jockin emphasizes virtue, and we could say that to the degree we are virtuous is to the degree we might in and thanks to the Real experience Dante’s Love vs the Lovecraftian. “The Real” is always hard, and in itself it is not something we will experience as joyful, but on the other side, we might retrospectively be glad for the experience because of how it forced us to develop. And so it will be as if it was “always already” in the Beautiful (Love). But if we don’t so develop, it will “always already” be a misery (Lovecraftian).

“Love(craft),” “The Beautiful,” “The Real” — all of these in O.G. Rose are used interchangeably, which might not make sense to a modern person who sees “The Beautiful” as basically a simile for the good and the truth, but if Jockin is right that “The Sublime” and “The Beautiful” shouldn’t have been divided (notably by Kant), then we can start to see how “The Beautiful” can be an experience of awe and also awful. It is a strike and surprise, and it puts a demand on us that we might not be able to handle, and if not, we might reject it and suffer self-effacement. The stakes of Beauty are the highest stakes, and if it is true that our world has forgotten Beauty, perhaps it was for very good reason: failure is failure. If our age requires Beauty, it was not yet a mistake for us to forget Beauty; perhaps that was necessary so that we made it to this moment in history when we might be able to handle it. Hard to say.

That all in mind, we will now elaborate on two terms, “The Sub-Conscious” and “The Range,” and will start with first. “The Sub-Conscious” is meant to refer to all the described dynamics together, and the term is supposed to be understood also in its psychoanalytic sense. We have in mind “the collective undercurrents of desires and drives motivating action,” which people can repress, hide from, try to avoid, vent — it could be argued that the entire role of civilization is to manage the Sub-Conscious (through “givens,” Capital, laws, etc.). Sure, but why the capitalization and hyphen in the term? Because I am trying to avoid arguments between if we should discuss “the unconscious” instead, or “The Id,” or claim the unconscious controls us more than the subconscious, and so on. I want to refer to the interplay between the subconscious and unconscious lurking under/with consciousness, but how that interplay works exactly is a debate to be left to experts: it is enough for our purposes here to suggest that there is an exposure possible between subjects that is a profound challenge, and that it has something to do with what functions implicitly, “beneath,” “in the background” — however we want to language it. Also, “the subconscious” (not capitalized and without the hyphen) can be individual: what we are interested in here isn’t reducible to an individual. “The Sub-Conscious” refers to something fundamentally collective and even global; the subconscious without a hyphen is more individual (and arguably, unless we come to terms with our own subconscious, we will not be “prepared” for the Sub-Conscious, which is why we are not saying “the work of the subconscious” for a given person doesn’t matter, but that there are different challenges at different times for different people, hence the need for a dynamic system of coordinating people). Also, critically, the collective Sub-Conscious is something “in range of people,” not so much “alone in a wilderness,” even if we need time in the wilderness to be ready for the Sub-Conscious. This brings us to our second term, “The Range.”

We have discussed in O.G. Rose “outside spaces” like “the roads,” and emphasized “surprising encounters” and “incompleteness” (A/B versus A/A). There is an idea that there are places and ways in life “outside the system,” seeking “lines of flight” that avoid “capture,” but problematically these are more exposed to the Real. We have argued that Capital, “givens,” and the like have historically functioned to “vent” the Real and/or to help “(un)veil” it at a rate we might handle (though problematically with time we can be habituated out of the ability to handle the Real, by our very “filters”). It has been suggested that these “outside spaces” are necessary for Childhood and that a Child can handle them, affording Beauty and keeping Global Pluralism from autocannibalism. Here, I want a term that can refer to all of these dynamics and dimensions all at once, and history might give us some candidates: “The Outside”; “The Wilderness”; “The Unknown” (I even considered “The Opens”). However, though I have used these terms, I resist them here because I do not want to fall into binaries like “inside/outside,” “city/wilderness,” “known/unknown” — the Real can surprise us anywhere and doesn’t map cleanly onto binaries. The term I will introduce here is “The Range,” because it is a term that brings to mind “the open range,” “in range of,” “scope,” and “a set of variables and/or possibilities.”

Our age is defined by a growth of Range thanks to Technology, Capital, the internet, Globalization, etc.; unless we are radically isolated, we are all in Range now. Range is the condition of global interconnectedness, but the quality the term “The Range” wants to emphasize is “exposure to the Sub-Conscious,” which is the great evolutionary test of our age (“The Great Filter,” perhaps?). As Range expands, there are less places where A/A doesn’t accelerate toward autocannibalism (via exposure to the Sub-Conscious), and so the need for A/B correlates with the spread of Range (but that risks “Love(craft)”). Does “Range” just mean “civilizational connections”? In a way, but what is unique is the possibility of “being connected to others” without any real social capital or involvement, a possibility which for most of history was not possible but now is thanks to Technology. For most of history, if I was to relate to someone (and be exposed to their subconscious), it would be in my immediacy; now, I can log onto the internet and be exposed to a large Sub-Conscious (that is not decentralized and so “broken up” across immediacies). Perhaps the Sub-Conscious is weaker because it is not immediate? A fair possibility, but I think we have been running that experiment and found the Sub-Conscious is powerful enough at least to destabilize our lives.

We could argue “Range” is a redundant term that just suggests civilization, but I disagree: we are pointing to the crisis caused by Technology erasing limits indiscriminately, meaning we are all exposed and connected to one another, but without social capital (trust, shared intelligibility, ethics…) needed to handle this exposure. Range is possible without the Social — that is the crisis — and it could be argued that what has increasingly replaced the Social is Range (with the Capital-Nation-State). As Range grows, so increases the probability we suffer the Real and Sub-Conscious, which means danger grows (but also evolutionary opportunity, as we’ll discuss). Range is a crisis without the Social, for it is exposure to the Sub-Conscious without adequate means to handle it. But who decides what is “an adequate response,” and by standard? The loss of energy. The loss of Creativity. The collapse of birthrates. Basically how evolution “selects” through time, and the “maps” that can handle the Sub-Conscious live.

VIII

Range is not just “outside” of institutions or “in the wilderness”: there is Range inside every room, where people use the internet and cellphones. The world is with us everywhere; everywhere is increasingly in Range. Limits are vanishing, and so exposure to the Sub-Conscious is growing. Why discuss Range when we can just discuss the internet though? Because Range is more psychoanalytical, with us, forming our subjectivity, even when we are not on the internet: the line between “offline” and “online” is thin (we can increasingly feel civilization when we are alone in a forest). Globalization increasingly turns the world into Range, which means everyone feels “in range” of everyone else and exposed. In that exposure, do we seek cover under Capital, or do we learn to handle it as subjects? The Range is where we are exposed to the Sub-Conscious, and if we are not “prepared” for it, we will be overwhelmed.

Institutions, Capital, “maps” — these have historically shielded us from the Sub-Conscious and filtered it to a degree we could handle, and though all of these still have a role today to contribute to that “filtering,” with the increase of Range is a tilting in the direction of more exposure to the Sub-Conscious than less. Institutions, Capital, “maps,” etc. can try to deny this shift, or reform in light of it: institutions can incorporate “road thinking” (Quinn); Capital can make space for Creativity versus mere Productivity; “maps” can focus on “dwelling in their Gödel Points”; and so on. Plenty of political and cultural movements indeed deny this shift (perhaps more Post-Liberal), and perhaps they will be proven right, but we require testing to see. The bet of the SCM is that the environment that will test us is the Sub-Conscious, and the bet is that the SCM helps us realize energetics, and “Energetic Selection” is a way evolution now works — but that must be explained.

Where there is Range, there is exposure to the Sub-Conscious, and the greater the Range the more intense the Sub-Conscious. To stop the expanse of Range would require us to stop the expansion of Technology, which could cause economic and social catastrophe, and this is not the interest of our “new address”; however, allowing Technology to expand could also cause a disaster before our AI-Causer (we live in interesting times). The SCM expands Range, yes, but can also train us to handle the Sub-Conscious, as necessary for the Social. This effort might be called “Social Accelerationism” (or perhaps “Sub-Conscious Accelerationism”), which like Land’s Accelerationism could lead to disaster or transformation. If Technological Accelerationism is real, there is an increasingly fast removal of limits which exposes us to the Sub-Conscious, so the choice to focus on the SCM or not is not the choice to suffer the Sub-Conscious (that is already happening). Our argument is that Social Accelerationism needs to occur alongside Technological Accelerationism, or else we will suffer self-effacement, and Social Accelerationism entails a radical exposure of worldviews to Otherness (in Range) so that we might be tested and refined to their most “internally consistent point,” a process which will either deconstruct us or unveil our Gödel Points, necessary for complexification, Childhood, and handling the Sub-Conscious. Evolutionarily, our technological and interconnected environment is selecting for “maps” which are “fitting” for the Sub-Conscious, and the SCM enables and enhances that test.

Without Range, it is not likely there will be a diversity of value-forms, a means to avoid being habituated by a MetaAesthetic, opportunities to train and diversify our metajudgments — it is likely we will prove “captured,” lacking Childhood, and somehow replaced by AI. But with Range, it seems likely we are overwhelmed by the Sub-Conscious (especially without B-20), and for this we should accelerate the process of realizing which worldviews (and which forms of them are best) “prepared” for the Sub-Conscious (though perhaps none are or only one). Everyone must choose a “map” they think is most likely to survive this “Sub-Conscious Test”: Atheism, Christian Atheism, Transhumanism, Christianity (x version vs y version), Libertarianism — and so on. Perhaps it is a “map” that combines x from Christianity, y from Hinduism, and z from Communism? Countless combinations are possible, but the realization of those combinations and their testing has been very onerous for most of history — but now we have the SCM. However, perhaps no “map” can handle the Sub-Conscious adequately, and if so then the increase of Range is to increase the reach of a Lovecraftian monster, which is perhaps just the forerunner, a horseman of apocalypse, clearing the way for AI (Land waits). Maybe, but we can’t know without running the test.

Indeed, perhaps no “map” can handle the Sub-Conscious, but no one can say, and we will have “reason to believe we have the best possible map for all possible exposures to the Sub-Conscious” will be to the degree we refine and test all possible worldviews to their limit and so to their Gödel Points, and the worldviews which survive and prove most effective and creative at incorporating incompleteness into themselves will be those which are most likely to thrive in light of the Sub-Conscious (note the Sub-Conscious is profoundly and fundamentally an experience of incompleteness).⁶⁴² There are no “views from nowhere,” so everyone must place their bets and take their stands (the test is on). It has been thought by some that religions kept us from realizing a unified world of greater potential, but religions could be the constraints necessary so that we complexify (gods correlate with religions). As Christianity discusses, if our battle is against principalities more than people, it is perhaps more against the Sub-Conscious, a question of Love or Lovecraft — us.

If people think Christianity is a curse, let’s submit it to the SCM to face the Sub-Conscious and see: that is the new “marketplace of maps,” able to test not just our abstractions but “our full being” which has developed in the image and likeness of our abstractions.⁶⁴³ If one it is a Christian, in light of the Sub-Conscious, it could be because the person believes it is the best combination of qualities, skills, etc. to prove antifragile in Range — but we will see.⁶⁴⁴ ⁶⁴⁵ Also, we ourselves cannot know the fullness of our own worldview and its capacity to handle the Sub-Conscious without the SCM: we must be a mystery to ourselves, and yet take a stand all the same, because again “a view from nowhere” is impossible. Ultimately, there are basically two responses to the Sub-Conscious: “open” or “closed.” Too much openness too soon, and we are self-effaced; too much closure for too long, and there isn’t enough adaptation and too much fragility. But what worldview has the best (shifting) proportion between “openness” and “closedness” for all possible circumstances? We can’t know ahead of time, only test continually via the SCM. This feels like philosophical “groundlessness” though, in that “what is best” is shifting, contingent, and not constant? Fair, but “groundlessness” should not be conflated with “nihilism” and/or “no truth at all” (it’s “conditional”), for where a “constant ground” is impossible it is still possible for there to be “a best fit” for a given circumstance and situation. It could be argued that Capitalism figured out the best possible response to “groundlessness” in affording constant experimentation, risk-taking, testing via logistic and coordination mechanisms, etc., but though we have managed an address for “groundlessness” regarding what is quantifiable (“commodities”), we have not yet managed an address for “groundlessness” regarding what is qualitative, for that has required the SCM. Lacking that, the successes of Capitalism and the PM have “overreached” into the qualitative, training and habituating us into quantifiable value-formation and metajudgment (A/A). Without the SCM (and/or “the nonrational”), Capitalism might select for fungibility and “the equal sign” (“=”), for that is the best means on offer to deal with the Sub-Conscious (basically, repress it) or treat it as equal to consciousness (a “flattening” and (pleasurable) “compression” that will cause autocannibalism for “incomplete/excessive subjects”). Ironically though, fungibility removes limits through Technology that exposes us to the Sub-Conscious, so this is not guaranteed to work, and in might just weaken us until there is no debate that AI can replace us…

Alright, but what is the Sub-Conscious testing “for,” exactly? Self-forgetfulness, flow and its contingency, antifragility, wit, creativity, energy…It will test for what worldviews and peoples are not overwhelmed by anxiety due to uncertainty and facing desire, those who maintain energy where “plausibility structures” fail, those who don’t flee Otherness, and so on. Perhaps Global Pluralism doesn’t generate more possibility for energy, creativity, and value than more isolated options? I think history gives us reason to think against isolation, but regardless, we cannot know without testing. Fine, but can we be more precise on what is being tested “for”? Energetics, basically. The Sub-Conscious is energetically demanding and overwhelming, and social interactions that go wrong can cause people to withdraw, isolate, and not want to deal with anyone. Not all worldviews equally respond to negativity the same way, and they all handle social differences and conflicts differently. Not all worldviews equally train people to not be overwhelmed by range stimulated by Otherness, as not all worldviews equally train humility and forgiveness. So we need humility and forgiveness to survive and thrive in Global Pluralism? Perhaps not, but we cannot say without testing different worldviews to see.⁶⁴⁶

The Sub-Conscious is energetically demanding, and “maps” that cannot handle those demands (and even learn to “create new energy” in light of it) will be selected out. Evolution might always ultimately select for energetics: when we say “the survival of the fittest,” this might mean “the survival of those energetically best” (the full meaning of which requires the test to determine). Perhaps there has been an emphasis on strength because the strong can take energy from others (and “turn off their energy” by killing them), and also strength helps living entities access energy, and though it is not wrong to emphasize “strength,” it might have contributed to us overly-focusing on physical capacity. Today, thanks to Technology, what is being selected for could be the ability to handle the Sub-Conscious, which is a kind of strength, but different in quality from the animal kingdom: it is more internal, psychoanalytical, and existential. (Spiritual, even?) Where energetics fail, the energy might not be there to thrive in the economy, build social networks, contribute to community, etc., and all of that might lower the chances that people have kids. The energy for reproduction might dwindle and so birthrates might fall. Perhaps not, but the point is that “falling birthrates” (in a “map”) could be a way that “Energetic Selection” works in the (meta-)environment of the Sub-Conscious. (And please note that a way an “indestructible map” might perish is to run out of energy, to select itself away.)

Metaphysics might really matter today, because one’s metaphysics might influence their capacity to handle the Sub-Conscious and not be energetically selected out. Theology, philosophy, metaphysics — all of these influence how we act and think, to ourselves and around others, and all of this impacts how we function energetically, and worldviews which lack energetic resources could be selected out by the Sub-Conscious. For an insufficient worldview to survive, it will need to avoid Range, which is increasingly impossible (but what many Post-Liberal efforts might be engaged in attempting, though that doesn’t mean there isn’t space for conversations on immigration, borders, and the like — all topics for me of Wordspread).⁶⁴⁷ ⁶⁴⁸ The perpetuation of insufficient worldviews or “maps” is arguably problematic, and yet we’ve never been able to say which are insufficient and by what standard: “top-down efforts” to weed them out have been a disaster (seeing as they can be “indestructible”). We’ve lacked a(n) (meta-)environment that could do that selection for us without knowing the results ahead of time, as we’ve lacked an environment to habituate us into being able to handle that process — but now we have the SCM.

In Range, we are increasingly exposed directly to the Sub-Conscious of everyone else, which is an opportunity for Creativity and Childhood but also Lovecraft. Without an effective infrastructure and means to tell which worldviews are best for this challenge, we could be energetically selected out. Which version of Christianity might maintain “internal consistency” while also being able to “creatively unfold” well and plausibility in light of the unexpected (history)? Might a combination of Atheism and Hinduism with Feldenkrais and Libertarianism prove energetically most antifragile? Perhaps, but we don’t know, as we cannot predict all the possible combinations of qualities and worldviews that the SCM might afford and test. Emphasis might also matter, and perhaps a worldview that emphasizes beauty over truth and goodness (my bias) is energetically more antifragile (and mysteriously proves to provide the best “means” between the transcendentals). Nobody knows, but as we needed the market and PM to manage well our “true ignorance” regarding the quantifiable, we now need the SCM to manage our “true ignorance” regarding the qualitative. Otherwise, our quantities will do our qualities for us (A/A).

Range is where the Sub-Conscious can “select us out” through lost energy, mental distress, withdrawal, etc. (“autocannibalism”), which looks very different from an animal kingdom that for Tennyson is “red in tooth and claw.” It could be argued Capitalism with the Pricing Mechanism was more of an effort in light of nature, to assure that no matter who was “selected out” by nature, there were always more people to try and test again (Technology can be seen as a great effort to survive nature, but now we are a place where we can “overfit” and eradicate nature, when what was needed was simply bringing it into relation). Now, the environment we must face is (also) the Sub-Conscious, and that requires the SCM, as the PM was needed for nature. Also, the SCM in being rhizomatic could help assure that no matter how many “maps” and forms of subjectivity are energetically selected out, there will always be new “maps” and new forms to test. In a world of more “vertical structures” (in terms of scale), there might only be say fifteen options that take a very long time to build up, and if they are deconstructed, we will be out of attempts. The (SCM) ecosystem is more antifragile, and it accomplishes this by limiting “scale” for “spread,” which doesn’t mean “scale” has been innately bad, but it could mean we are in a different “historic moment.”

Where there are no limits, there is nothingness and/or interconnectivity, and the Sub-Conscious is unleashed. Whoever lacks the energetics to survive this exposure will be “selected out,” and if the Sub-Conscious selects for energy, seeing as value arises from a dialectic with energy and creativity (II.1), the Sub-Conscious might select “toward” value (and note that it is odd to side with a worldview as “more true” if it cannot handle the Sub-Conscious, especially in a world where we can never access “things in themselves” to know for sure what is true and what is not). We want Atheists to be the best possible Atheists they can be, the Christians to be the best possible Christians they can be…the Marxists…the Transhumanists…(sanctification?) and then expose them all to the Sub-Conscious and see who thrives in “Energetic Selection”: this seems our best hope for Value-Form Diversification (A/B). Those who remain are those who we have reason to think are our best shot for Communities of Holy Spirit, “spreading Childhood,” Absolute History…

The Sub-Conscious cannot be directly encountered, precisely because it is not conscious: it must “surprise.” Hence, we must be in Range and “prepared”; we cannot “plan” for it, but without the SCM, I doubt we can “prepare” adequately, and our best hope then is to stay out of Range, and many of the Post-Liberal Addresses in my mind are basically this effort (which might be best, please note; we don’t know until we test). A “new address” requires us to find “belonging again” in Range, which means in exposure to the Sub-Conscious. Is that impossible? Maybe, but we won’t know without experimentation, and I don’t believe we can meaningfully run this experiment without the SCM; without that, we will fail, but the results won’t mean we had to fail, only that we lacked the means for the possibility of success. There will be some who believe that we cannot handle Range, and they will try to more so isolate or surround themselves with people who are similar in hopes of lessening the impacts of the Sub-Conscious (an effort which “the shock of difference” might upset, alluding to Leibniz). And perhaps those efforts are best, but they are not our interest here.

Technology removes limits and so expands Range, and without the SCM we will not effectively coordinate the excess-limits we require in Range to not suffer autocannibalism due to the Sub-Conscious before our AI-Causer. If we cannot handle Range, we must basically reverse Globalization and Global Pluralism, which means we must reverse Technology — and I don’t see how that is possible without (causing) a “Great Leveling Event.” Time will tell, but to review our steps:

1. The more Range spreads, the more we are likely to encounter the Sub-Conscious (and so need excess-limits).

3. Technology spreads Range by realizing as many actual-limits to be contingent-limits as possible (Productivity).

4. The SCM spreads Range but is also a means for us to handle the Sub-Conscious, while Technology without the SCM expands Range without a means to handle the Sub-Conscious.

5. The Sub-Conscious is an “evolutionary environment” which selects for “fittedness” according to energetics.

6. What is being tested is not so much individuals but “maps” to see which are best at enabling followers to “dwell in the Gödel Point.”

7. We cannot know ahead of time which “maps” are best “fitted” for the Sub-Conscious, and so we require testing, coordination, and experimentation. This is what the SCM makes possible, while also refining all “maps” to be the best possible versions of themselves for the test (while also selecting out “maps” that are actually “mere notions” and not even “internally consistent”).

8. The “maps” that not only survive this Sub-Conscious Test and Energetic Selection but thrive are those which will continue to evolve and complexify. (Create. Beautify.)

9. We can “belong again.”

a. Encounterology is the study of these dynamics in all possible fields, as needed with the expanse of Range and so exposure to the Sub-Conscious.

b. Encounterism is socioeconomics designed around these dynamics of the Range and Sub-Conscious.

c. If no “map” can prove “fitting” for the Sub-Conscious, then we seem doomed unless we strongly regulate Technology, which seems impossible because “the way is shut” — at least without a “Great Leveling Event.”

d. Beauty arguably must arise with the Sub-Conscious or we will be destroyed, and that will not happen without Childhood. (The Sub-Conscious requires excess-limits.)

And so we might write:

The Age of Givens
(“The Problem of Thoughtlessness”)

to

The Age of Maps
(“The Problem of Internally Consistent Systems”)

to

The Age of Range
(“The Problem of the Sub-Conscious”)

Teilhard de Chardin is famous for his work on the Noosphere, and perhaps (to be speculative) the Sub-Conscious is the test and “filter” we must pass through to realize Chardin’s vision. The Sub-Conscious then could be “energetically selecting out” all worldviews which cannot handle being part of the Noosphere.⁶⁴⁹ Harold J. Morowitz himself might point to something like the Noosphere when he discusses thinking religions in light of emergence, and perhaps the SCM in some contributes to that vision. ‘This book has proceeded with two agendas,’ Morowitz writes, ‘to study emergence by examining a number of examples, and to seek for the nature and operation of God in the emergent universe.’⁶⁵⁰ Heretical? Could be, but maybe only if approached too directly.⁶⁵¹ Emergence cannot be directly incorporated by religions (that’s “poured in from the top,” as Dr. Wilson might say), but they can in working to be true to themselves in the SCM nevertheless create “the conditions of possibility” for emergence indirectly. Is that the work of religions today? ‘If our evolving minds are the transcendence of the immanent God,’ Morowitz writes, ‘then the responsibility of making a better world is ours, as is the responsibility of figuring out what we mean by a better world.’⁶⁵² Emergence is not innately good — ‘[t]he emergence of mind has the potential for good and evil’ — for our respond to the Sub-Conscious could be self-destructive.⁶⁵³ But it could also “spread Childhood.”

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Notes

⁶¹⁹Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1992: 222.

⁶²⁰Morowitz, Harold. The Emergence of Everything. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004: v.

⁶²¹Morowitz, Harold. The Emergence of Everything. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004: 25.

⁶²²See Chapter 3 (pages 25–38) for more in The Emergence of Everything by Harold Morowitz (Oxford Paperback Edition) for more.

⁶²³Morowitz, Harold. The Emergence of Everything. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004: 179.

⁶²⁴Morowitz, Harold. The Emergence of Everything. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004: 14.

⁶²⁵Morowitz, Harold. The Emergence of Everything. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004: 13.

⁶²⁶This alienation of “Global Pluralism” might be more fruitful to focus on then alienation caused by labor in Marx.

⁶²⁷Capitalism is arguably “toward” overcoming all intensities and domesticating them, but, alluding to Land, to so function our technology itself becomes “a fanged noumenon” that leaves us behind: to overcome “intensities,” we make technology too “intense” for humans to handle (in AI). Hence, we must “choose limits” in the sense that we decide that there are some “intensities” and “excesses” that trying to “territorize” would not be worth it and cause autocannibalism.

⁶²⁸Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 81.

⁶²⁹Why did we remove “The Middle” for Jouvenel? For the Upper gaining power, yes, but also to avoid the Sub-Conscious.

⁶³⁰This can occur despite possible opportunities for Enablement and development, because the people might not be ready for the demands of Enablement and/or not want it, suggesting a need for training of the SCM.

⁶³¹Consider papers like “On Love” by O.G. Rose for the relevant methodology.

⁶³²For more, see “The Collapse of Global Liberalism with Philip Pilkington,” as can be found here.

⁶³³And ultimately of rationality seeking to become distinct and “autonomous” compared to Determination, which then has given rationality the ability to be “in itself” as “autonomous rationality,” and so seek Dream-Equality (in and through AI). But this is an argument we will need E.O. Wilson, Mary Douglas, and others to make.

⁶³⁴Without excess-limits, the American Dream of “Authentic Givens” — a Hegelian contradiction of Freedom (see Dr. James Vaughn), the matter of “The Absolute Choice” — will not be possible. For more, please see “The Authentic Givenness of the Voluntary American Enlightenment Religious Culture” with Paul VanderKlay, as can be found here:

⁶³⁵Wait, didn’t we in II.1 discuss Ivan Illich and his critique of “scarcity,” and argue that we needed to overcome “the scarcity mindset”? Isn’t that point in contradiction with the idea that “we need limits” somehow? Fair, but paradoxically what Illich understood is that an emphasis on “scarcity” (which is not necessarily always the same as “limit”) contributed to the Technological Essence (in politics, economics, etc.), for scarcity naturally strikes us as something we “ought” to overcome, even if we cannot (“limit” as a word leaves more opening for acceptance, but “scarcity” is more easily experienced as a problem we should solve). “Scarcity” has a double function, where we are trained to accept that everyone can’t have everything all the time, and yet we need salvation from this tragedy, with the market and technology as best positioned to function as our saviors. And certainly there is something beneficial to this habituation of “scarcity,” because it can motivate us to innovate and increase our quality of life — but if “scarcity” has a monopoly on our habituation and “horizon,” there will be trouble like Illich understood (socially, politically, etc., as people demand an end to scarcity, see their lives in light of scarcity, etc.). The PM can train us to “address scarcity,” but that training will “overfit” into Disablement without the SCM to help us “test limits” into Enablement. The “mindset of scarcity” that Ivan Illich critiqued is not a denial that scarcity exists, but a way of thinking that basically leads us to try to overcome all possible limits, or to treat limits in general as a bad thing: it is a move of the Technological Essence that seems to acknowledge limit, but ultimately just sets the stage for Technology to treat all limits as that which we “ought” to overcome. And perhaps 99% of the time, that is correct, but the 1% of the time it is wrong could be disastrous.

We could see Illich as warning against a society that emphasized “scarcity” in a way that made it incapable of coordinating excesses, qualities, and abundances, precisely because the system was designed for only the “scarce” to be intelligible to it. If “value” equals “scarce,” we shouldn’t be surprised if scarcity spreads and worsens, for that is the incentive. But before the SCM, perhaps we couldn’t help but conflate “scarcity” and “value,” leading to inefficiencies in Capital; now, there could be a means of effectively coordinating what is not scarce, which means it could become possible for us to make intelligible a value-form that isn’t based on scarcity. Now, “value” and “flow” might align, or “value” and Creativity, Beauty, self-forgetfulness, courage….all modes of being which the Pricing Mechanism (PM) has not been effective at coordinating, simply because these value-forms were primarily qualitative, which the PM could not effectively make intelligible to it. That qualitative-coordination required human agents in the system who were Children.

Also, what makes an actual-limit “a real limit”? That at our maximum capacity, our maximum Enablement, we nevertheless cannot overcome it and/or there are still things beyond us. Illich’s Disablement can artificially “make things seem like” actual-limits that are not, only “relatively such” because we have been Disablement by technology, as there can be indirect incentive for, because it can make it seem as if there is always more for technology to do, and so more Productivity to be had, and so more room for speculation and “plausible deniability” that the PM without the SCM is sufficient. It is only from a place of maximum Enablement that we can meaningfully say what constitutes an actual-limit, a contingent-limit, and an excess-limit, but we also cannot know ahead of time what constitutes “maximum Enablement,” hence the need for the SCM with the PM to always coordinate, test, and experiment. And we might argue that only excess-limits could assure that no possible level of Enablement would lead to the total loss of limits, which could lead to the self-effacement of the subject. But what if there are no excess-limits? Then we will be gods or animals.

⁶³⁶The question of which limits are actual, contingent, and excessive can be seen as the question hovering over hermeneutics in religion, law, etc. What beliefs in Christianity must a Christian believe, and which are not essential? Well, the “text” must be revisited and hermeneutics worked through. Hermeneutics could be training to determine the qualities of limits that afford complexity (a work especially pronounced outside science, perhaps?). Our age might be one where “learning to read” is of the upmost importance.

⁶³⁷Things might be thought of as mixtures of limits as they might be thought of as mixtures of Aristotelian causes. “The Final Cause” of a cup is its excess-limit, which makes it inexhaustibly intelligible in its very intelligibility (the SCM could help us realize the inexhaustibility of all possible things in their very intelligibility) (all things must “fall back” into some Determination or be nothingness). “The Material Cause” of a cup could be a mixture of contingent-limit and actual-limit, for the cup-maker could have made the cup out of something else, but once a cup is made out of this versus that, it cannot be itself without being made of that specific material. “The Efficient Cause” or “First Cause” could be similarly mixed, because the maker of the cup could have been moved to make something else, and yet it is also the case that the cup wouldn’t be what it was without the precise motivation that led to its creation (nothing can exist that isn’t caused to exist, an actual-limit). And so it goes with “The Formal Cause,” because a cup must have the form it does to be itself, but the cup-maker could have operated according to a different form.

Between the craftsman and the cup-object, the causes take on different qualities of limits, and that seems like it must be negotiated (and would benefit from an SCM). But there is something interesting where for humans there seems to only be contingent-limits and excess-limits, where for human creations there are also actual-limits: perhaps the spirit of Technology is for there to be things that are “like people,” but the risk is that it can accomplish this while training us out of the capacity to recognize excess-limits, without which we perish.

⁶³⁸Also, having something “like the SCM” could be a problem without Technology, as perhaps the history of the Silk Roads might show in eventually passing over into wars, but I’m not sure.

⁶³⁹If we want to think of “the problem of internally consistent systems” as “a trick of the devil,” then we might think of it like the Cross, a lure. Victory seemed to be the devil’s, but his greatest success ended up being his greatest defeat. Likewise, humanity’s greatest defeat in “maps,” what keeps us from “the territory,” could be humanity’s greatest victory: to really participate in “the territory” as an open-ended emergence.

⁶⁴⁰We have historically treated “the truth of worldviews” as realized in alignment with their origins and original intentions, and though this is not false, we might realize what was origin-ally “always already” there in how they can “surprising unfold” in their Gödel Points. We tend to associate the truth of things being what they are origin-ally, but “The Absolute of Origins” could be what they afford a thing to become without suffering autocannibalism.

⁶⁴¹Otherwise, it can be as if no “Absolute Choice” was made at all (if we Absolutely Choose, perhaps without meaning to, that “lack is nothing,” then nothing happened).

⁶⁴²Ultimately, perhaps all we can do is alter the probability distribution through a change in starting positions: there are infinite possible futures, but we want “the infinite possible futures” afforded by the SCM with the PM (SCM+PM), versus “the infinite possible futures” afforded by just the PM (we don’t need to know or predict the future to change the future). There is reason to believe that the SCM+PM together is our best chance for finding “fittedness” for the Sub-Consciousness (F), and though we don’t know exactly what constitutes F, we nevertheless can conclude that a world with the SCM+PM is more likely to realize F than a world with just the PM. Perhaps we are wrong, but our work in Belonging Again has been to make that case plausible.

We are arguing that a world without the SCM is one where the possibility of F might be there but is not probable, and so the experiment is likely to be stopped by entropy before F is found. Perhaps entropy still wins in a world of SCM+PM together, but the chances for F are higher (what we call “metageometry” has much to do with making a possibility a probability without knowing how exactly).

Well, is it possible that we end up in a possible world that is worse because of SCM+PM versus PM by itself? I don’t see how, because the worst possible outcome is basically autocannibalism due to exposure to the Sub-Conscious, and Technology is doing that work through the removal of limits without the SCM. Perhaps the SCM accelerates the rate by which we are exposed to the Sub-Conscious, and so perhaps we are destroyed sooner? Well, surviving longer might actually be worse because we are energetically drained and isolationist. I would not argue that “more time” means a strategy is better than “more quality,” but there could be disagreement.

Without the SCM, being overwhelmed by the Sub-Conscious seems inevitable, though with the SCM there is no guarantee, and perhaps we are overwhelmed sooner. That seems to be the risk: there is a chance for “a new address,” but at the risk of self-effacement sooner. However, I do not grant that avoiding self-effacement for longer is necessarily better if our quality of life is so low.

⁶⁴³We will determine the worldview that is most likely to be Absolute not on correspondence with reality (which cannot be known with certainty) but on thriving before the Sub-Conscious. Determining “The True Worldview” might be impossible, but not “The Absolute Worldview(s).” “The marketplace of ideas” — “a test of rationality” — is important to determine which notions are actually “internally consistent” versus not, but after that work, what is needed is then “a nonrational test” of the Sub-Conscious (the critiques of Postmodernity against the Enlightenment were pointing to the need for the SCM, not a deconstruction of rationality entirely).We cannot know ahead of time which Absolute Choice, “map,” mode of subjectivity, value-form diversity…is energetically most antifragile, and so we have needed “a marketplace of maps” to test and tell. Personally, I think the movement from Religion to Absolute Knowing in Cadell’s Real Speculations is impossible without encountering the Sub-Conscious.

⁶⁴⁴Is this a form of Pragmaticism, where something is true because it “works”? “A Pragmatic Psychoanalysis” maybe, and what proves antifragile before the Sub-Conscious is more Absolute than true.

⁶⁴⁵Please note the Sub-Conscious might not disprove a worldview so much as it causes the worldview to “lose stickiness” (perhaps the best we can hope for in a world without certainty, pointing back to “Compelling” by O.G. Rose): it just can’t generate the energy needed to maintain it.

⁶⁴⁶What if a worldview seized control of the State and used threats to prevail? That could happen, hence the importance of acting outside the State as much as possible, and also the hope there is in “the way being shut”: that could mean the State is doomed to be eclipsed by entropy. Perhaps not, but the way the State has become closed in on itself could mean it has locked itself inside its tomb. But couldn’t AI lead to a State that is more powerful than any State we’ve ever seen before? It might, but that is outside of our control: what we can control is our involvement in the Social. Also, our best hope of stopping that future could be through “creative destructive” and generating alternatives, which requires Creativity to afford, as the SCM trains.

⁶⁴⁷We can think of every worldview as “a portfolio of limits,” and we cannot know ahead of time which portfolio is (most) antifragile for the Sub-Conscious. “Do we think this is the best Antifragile Energy Portfolio?” — a new inquiry of “maps.”

⁶⁴⁸But what are experiences that “give us reason to believe” our worldview is “fitted” for the Sub-Conscious? “The Strike of Beauty,” perhaps. Joy. Energy. Freedom. Self-Forgetfulness. Laughter. Perhaps we can’t know ahead of time.

⁶⁴⁹The “Cheap Noosphere” is a “Third Impact” of some kind, while a “Costly Noosphere” requires us to face the Sub-Conscious with the SCM.

⁶⁵⁰Morowitz, Harold. The Emergence of Everything. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004: 197.

⁶⁵¹“Directness” might be a difference between “icon” and “idol.”

⁶⁵²Morowitz, Harold. The Emergence of Everything. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004: 196.

⁶⁵³Morowitz, Harold. The Emergence of Everything. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004: 199.

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Richard Boothby in his lecture on Lacan and Das Ding, given October 18th 2023 at Philosophy Portal, noted how we might approach the gods as a “mode” by which the Real is revealed. Religions then mark out zones of “not understanding” on which our lives depend (like a space of “free speech”); we cannot understand everything, and yet our lives are deeply impacted and shaped by what we cannot understand. All we can do is ‘make our sacrifice and hope for the best,’ as Dr. Boothby put it. Similarly, perhaps we cannot fully understand Childhood or why some people become mentidivergent while others fall under Affliction; perhaps it will always be a mystery why exactly some people are “intrinsically motivated” and others aren’t, as it might always be a mystery for why we seem “essentially lacking” and capable of self-effacement, as it might always by strange that we can be River-Holes and White Boxes. But we don’t need to fully understand these phenomena, only trace out “zones” or “situations” (Leibniz) in which the likelihood of their emergence and happening is higher. We might not know why in one Cave prisoners are less likely to “leave on their own” while in another Cave they are more likely to leave, but if we can at least observe a difference between these Caves, we will see a way to approach “the problem of scale and spread” which so deeply concerns us in Belonging Again. Works by O.G. Rose will indeed attempt describing why we can “leave Plato’s Cave on our own” in more detail and what kind of subjects we must be (and in what kind of reality) so that this might be possible, but here observing a difference between the Caves (A/A) and “zones” (A/B) would be enough. In what environment or “meta-architecture” are we more likely to see an emergence of mentidivergence, Attention, A/B and Children? Under what conditions? What might the “zones” look like around the Unknowability which we must choose to interpret as either a “pure nothingness” or Apophatic Mystery (thus possibly making ourselves “openings” for negentropy)? Are there “zones” which might inspire ever-more people to courageously make Absolute Choices?

What many are calling “The Liminal Web” online might be seen as a “zone” which may or may not be conditions in which people can become different kinds of subjects who are perhaps more A/B than A/A, and the Liminal Web could be this even if we don’t fully understand why it works or how. As I will attempt to show, I think we can find reason to believe something like the Liminal Web has worked historically and lead to profound socioeconomic change (what Deirdre McCloskey calls “The Great Enrichment”), and furthermore there is reason to believe that “systems don’t take care of themselves” (that they are all ultimately abyssal), and thus everything rides on a “human element and contingency,” mainly the nature and conditioning of our subjectivity. Are we under Affliction (A/A) or capable of Attention (A/B)? Language we will use later in this book is Discourse and Rhetoric, with Affliction aligning with Discourse while Attention aligns with Rhetoric, and so we will be asking, “Do the ‘zones’ of our world incubate Affliction/Discourse or Attention/Rhetoric?” Our answer to this will suggests what kind of subjects we are helping birth into the world, upon which the question of if we might “spread Childhood” rides. (Much rests on how we relate to “lack” and “nihilism,” RSI).

Discourse is the zeitgeist which spreads Affliction (A/A), while Rhetoric is the art which spreads Attention (A/B), and the spread of Rhetoric and Attention requires a deconstruction of the “subject and object divide” into a world where we see “systems/subjects” (which means we must arrive at a new concept of the subject and of system). This would be for us to “spread Childhood,” and honor Nietzsche, but here I would like to take a moment to address what David McKerracher tells us in Timenergy, mainly that ‘Nietzsche is not our friend.’¹⁵³ Though we are mainly framing our investigation as “spreading Childhood,” Nietzsche couldn’t care less if the working class or average person gained “leisure,” Childhood, or what McKerracher calls “timenergy.” Nietzsche knew like Marx that ‘leisure time [was] the basis of all qualified culture,’ which is required if we are to gain “zones of Unknowability” with which Childhood might be cultivated, but arguably ‘Nietzsche sought to hoard leisure for the few at the expense of the many.’¹⁵⁴ Nietzsche was even ready to ‘enslav[e] the Third World’ if needed, writing on the West striving for leisure that:¹⁵⁵

‘One could perhaps think of satisfying his desires and massively introducing barbaric Asian and African populations, so that the civilized world continues to use the services of the uncivilized […]’¹⁵⁶

What Nietzsche wrote was wrong. Yes, but then McKerracher makes an important point: ‘Nietzsche is actually onto something […] At least Nietzsche owns up to the reality of the situation […] Nietzsche comes right out and tells us what the objective situation is, taking the side of the parasites rather than the easy way out.’¹⁵⁷ Many of us in the West rely on labor and “slaves” for our standard of living while acting like we do not, and in this way perhaps Nietzsche is more honest? This doesn’t make what Nietzsche wrote moral, but have we found a way yet to sustain our standard of living without relying on a working class that is drained of all “timenergy” (to use McKerracher phrase)? This suggests why the problem of “spreading Childhood” is so pressing, even if Nietzsche himself seems to have thought it was impossible (hence for Nietzsche the reliance of Children on slaves). In this way, to consider “the spread of Childhood” is to consider something Nietzsche himself may not have considered. For Nietzsche, there was no way to “spread Childhood” — considering the question might have been a fool’s errand. If so, we will be fools.

If we cannot “spread Childhood,” then we might be stuck with Nietzsche in a way that resonates with Daniel Tutt’s work, which asks us to consider Nietzsche not ‘[a]s a friend and co-conspirator […] [but] as a parasite,’ which is to basically say that Nietzsche is an elitist whose project requires a working class (deprived of timenergy) to sustain those elites.¹⁵⁸ Nietzsche fights and resists equality and socialist tendencies, which isn’t ‘to cancel Nietzsche,’ but instead to take seriously the difficultly of “egalitarian leisure at scale.”¹⁵⁹ This is fair, for indeed I do not think Nietzsche provides us thinking on how we might address “the problem of scale” in “spreading Childhood,” and indeed Nietzsche seems to accept a “slave class” as necessary for sustaining elite Children (as Tutt and McKerracher point out). If we are to say this is wrong of Nietzsche, then I believe it is our responsibility to show and argue for an alternative that doesn’t fall into totalitarianism, Discourse, and/or Affliction. That is the attempt of Belonging Again (Part II), which is the effort of “addressing” Belonging Again (Part I).

‘I don’t know if timenergy can actually be reclaimed en masse’ — what McKerracher writes here is what I feel about “Childhood en masse.”¹⁶⁰ But I resonate with what McKerracher tells us next:

‘I genuinely fear for and feel a terrible sadness for all the hundreds of millions of children who are, on a daily basis, told they cannot explore their interests and hone talent for its own sake; who are told that they are inferior and destined to failure if they can’t force themselves to care about the arbitrary interests of others from period to period all day every day from week to week for decades.’¹⁶¹

Nietzsche might give us Childhood but not the resources to spread his Childhood to all children — to provide that is what we will attempt. We must. Nobody reads. ‘If nobody can really read, then who cares if books are censored? They’re wasted on us […]’¹⁶² If they are not to be wasted on us, we must resist the desire to be “intelligible” and “understood” (for example), for this is when we cease to strive ‘not to be defined by identitarian categories’ but instead want ‘recogn[ition] [from some] big Other.’¹⁶³ This is for us to follow Discourse instead of Rhetoric, to give up “useless space” which makes possible a Deleuzian “line of flight” that we might say we want but receiving proves terrifying and something we can then try to disown. If we seek “belonging” in definability, we risk failing in our effort to “belong again” in this ‘insane world where nobody […] belongs.’¹⁶⁴ We are to “belong” in a way which negates/sublates old ways: we are to “belong” and find “meaning” in Childhood. ‘We have a need to feel like we belong,’ but that need today is not being met or is being fed by “the junk food” of tribalism, “capture,” ideology, or the like.¹⁶⁵ ‘We also have a need to feel like we are becoming better at things and giving back to our community,’ hence the need for training, “gymnasiums,” and Childhood in general.¹⁶⁶

To Change the World by Dr. James Hunter can be seen as his own “address” to the sociological realities he saw unfolding, as he famously described in coining the term “culture war” and in channeling the work of thinkers like Peter Berger and Philip Rieff. The book is interested in how ‘religious faith [might be] possible in the late modern world,’ which also explores ‘how do believers live out their faith under the conditions of the late modern world?’¹⁶⁷ Hunter is mostly examining how Christianity can influence and participate in culture, which leads him to broader understandings of how culture is shaped at all. ‘[E]verything hinges on how we understand the nature of culture,’ he writes, and the hope of Belonging Again (Part I) was to provide that understanding, which is to say if we do not understand the tension and interplay between “givens and releases,” we cannot move forward.¹⁶⁸ Hunter discusses the importance of values, ideas, and choices in shaping cultures, but where in culture these values, ideas, and choices reside is central. Many Christians try to shape culture through evangelism “from the ground up,” but Hunter does not see the historic evidence for this proving effective. Christians cannot just tell people about Christianity if they are to change culture, as Children cannot just tell people to be Children. Sure, Children might have values, ideas, and choices which could help us transcend Affliction, but none of that “culture of Childhood” will necessarily go anywhere. More is indeed.

Hunter emphasizes that culture is changed through institutions, networks of influence, systems of power, and the like, and “grassroots” and “ground-up” efforts only prove effective to the degree they move into those areas. If Children want to change the culture, they must move into places where they influence “cultural production” and “cultural capital” and then prove “faithfully present” in those spaces (to use Hunter’s invaluable terminology). If Christians emphasize all these areas as “sinful,” they might think it holy not to seek “faithful presence,” which for Hunter is problematic, for this thinking is for Christians to give up the culture (as it would also be for Children). Hunter makes another key observation:

‘Interestingly, th[e] emphasis on values, choice, and spiritual renewal has also predisposed nearly everyone to focus on politics as the central means of changing the world. The reasoning goes like this: bad law is the outcome of bad choices made by individual politicians, judges, and policy makers. Thus, changing the world requires that individual Christians vote into office those who hold the right values or possess the right worldview and therefore will make the right choices.’¹⁶⁹

Like Hunter’s own work does, Belonging Again (Part I) hopefully made clear why this is a terrible mistake which will likely cause Pluralism to undergo self-effacement (such as in “Equality and Its Immoral Limits”). To win at politics is to win at force, and this will not be to change hearts and minds. Robert George is right that “law teaches,” and if Christians change the law to make it favor them, this could help “teach us” that Christianity is good — but then we will attempt to “stimulate culture” with law versus “create culture” (a distinction we will elaborate on when we discuss Keynes), and not only will this favor Affliction and Discourse (perhaps arising to a “Christian Affliction,” horrifyingly enough), but it means every election will be a battle for who is able to “softly nudge” people in the direction of their worldview.

Where “creating culture” is overlooked or deemphasized, power can run in to fill the void, and those “values and choices” would seem to be the opposite of politics, and ironically without culture they can become “captured” by politics and power. This seems to be what happens when we are “disabled by Discourse” and the zeitgeist, as Ivan Illich will discuss, and so disabled we cannot “make culture” only “employ power and law” to change the world into what we want it to be. But how we change the world changes how the world changes, and if we change it through means of Discourse, Affliction, and A/A, so the world will be “captured” and not change as we think it does. Discourse will seem challenged as it prevails.

Dr. Hunter in Chapter 1 of his book considers the Conservative Christian perspective of “changing the world” and makes a case for why it is entirely mistaken in Chapter 2, which has implications for “spreading Childhood.” He argues that there is no necessary correlation between the size of a community and its influence (‘as David Hollinger has shown [for example], the contribution of the Jewish community to science, literature, art, music, letters, film, and architecture is both brilliant and unrivaled. And these contributions were made in a context often defined by open, aggressive, and malicious anti-Semitism […]’), and yet the Evangelical strategy suggests that cultural influence is tied to community size (please note Jewish communities suggest the primacy of culture, a point Malcom Collins also explores in The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion).¹⁷⁰ Size doesn’t necessarily hurt, of course, but it guarantees nothing, a point which can be comforting, for it means we don’t need everyone to join our effort for the effort to “spread Childhood” to change culture out of Affliction. But the point is also befuddling, for if culture is not shaped by size, what changes it?

Failures of Christians to shape culture can be interpreted by Conservatives and the Right as ‘Christians are just not trying hard enough, acting decisively enough, or believing thoroughly or Christianly enough’ (the same could be said of Children).¹⁷¹ No, this is wrong: an ineffective strategy won’t work no matter how hard we try. But the more it fails, the more Christians are blamed, for ‘the burden of responsibility and action resides with the individual Christian and it is up to them to be better and do more to change the world.’¹⁷² This is a receipt for pathology, tribalism, and paranoia, and it can lead to hopelessness, nihilism, and even deconstruction: ironically, the Christian effort to “change the world” can thus lead to a dissolving of Christianity. The same could happen with Childhood via an emphasize on being more Childlike, mentidivergent, philosophical…if we are not careful.

Where does this notion of cultural change come from that Hunter sees as so erroneous? Well, it aligns with what we often find in Conservatism, which tends to support Capitalism:

‘[t]he model of culture change on offer […] implicitly operates within the framework of a market populism. Change comes through the random aggregation of individual actions and choices in a free market of options. What matters for the Christian in this approach to culture, is entering into the marketplace with the creation of new cultural goods. The direction and purpose and coherence of cultural creation matter less because, in the end, it will be the market that determines what succeeds or fails.’¹⁷³

This is simplistic. It is not necessarily the case that “the best ideas prevail” in the end: it is the ideas which “faithfully reside” in systems of influence and power. “Faithful presence” is a key concept to Hunter’s thinking, and basically he argues that Christians need to make their way into places of power and influence and prove “faithful to the values and ideas of Christianity” in those spaces. In this way, Hunter is not saying that ideas don’t matter, but that it also matters where ideas are, and if they are not found in networks of influence, they cannot change the culture. Ideas deeply matter, but which ideas deeply matter depends on where the ideas are present.

Everything Hunter argues regarding Christians applies just as well to Children, and Hunter is not arguing that Christians need power if by that we mean “gain political sway,” but that Christians need to “faithfully be” where power is found as Christians. Likewise, those who happen to be Children right now for reasons we might not yet understand are those who will need to move into places of influence and “faithfully be Children” if the culture is to shift in a direction that might “spread Childhood.” If this is what is required to overcome “The Meta-Crisis” and “The Great Stagnation,” then this is a matter of great sociopolitical consequence. If a failure to spread “intrinsic motivation” will lead to social collapse, then Children reaching places of cultural influence and faithfully being Children (which will not be easy, please note, and easily require training say through classes at Philosophy Portal, Voicecraft, Theory Underground, Other Life, Parallax…) is a matter of great and dire consequence. But what does that mean, and how might we go about it? Indeed, those are the questions which “the problem of scale” must take up.

If we don’t like what Nietzsche wrote (that David McKerracher rightly critiqued), I think it is our responsibility to answer Nietzsche with a way to “spread Childhood” (a counter-response which Nietzsche might have happily received). The response will require us to create conditions of “zones of Unknowability” (as possible if Children are “faithfully present” in networks of influence), which are “zones of Gödel Points” in which “essentially incompleteness” can no longer be denied (“plausible deniability” runs out). This is where a River-Hole is possible and mentidivergence could emerge to address Rational Impasses; this is where Attention (A/B) can break through Affliction (A/A), but at risk of great pathology and self-effacement — but this is a risk we must prepare for given “the loss of givens” and approach of the Technological Singularity. We must prepare ourselves now, but how? Sure, we can know that we need to spread the conditions in which people can “leave Plato’s Cave on their own,” but that doesn’t mean we know how to socially, and even if we do come up with a method, do we have any historic evidence to believe it will work versus hopeful speculation (which risks oppression and totalitarianism)? I think so, which will bring us to Deidre McCloskey, who can give us confidence that a “faithful presence” in “zones of Unknowability” which incubate Childhood is a sound strategy.

If we fail in this effort, the alternative is something I fear Affliction and Discourse would have us try as a solution (and “our only option”) which will ultimately only benefit Affliction and Discourse, mainly some model of “central planning” using Artificial Intelligence (as we might already see in China). In Critical Mass, Philip Ball discusses how ‘[t]ools, methods, and ideas initially developed to understand how the blind material fabric of the universe behaves are now finding application in arenas for which they were never designed.’¹⁷⁴ Can physics help us predict and plan (suggesting we don’t need preparation)? Can science provide a ‘theoretical framework which underpins contemporary physics [and yet can also help us with problems like] traffic flows to how the economy fluctuates and how businesses are organized?’¹⁷⁵ Or does that suggest a hubris that has caused the world so much trouble and contributed so profoundly to Affliction and Discourse? Even if we do not support this A/A-thinking, if the world begins to fall apart, we become desperate, and this kind of thinking is all we have, it will be what we employ. Better to try something than do nothing, right? And so we will try. After all, ‘[i]f people are smothered down to billiard balls interacting through mathematically defined forces,’ and that saves us all, shouldn’t we be grateful?¹⁷⁶

‘The most urgent question, to which the physics of society can contribute,’ Ball writes, ‘is whether we can construct a society blessed with wisdom and compassion that others, often in harsher or more difficult times, were able to glimpse and to demand.’¹⁷⁷ Ball also writes:

‘A push and pull: a tension between conflicting desires. This is all it takes to tip our social behavior into complex and often unpredictable patterns, dictated by influences beyond our immediate experience or our ability to control. Regardless of what we believe about the motivations for individual behavior, once we become part of a group we cannot be sure what to expect.’¹⁷⁸

Ball tells us that ‘the physics of society is and can only be a tool, never a moral compass.’¹⁷⁹ Ball is not naïve, and I cannot blame him for turning to physics in a world many philosophers have left all “the practical work” to scientists and engineers. Ultimately, Childhood cannot be engineered without risking oppression and totalitarianism, only incubated in the right conditions, conditions which must have the possibility of failing or else they will oppress. These are human conditions. These are “zones of processing Unknowability” and must be widely available if the conditions in which Childhood can be incubated are to “spread” and increase the mentidivergence which possibly enables more people to “leave Plato’s Cave on their own” and avoid through Attention the Rational Impasse of Affliction. This will require a “faithful presence” of Children in places of influence amidst “the loss of givens” and in preparation for “The Technological Singularity,” but that will prove effective only to the degree these Children understand how best to approach “the problem of scale.” And so, to that problem we will now turn.

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Notes

¹⁵³David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 166.

¹⁵⁴David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 167.

¹⁵⁵David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 166.

¹⁵⁶David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 168.

¹⁵⁷David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 169.

¹⁵⁸David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 165.

¹⁵⁹David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 166.

¹⁶⁰David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 127.

¹⁶¹David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 127.

¹⁶²David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 128.

¹⁶³David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 89.

¹⁶⁴David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 93.

¹⁶⁵David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 107.

¹⁶⁶David, McKerracher. Timenergy. Boise, ID: Theory Underground Publishing, 2023: 107.

¹⁶⁷Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: ix.

¹⁶⁸Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: 6.

¹⁶⁹Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: 11–12.

¹⁷⁰Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: 20.

¹⁷¹Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: 22.

¹⁷²Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: 24.

¹⁷³Hunter, James. To Change the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010: 30.

¹⁷⁴Ball, Philip. Critical Mass. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006: 5.

¹⁷⁵Ball, Philip. Critical Mass. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006: 13.

¹⁷⁶Ball, Philip. Critical Mass. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006: 455.

¹⁷⁷Ball, Philip. Critical Mass. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006: 465.

¹⁷⁸Ball, Philip. Critical Mass. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006: 469.

¹⁷⁹Ball, Philip. Critical Mass. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006: 464.

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If the subject participates in reality like Rosen describes, then we cannot speak of a hard “subject and object divide,” and this would suggest that subjects participate in reality in profound and deep ways, which is perhaps precisely why we must deal with the problem of Affliction, hopefully overcoming it in favor of Attention. If we believe reality is A/A, then we indeed can make it seem “as if” reality is indeed A/A, even though it might ultimately be A/B; if we only operate according to Hegel’s Understanding, then we can make it “seem like” there is no need for (the distinction) of Reason. We influence how reality “manifests” to us, which is both encouraging and terrifying, for it means if we live in error, reality will easily manifest to us in a way that makes our error invisible and undetectable. This is how Affliction works, which is to say it “works” and thus becomes “invisible” like Heidegger’s doorknob. Self-deception works because it is not self-deception but sight.

However, we just explored an argument for why we are reaching a historic moment which will increasingly force the average person to face a Gödel Point that not even Affliction can conceal us from (“The End of (True) History”), and at this point the incompleteness of A/A will easily become undeniable, and the average person will be forced to choose how they respond. And they will either respond pathologically or negate/sublate themselves into Children. Or so is the claim of this work, and we will further argue what the implications for this will be in economics, education, politics, religion, and more. We live in a terrifying time and so it can be an exciting time, but much will rest on how we collectively make “The Final Absolute Choice.” If we are prepared to choose and spread Childhood, we might prove to be River-Holes and perhaps add negentropy to the universe, as perhaps possible because of the “lack” and nihilism described by Rosen—but to explain let us turn to Cadell’s work.

Systems and Subjects by Cadell Last

It is difficult to think systems, a radical challenge to consider subjects, and Cadell Last has decided to think both. Systems shape subjects though, as subjects change systems, and that means the topic is active and changing. To make matters more complex, Cadell Last considers the possibility that the very act of considering “systems and subjects” actively participates in the formation of both, and also thinking that meta-thought can shape the meta-thought, which can shape the meta-thought — on and on. How do we even begin thinking something so alive, dynamic, and fractural? This is the challenge Cadell Last has put himself up to facing in Systems & Subjects, where he attempts to elaborate on why subjective experience is so problematic, why we must think systems and subjects together versus apart, and even goes so far as asking us to imagine ‘the self-certain cogito [realizing] itself to be nothing but the pure thought of the unknown where there is only pure possibility.’¹⁰⁶ We cannot be so sure that ‘Absolute space and time [won’t] reveal itself to be nothing but the Absolute concept,’ capable of creating radically different constraints than what we are habituated to, which would mean that the Absolute concept could also beget a reality in which subjectivity is effaced — as seems to be what we as Moderns are bent on accomplishing.¹⁰⁷

In The Absolute Choice, it is argued that Hegel considers “thinking” and “dreaming” as more similar then we often imagine, at least in terms of the mental acts themselves. When I dream, thinking relates to thinking, and it is not so bound by the “determinations” of the real world, and so dreaming seems radically different from thinking, but this is an impression created by the context which thinking is situated in (mainly, the earth). Arguably, the collapse of systems and subjects unveils the possibility of thinking to be more like dreaming (like it always has been), and what if history is a long story of thought realizing it has the power of a dream through time (because reality itself is Nature/Notion, as the Child may “practically live”)? What if “subjects” and “systems” coming together is part of how we realize the “Dialectic Monism” of the universe itself (which would make Nature “more like a thought” and less like a “thing”)? This is all extremely speculative, but if this is all the case, then part of our “address” will be thinking society, community, and the like in a manner that takes this possible realization seriously. However, if thinking were to be so powerful, we would have to become comfortable with our wants and desires, which would also prime us for encounters with Lacan’s “The Real.” Are we ready for that? Are we ready to confront truths about ourselves? (Perhaps we must say, “Yes.”)

We can see why there are real and high stakes in the work of Cadell Last, for our very assumption that subjectivity is divisible from “systems thinking” could be precisely why we end up dividing subjectivity from our systems, which would be for us to erase our very personal involvement. For all practical purposes, this would be the end of “humanity,” but Cadell Last argues that this does not have to be the case, writing:

‘The cumulative embodiment of the beautiful, good and true as it relates to the history of conceptualization forces us to understand both practically and theoretically that abstractions are not just in our head, or simply words, but the way in which the subject possesses the remarkable capacity to bring forth something out of nothing (creation ex nihilo), to transform the still void into material movement.’¹⁰⁷

To think is to create, and if we own this truth versus externalize it into “impersonal systems” (an impossibility), we might create a reality we love. Cadell Last further writes:

‘[I]f we see the cumulative increase of saint and sage-like subjects, who have integrated their partial truths in the multiplicity of drives that structure a conceptual becoming, we have the location of higher organizational capacity. This is the precise location where subjectivity gains the capacity to conceptualize beautifully, ethically and truly into the unknown. From this emergence we should expect a reality that is unimaginable from our present point of view. What will become possible for such a higher order community of subjects? What freedoms will structure their existence? What love will be embodied right here and now?’¹⁰⁸

These are beautiful and moving considerations, but can they be justified? Are these notions which we can actually find reason to deeply consider and encounter? We’ll see, but here it should be noted that Cadell is suggesting what kind of subject we must become like to prepare for “The Technological Singularity” and to handle “groundlessness” and “nihilism” as described by Rosen. What Cadell describes can follow if in “The Final Absolute Choice” we decide to believe there is an Apophatic Mystery we can participate in and condition. Is it all wrong? Perhaps, but Hegel teaches that the fear of error is the fear of truth.

‘[W]e all know when we refer to ‘the subject’ or ‘subjectivity’ we are referring to an inner place, or an inner experience, or a basic feeling of an inside,’ and we have been trained to view this experience as best “bracketed out” from our considerations of external systems and phenomena (and so this is how “being neurotypical” is understand versus the “mentidivergent” we need to incorporate to avoid Rational Impasses).¹⁰⁹ Generally, ‘modern society has built knowledge structures designed in relation to this feeling of an inside, or this sense-perception of an outside’ (“the objective”), and though Cadell acknowledges this notion was necessary for the development of thought, he also suggests a need to “sublate it” into a new notion in which “subject and object” are more like “subject/object” and ultimately “subject/system.”¹¹⁰ There is still distinction — it is not that “all is one” like a blob — but the distinct entities form one another in(to) their very distinctiveness.

The historical period in which “subject and system” developed according to the idea that they were distinct has “passed over” into a period where we consider “subject/system” as together (at our Gödel Point), and now we are developing with the idea that “subject/system” are interpenetrating and so informing one another. Ideas change history, and how does history change once we have the idea that “ideas change history”? To stress, Cadell Last is not suggesting a ‘ ‘new age’ spiritual obfuscation [in which we] vapidly claim that ‘we are all one’ or ‘we are connected with the whole universe,’ ’ nor is Cadell Last suggesting a ‘panpsychist presupposition that fundament base-level reality ‘is consciousness.’ ’¹¹¹ ¹¹² Instead, inspired by the work of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Cadell Last suggests a ‘revolution[] require[ing] us to go deeper into our own metaphysical systems, to include the processes of becoming that constitute history itself’ (which we will argue in II.2 requires the Social Coordination Mechanism to do well, as we’ll explain).¹¹³ A tall order, and perhaps even impossible — why should we bother to try? Well, because we are heading toward a future and even “Technological Singularity” that assumes a certain vision of humanity in which subjectivity is merely a viewer of the world, not an active element in its development and unfolding. If this is wrong, then we could develop out of ourselves without ever realizing it — the stakes couldn’t be higher (a point I think aligns with Žižek in his Hegel and the Wired Brain). Thus, we must attempt to think what seems impossible to think or alternatively forgo the effort in an act that might cast aside our future.

It is impossible to avoid technology without avoiding our historic moment, so Cadell Last is not supporting such an abolishment. In fact, thanks to ‘technological complexification, historical subjectivity gains the tools required to experientially probe deeper and deeper levels of reality directly, [but notably] as we create them and find ourselves in the process.’¹¹⁴ If I were to say what constitutes a main thrust of his book, it is this notion of including subjectivity in our systems and development, which is difficult, for the presence of subjectivity means the system is actively aware of itself and developing itself around that development, which changes the awareness, which changes the development — on and on. This brings to mind “The Absolute” in light of Hegel, which I discuss as distinct from “The Truth.” Whereas “The Truth” is “everything that is the case” (to allude to Wittgenstein), “The Absolute” is “everything that is the case plus us,” which changes what constitutes the case, which changes us, on and on. To put it generally, Cadell warns that we mostly assume “The Truth” in the background of our research, technological development, etc. (which favors A/A and Affliction), when it’s very possible that “The Absolute” is more aligned with how the universe actually operates. But part of “The Absolute” is the reality that the way we think about “the background” of the universe could transform how the universe unfolds, making it seem like “The Truth” is only the case (and that we were thus right to think according to “The Truth”). In this situation, a feedback loop could arise in which human subjectivity gradually works itself away.

‘Newton’s space and time is less fundamental than the wave function where bodies exist in probabilistic superposition as opposed to deterministic locations in space and time. [This being the case,] we must think not only determinate reality, but how determinate reality emerges from indeterminate reality.’¹¹⁵ Cadell writes that ‘for Hegel, abstract representations of reality are constantly undergoing a spiritual and social negotiation via mechanics of recognition in the phenomenal becoming of the understanding itself,’ which means that the very standard according to which we understand ourselves changes in the act of us understanding ourselves.¹¹⁶ This is difficult to think, and it might be the case that trying to think it changes how we and our world unfold(s).¹¹⁷ Cadell Last offers a useful metaphor later in the work to help get at the strange ontological paradox that subjects might “be,” and he asks us to think of ourselves “like a quantum computer” (‘[t]he weird mirror with human subjectivity in-itself [where] the subject is in some sense an entity that possesses […] strange quantum computational properties’).¹¹⁸ Though it is common to consider the brain “like a computer” (which primes us to erroneously fall into subconsciously ascribing to ‘eternal idea[s] which exist[] independent of subjectivity’), it is not common to consider the brain “like a quantum computer.”¹¹⁹ Now, this isn’t to say the brain “is a quantum computer,” but instead is meant as a historical metaphor (like Newton’s metaphor of the universe as a clock): Moderns tend to think of the brain as using “1s and 0s,” but what if we tried to understand ourselves according to quantum logic, as paradoxically and simultaneously thinking in 1/0s — how might we think our nature then? Like Children?

It was necessary for us to develop historically through a period where we considered the brain “like a computer,” as ‘Descartes and Newtown can […] be explained as historical figures of consciously, socially selected as necessary truths for their time,’ but we must now move into a phrase in which the brain is strange.¹²⁰ This is for us to ‘think[] subjectivity as an active participate in reality,’ which suggests the possibility of negentropy and entropy relating in novel and unexpected ways.¹²¹ We cannot be quick to rule this out, for though we often say “the map isn’t the territory,” it’s possible (if “The Absolute” is the case) that “the map is the territory as map/territory” (so similar to A/A but critically distinct), the very consideration of which would be for us moderns to ‘confront[] with something alien […] [something] disturb[ing] rational identity.’¹²² This would force us ‘to affirm the true as the non-rational constitutive of rationality,’ which is a rather large and difficult step — suggesting perhaps why we have not thought it (or wanted to think it).¹²³ At the very least, we have to take into account that map-making is part of the territory, which suggests the territory might be like a map itself — but now, for me at least, we’re drifting into considering Hegel…

For Cadell Last, what we must face is a ‘scientific thought of how any concept we have of ‘out there’ emerges from and is entangled with the inside, by processes of self-making.’¹²⁴ If our thoughts of “out there” shape what we encounter “out there,” then we cannot consider the thought of “what is out there” as independent of the process by which we realize what is “out there,” for our concepts direct what we encounter. Indeed, if our minds were computers, perhaps “the inside” and “the outside” could be divided, but if our minds are really more “like quantum computers,” then we exist in a reality of “inside/outside” (1/0), and thus we must be aware of what we are thinking about in the act of investigating what things are “about.” This might sound mystical, but Cadell Last resists such a framing, and he warns that ‘[t]he inability of serious philosophers and scientists to take this challenge as of essential importance leads to regressive obscurantist spiritualist interpretations to take over mainstream discourse.’¹²⁵ Indeed, books on “manifesting” seem to multiply by the year…

Cadell Last uses the metaphor of “a white box” and writes that ‘when we think positively about our own interior experience, our own subjectivity, what we are, is a white box (the opposite of a black box). A white box is the real but unobservable internal organization of an informational process.’¹²⁶ “White box” can be associated with a “white hole,” which is the opposite of a “black hole,” and instead of sucking all matter and light in, a “white hole” is infinitely and profoundly generative. Subjectivity doesn’t merely “take in” the world around it but is a feature of reality that “releases (more) reality into reality,” per se (a process of itself that the subject might experience as “lack” due to the (necessary) finitude of the “frame” by which the subject experiences itself, to allude to Alex Ebert’s “Fre(Q) Theory” (#161) — Absolutely Choose) — subjectivity is “a point of creation.” Subjects participate in the universe, but that means ‘emotional trauma of self-organization is going to be a systemic feature of the process’ in which being becomes itself.¹²⁷ This point begins to cut to the heart of the problem: if subjectivity contributes to the development of systems, then unaddressed traumas, projections, fantasies, and the like will be essentially structured into our systems, reality, and world (and so we come to live under Affliction, A/A). These are the stakes, but rather than consider them we often assume there is no “Absolute” only a “Truth” — a risky bet (which might favor Affliction).

Infants face numerous traumas in their development to become children, and children face traumas in becoming adults. Similarly, humans will face traumas in developing from moderns into those who accept “The Absolute,” but if we don’t face those traumas, they will become traumatic, and those “traumatic experiences” will be integrated into the systems we design (and feed-back into ourselves). Cadell Last writes:

‘The ultimate lesson for performing in tension is that tension is itself a type of absolute condition for being a form of subjectivity. In other words, there is really no choice when it comes to experiencing and moving through tension in the sense that the end of existence (death) is the only state when tension will be, presumably, removed from internal experience.’¹²⁸

This is arguably an “axiomatic belief,” which is to say we must “start off” either believing tension will always be with us or that tension isn’t an essential feature of existence but rather a bug we can correct. Cadell Last suggests that tension is precisely the necessary prerequisite and experience needed for subjectivity to be creative (and furthermore to look “outside itself” toward “otherness” with Attention), and if it is the case that we require a creative subjectivity to exist and experience an unfolding reality, then removing tension (RSI) would be to remove reality. Considering this, the choice to interpret tension as “essential” for being or “nonessential” is possibly a choice between life and death, and yet ironically it is “tension” which should be associated with “life,” when it seems natural for us to conclude the exact opposite. A search for unbreakable laws, for an “oceanic one,” for a final place of rest — all of these are ironically goals which threaten the unfolding of the universe and us in it. (We need tensions and limits, but which tensions and which limits? That will require a new social infrastructure and coordination mechanism, the SCM, as discussed in II.2.)

Bertalanffy suggests ‘that the strange appearance of subjectivity [in the cosmos] must have something to do with the property or tendency to cumulatively increases negentropy or higher order phenomena,’ which is to say the existence of “the irreducible subject” is reason to hope that entropy is not our sealed fate.¹²⁹ However, this subject must know itself enough to participate in this negentropy and prove a source of it — which for most of history has not been guaranteed. Cadell acknowledges that ‘[t]here might not be much of a mystery as to why our knowledge is not more self-reflective,’ mainly, “self-reflection” is hard and requires facing negativity.¹³⁰ Cadell discuses “the white box” in his book, as well as the idea of a ‘river-hole,’ which is meant to combine Nietzsche’s ‘metaphor for self-becoming’ with Lacan’s ‘metaphor for the self’s core as the locus of the unconscious,’ and in both of these metaphors we see an effort to describe a source of negativity as also a source of creation precisely thanks to that negativity (similar to how “nihilism” is both a source of life and possible effacement, following Rosen).¹³¹ Both a “white box” and a “black box” entail the reality that ‘we do not really see what is going on inside’ either, but while a “white box” proves a source of creation, a “black box” is like a “black hole” and (traumatized) sucks everything into it to be destroyed.¹³² Both are like ‘a circle with a gap in it’ (which brings to mind Lacan), which is to say both boxes entail an opening either into which we can be sucked and lost, or out of which can emerge new “becoming” and creation.¹³³ The choice is ours, but the choice of creation is hard.

Still, both boxes are boxes (which is to say both mean we are “unable to escape” self-reference). Cadell considers how the subject might be a source of order in the cosmos, which otherwise might only have the option of dissolving and deconstructing itself into a “heat death,” but to be as subjects sources of negentropy, subjects will have to face the negativity of realizing they are “trapped” within themselves and their traumas (we either must be A/A or A/B).¹³⁴ Furthermore, we will have to give up the possibility of participating as ‘an observing being in the system,’ possibly free of ‘organic and semiotic ‘distortions’ […] which supposedly block [our] asymptotic approach[es] to ‘objective external reality.’ ’¹³⁵ Our task must cease to be escaping “distortions,” and instead we must be in the business of seeing them as material for our work. What is that work? Being a “white box” at home with being (stuck as) us.

The world today increasingly forces us to “self-reference,” which is to say we are trapped in having to undergo self-reference.¹³⁶ Even if we don’t self-reference, we increasingly know we can, and so we know when we aren’t self-referencing (the appearance of an option can change the meaning of all options). Take the invention of AI, which has forced everyone to ask, “What is human?” “Why am I human?” Pluralism in general brings about “self-reference,” where we ask, “Why do I believe in Christianity?” (seeing as I could have been a Hindu, a Muslim, or the like) — to encounter diversity brings into question “first principles” and the legitimacy of those first principles (as focused on in Belonging Again (Part I)). Once this occurs, we find ourselves stuck asking questions like “Who am I?” “What do I believe?” “Who do I think I am?” And these questions bring “negativity” and tension — which we must face if we’re to be a point of “negentropy” versus “entropy.” The obstacle can be the way, as Stoics say.

‘In Bertalanffy’s work, the ideas of transcendental idealism are entertained in so far as systems were seen fundamentally as mental abstractions capable of helping human social reality do useful work in relation to difficult historical problematics.’¹³⁷ Indeed, if this historic age is one in which “we all must self-reference,” that basically means we must all be philosophical (as Peter Berger and Philip Rieff understood), and indeed transcendental idealism seems central in helping us deal with that reality, which brings us to thinkers like Hegel and others who question “the subject/object divide” in favor of (intersuppositional) relations. Friedrich Hayek teaches us that no matter how smart we are, we can’t know how many plastic folks the McDonalds down the street needs to order next week unless we work there; likewise, no matter how smart we are, we cannot think what we need to do to be “white boxes” in the world today unless we occupy the “meta-terrain” suggested by Systems & Subjects, which is to say unless we accept the premise that there is no hard “system/subject divide.” Similarly, we must see the world “tragically” and as “a system of tradeoffs” like what was described in Belonging Again (Part I) if we are to prove able to think the “address” which might help us “leave Plato’s Cave on our own,” mentidivergent and free of Affliction…

IV.2B

How do we have the strength to do the “nonrational” (a question which brings to mind Lev Shestov’s “impossibility,” and also The Conflict of Mind by O.G. Rose)? How might we do what seems absurd and ask, “What is human?” before AI (versus only use AI to avoid what’s difficult) (how might we use technology to “extend humanity” versus “replace humanity,” to suggest Illich)? Well, it might require communities and relationships which could help strengthen us, which is to say we might need “Absolute Communities.” But isn’t that a “chicken/egg problem”? Don’t we need to make “nonrational choices” to be “Absolute Knowers,” so how could there already be “Absolute Communities” to help us make those choices? Perhaps like the chicken and the egg, individuals and communities arise together, emergently, because that is what the historic moment requires.

The invention of AI cannot be reversed, for even if we ban the technology, the idea of it has already entered our minds and impacted us into asking, “What is human?” “What is intelligence?” The conceptual change is done; thought has already been transformed. And it will be tempting to use AI to avoid thinking for ourselves, to offload moral choice to the AI (like Alex Ebert warns about), and then claim, “I only did it because the AI told me to,” and so on (numerous examples could be made). To be a “white box” instead of asking the AI what we should do, the question is if we can stand before AI and ask, “How am ‘I’ given that?” Rather than use AI to escape ourselves, can we use AI to reflect back on ourselves, which is to ask if we can use AI to go deeper into negativity versus try to escape it? I think this will prove a great and difficult challenge, for our natural response to negativity and tension is to assume, “This shouldn’t exist” — to interpret such as a “box” that we require in order to be a “white box” is not natural at all.

Unfortunately, adding to the likelihood we make this “effacing mistake,” the conditions which arise to tension in us have ‘no easily identifiable physical cause,’ only adding to the impressive that “tension shouldn’t exist.”138 To grasp why tension is fundamentally part of being, we likewise have to accept that things which lack apparent physical cause are also part of fundamental being, which is a “metaphysical shift” in thinking that will not be easy or natural. It’s more natural to believe that we should simply ignore or erase ‘the symbolic order’ which causes this tension, but Cadell stresses that we should rather ‘work-through it.’¹³⁹ He writes (suggesting Affliction, A/A…):

‘[A]bsolute closures are doomed to equilibrium, because no matter what field they exist within, eventually the environment will change so much that their knowledge structures will no longer be fit for action. Thus, eventually, they will hit a state of equilibrium, but the self-organizing symbolic drive in-itself will continue to participate in the strange loop between chaotic information fields and ordered knowledge practices that are best suited to explore these fields.’¹⁴⁰

Cadell Last asks us to imagine that we might only exist because “something doesn’t work,” which is to say something fails to achieve equilibrium and “a stable state.” Because of this failure, infinite creation and development becomes possible (a blessing of “lack” like “the possibility of intrinsic motivation”), but at the price of us having to live with a difficult and heavy tension. Are we so sure this isn’t the case? Regardless, we need to face this question directly, for we moderns are currently thinking and designing our systems assuming a “Truth” versus an “Absolute.” And if we cannot escape “self-reference” now, ready or not, we will face our “box” one way or the other, as either “white” or “black” (as Mystery or Ever-Meta, to allude to my discussion with Matthew Allison, Ep #139).

Though we spend a lot of time “blaming the system” for our plight, what is being suggested here is a world in which we are forced to confront our pathologies precisely because “we are the system,” per se, and so what “the system does to us” is what we do to ourselves. We easily enjoy believing that “the system holds us back” — what will we do when we must take responsibility for ourselves and our desires? Perhaps we want a “subject/object divide,” because then we could say that “objects are in our way”? Is the age of “scapegoating objects” over? Society can be seen as partly in the business of helping us “vent” and “manage” Lacan’s Real in a way that we can handle, and perhaps a day is coming where we must learn to handle a much weaker ventilation system, which is to say we must learn to handle more “Reality” directly.

As scientists might enjoy entropy, so we might enjoy “the system” (similar to how people can enjoy conspiracies, as described in “Desire’s Masterpiece” by O.G. Rose). Another reason we might entertain this enjoyment is because belief in a “Big Other/System” can help us avoid accepting “essential incompleteness,” because if there is “something wrong” with life, we can externalize that “lack” to something we can solve and correct. But if we and systems are unified, then the shortcomings of the system suddenly become ours, and in that move we have to accept that ‘living systems are in a permanent state of imbalance,’ and that means we are as well.¹⁴¹ Incompleteness is ‘a systemic feature of our existence, and thus cannot ultimately be resolved or reconciled by an ideological closure.’¹⁴² Thus, if we are forced into “self-reference” today, the average person is increasingly forced into facing and experiencing their “essential incompleteness,” regardless if they are prepared. How might the majority respond? Pathologically, in all likelihood, but this step of self-reference is also the beginning of the road for us to become Children and “intrinsically motivated.” Might we make the most of ‘including all of subjectivity […] into the truth of ontology?’¹⁴³ Of thinking ‘of technological singularity as an event?’¹⁴⁴ Of considering that ‘thought itself [might be] the crucial agent that could prevent the collapse of the universe in heat death?’¹⁴⁵ That we are responsible for dreaming?

Science with technology has brought us to a place where we are forced to confront our own interiority and decide if we will continue to “bracket it out” from our thinking or incorporate it more deeply to a place where subjectivity essentially shapes and transforms our world (moving us into A/B from A/A). Science today suggests problems in which we are entangled, and how those problems are tangled is determined by us. Cadell Last also notes that it is impossible for us to think without thinking according to assumptions, a certain paradigm, and the like, and so we must decide before we think (nonrational) if we believe subjectivity actively shapes reality or is only an observer of it (suggesting how Affliction and “maps” form and work). To follow Cadell’s lead is an act of mentidivergence from Truth to Absolute (as Land waits).

If awareness changes how reality unfolds, learning such risks causing us existential misery if not insanity, but not learning this is also risky, for we might continue to design subjects out of being (we might be dealing here with something as difficult as “lucid dreaming,” of realizing we are in a dream without waking up). As Cadell puts it:

‘The essence of the mental paradox, in relation to the ideology of scientific materialism and fundamental laws can be formulated simply: subjective mind or consciousness has internal to its own nature the capacity for real time computations that are not reducible to past programming. In other words, subjective mind is not absolutely determined from past causes.’¹⁴⁶

How do we live with this knowledge and possibility? Well, it won’t be natural for moderns, but we fail to incorporate the work of Bertalanffy into our thinking at great risk. ‘Bertalanffy saw the emergence of a true symbolic drive as something that did not conform to the utilitarian closed loop derived from biological metaphor’ (A/B over A/A), but we can still choose to treat “symbolic drive” as utilitarian, causing a mismatch which breeds pathology and self-effacement.¹⁴⁷

Is “subject” now another word for “system” and “system” another word for “subject”? Is “object” another word for “subject”? These are questions we can feel left with after Cadell’s book. If so, again, the line between “thinking” and “dreaming” is now much thinner, and this might sound wonderful, but a dream we have to acknowledge is our own could be a nightmare (which points to the topic of “Dream-Equality” in II.2). We can always claim a dream is “outside our control,” and if it’s “lucid” we can say it’s arbitrary — but what about “real dreams” that others will see we dreamed? What about having to really face what we want and letting others see as well? What about a world of radical social nakedness? Are we ready for that reality? A dream we really choose might always be a nightmare. But this is the kind of world we are heading toward, where technology enables thinking to realize itself as more “dream-like” than ever before (suggesting “Thinking Here and Thinking There” by O.G. Rose), but in that very state we might be horrified by the subjectivity which enables us to dream, precisely because we will have to face our dreams and own them as our own. We will have less “plausible deniability” for not knowing what we want and having it, which will force us to face and know ourselves — and all “The Real” that comes with us (perhaps tempting us to “solve the subject” by solving it away, an “effacement drive”). But where thinking is freer from immediacy to dream, it becomes possible for us to think/dream beyond Plato’s Cave and act on our own (nonrationally, mentidivergent, for dreams can help free thought from what’s “typical”).

‘The self-organization of the symbolic order is likely in-itself impossible to stop,’ the question is only how will we try to organize it?¹⁴⁸ Will we deny the active role of the subject? That will be natural for us, for knowing the subject requires a processing of negativity that will prove painful and possibly traumatic. We will have to accept that a “perfect future” isn’t possible, only a future we create, which burdens us with possibility. If the human is the product of a mistake, the future can only be perfect without us, and thus we are tempted to think of a future that is post-human. As Cadell notes:

‘Could it be that theoretical physics, in the mathematical abstraction of a higher other eternal world qua multiverse, is unconsciously expressing deep desires of the biological organisms and cultural creatures engaged in this activity?’¹⁴⁹

Science seems to have a subconscious dislike of the subject, precisely because science cannot “solve it,” per se. Thus, it is possible that cybernetic and transhumanist talk of a future in which AI replaces humanity might reflect a subconscious desire to “solve the problem of the subject” by removing subjectivity from the universe. Are not scientists human beings with minds just like the rest of us? Can’t they be susceptible to “the death drive” too and, Afflicted, undergo self-effacement? Have we even considered this possibility, that current widespread notions about the future might simply be scientific “wish-fulfillment” to overcome the subject once and for all? Might we just be desiring a utopia where there is nowhere for us and claiming it is inevitable so that we can deny the role of desire and subjectivity in its construction? Might we be tempted by “The Bystander Effect”?

As science might subconsciously desire to remove the subject to “solve (away)” the problem of the subject, the same desire could lurk in the background of systemic, institutional, and societal design in general (all organized by Affliction and Discourse). When we build a community “for the people,” we might subtly build it in such a way to “get people out of the way” (suggesting what people “need” is a way to overcome their subjectivities — which of course we cannot rid ourselves of without ceasing to be) (The Trial was perhaps a story of Josef K getting himself out of Discourse’s way, as Discourse would have it). To help people, we might try to remove them; to get people “out of the box,” we might remove them from where they need to be. Help isn’t always helpful.

IV.2C

On the notion that the subject actively participates in reality, if we decide that “things don’t exist,” only relations (as Owen Barfield, Leibniz, or Hegel might encourage us, because “things are idols” in the sense that they cannot provide their own grounding), then we will easily be lead to think against sociological “givens,” for everything “solid” will come under suspicion. This is arguably a good thing, but we might also be at risk of committing the fallacy of “Cheston’s Fence,” which is to say we tear down something before we know with what we will replace it. To cease living in a world of “things” means that I live in a world that my presence in shapes and transforms directly in ways I’m likely not fully ready for, and that makes me more responsible and active in the world than I might be ready to face. This can be difficult to experience and bear, for though I might lament “the system” and how it inhibits me, I might also be terrified to live in a world where I can’t say “the system” or “this object” is so readily holding me back, because I am more “part of it” than I previously thought. We dislike “the system,” but we might dislike being deeply part of it more.¹⁵⁰

Peter Berger teaches us that we are all existentialists now, and the emergence of AI seems to force the majority of people to reflect on “What is human?” This is to say the majority is now forced to engage in “self-reference,” and this is the “box” which none of us can escape — the question is only if the “box” will be “white” or “black,” which might be tied to the question of if “self-reference” can be the grounds of a new kind of “given” after the loss of traditional “givens” described in Belonging Again (Part I). This might suggest philosophy itself could be this possible “given,” which then suggests something like “Absolute Knowing” — might it be that AI will be a “forcing function” that brings the average person to “being philosophical” and Childlike? Perhaps, and then the question would be if a certain “mode” can provide “givenness again” (though not in the same way as traditionally implemented, and perhaps only with Voicecraft-training).

To “have to reference ourselves” is to find ourselves having to be conscious of ourselves, and as Alex Ebert stresses, consciousness is primarily in the business of becoming unconscious: to be conscious regularly and constantly is psychologically and existentially very difficult and overwhelming. Perhaps a role of philosophy is precisely to be in the business of helping us live with “constant consciousness of ourselves” (denied a success of thought as unconsciousness)? How this occurs for the majority could be precisely because AI and technology forces us to ask, “What is consciousness?” — a question drawn to our attention precisely because AI has us constantly ask, “What does it mean to be human?” Feeling stuck “conscious about consciousness” and/or “conscious that consciousness doesn’t seem different from AI” is precisely being “stuck in a box.” But to suggest negation/sublation, we must be in a “box” to create, as we must be a “hole” so that a river comes out of us. Perhaps as a “white box,” we must create (the only thing we cannot change is changing).

Self-reference brings about a different “mode of being” in the world, and it can inspire us into developing skills and abilities (bringing Ivan Illich to mind), which might align more with negentropy than entropy. Generally, the shift from “searching for a ground” (which defined much of Modernity) to “developing skills, modes, relations…” (perhaps more Metamodern) seems central, and in this we might see the possibility of a new “consistency” that doesn’t rise above change simply thanks to Transcendence. And which is more impressive: a constant in the midst of change or a Constant “above” change as Transcendent? This can be debated, but the point is that if we today are emphasizing skills and “modes,” then we might be capable of a “consistency” that has not been historically needed before, a step that might even be a negation/sublation. We’ve traditionally conflated “consistent” and “Transcendent,” but that doesn’t need to necessarily follow — with the right skills, we can provide our own consistency (something like a musical “harmony”).

Being a “white box” is more about finding the right “mode” versus the right “ground,” but realizing and engaging in this mode will require us to overcome the pressures and tensions of being in a (limit(less)) “box” (which can easily feel like a prison). In a way, the modern world seems like a prison which forces us to “self-reference” and thus be existential, but as Sartre taught us, we can be free in a prison based on our choices and orientation to the prison, so we can find a “mode” that makes us “toward” the world in a way that changes how it (creatively) “unfolds.” And so can “self-reference” be a new kind of “given”? If AI and the horizon of the moment forces us to be “self-referential” (“boxed”), might this help us address some of the concerns of Belonging Again (Part I)? Indeed, Part I suggested that the loss of “givens” has proven consequential, and yet we also cannot return to “givens” as classically understood — a negation/sublation is needed, seemingly one that moves “givenness” closer to the individual subject (hence the focuses on Hegel, Deleuze, Nietzsche, and the like). Might the “necessity of self-reference” be part of what we need? If “self-reference” is part of the “box” that makes it possible for us each to be a “white box,” then I think so. But perhaps we need the “self-reference” precisely so that we can engage in “self-forgetfulness” (because words we cease saying generates a different quality from a state of constant silence)? Indeed — but what is meant by this will be expanded on later (it suggests we must employ Meta to master Mystery, as I discussed with Matthew Allison, but to use Meta is to risk falling into Ever-Meta; we must walk through Inferno and risk stopping).

To be forced into self-reference is going to force us to confront our wants and desires more, and we will also be forced to know that other people know our desires and wants. What we want says something about who we are, and we often don’t want others to know who we are, as we often don’t want to know such about ourselves. If we are stuck self-referencing, and “thinking” is more like “dreaming” than we often realize though, then we can more so be whoever “we dream to be,” which sounds liberating and is, but it’s also terrifying — we’d have to own our wants, which we are likely to respond to with anxiety or with a “hardened personality” which doesn’t question wants (just wants or denies them) because that would open us to anxiety. We must resist responding to “being boxed” with “being closed-off” but how? Not easily, and if philosophy is about “knowing thyself,” it makes sense why Lacan thought of himself as an “anti-philosopher,” for he taught that we do not want to know ourselves. But imagine if we must know ourselves, if we were to be stuck “in a box”? How would we respond? Could we take the pressure? If we could, Cadell suggests we might prove sources of negentropy and creation.

An “address” of Belonging Again will collapse “the subject/object divide, which will help us escape Affliction into Attention. But isn’t that strange? If there is a divide that would seem to make space for Attention, but the opposite is the case, especially when we treat what is “beyond the divide” as that which we can never access (as popular Kantianism has led many into), and so that which is impossible to give Attention. Things or “others” completely divided from us are things which Attention cannot essentially change, so “things” can interact (A/As can “bump against one another”), but (to make a distinction here I can’t promise I’ll hold to) not so much relate (negating/sublating into A/B). Of course, if there is no “subject/object divide,” then things do “relate” not just “bump into one another,” even if they don’t know any better, but here we are suggesting that Children must know and be aware of this “relating,” which is psychologically difficult (for we are forced to more so confront desire and “The Real”).

Please note that to deconstruct “the subject/object divide” is not to say “everything is one” (like a blob) but to say that everything can relate. The “divide” is more like a wall, and I cannot really give Attention to what is on the other side of a wall. Rather, to deconstruct the divide is to make it possible for me to “see” others, and though the distinction between me and others is still there, it is now possible for us to relate precisely because we are not the same (if we were, there would be nothing to relate). This gets into my work comparing Leibniz and Hegel (forever indebted to Anthony Morely), as I discussed at the 2023 Philosophy Portal Conference, but the point is that to remove the divide doesn’t erase distinction but makes it possible for difference to relate and thus for Attention to arise without Affliction (A/A, Nash Equilibria).

It is funny that the classic divide entails “object,” as if we can so easily assume the existence of independent objects, but is there such thing as an “object” outside a world? Objects are always situated in a physics, and so humans are always situated in a metaphysics (referencing objects). We are “always already” systemized, but what does it mean that we today know we are “always already” systemized? This is the challenge Cadell takes on, though admittedly I have hardly scratched the surface of Cadell Last’s critical book, leaving unaddressed the topics like “abductive reasoning,” the dialectic between coherence and correspondence, the “positive limits” of Hegel, quantum gravity, Hegelian reconciliation — nothing I wrote here could express the ideas better than Cadell Last does himself (the sections on “Neapolitan ice cream” are notably delightful). Cadell articulates well why our fate is tied to how we relate systems and subjects, and he wonders if we moderns might still be thinking in terms of a necessary historic phase that will prove self-effacing if we fail to sublate it into the next phrase, which for Cadell Last entails thinking “subject/system” versus just “subject and system,” against the habituation of our age.

If we are to some degree controlled by a system, we can still know we are controlled by a system, and then we can know our knowing about the system is controlled — on and on. This “meta-dimension” (which is possible thanks to self-reference) means there is always an excess wherever a subject is present, and the question we must ask is if we will use this excess in favor of negentropy or entropy (Mystery or Ever-Meta, Rhetoric or Discourse…). The meta-excess of the system seems to be why we are able to steer our system/subject in a direction of our choosing (toward “blackness” or “whiteness,” per se) — not instantly or all at once, but the meta-excess is why, though we might seem more imprisoned “now” than free, we ultimately have degrees of freedom. The question is only “how” we might engage in “self-reference,” and Cadell himself often models this building: he does not discuss an abstract subject, but often references himself in discussions. Cadell engages not in “self-reference,” per se, but “Cadell-reference,” and I think something similar is what we all must do. We must make “gifts” of our “life-material,” and offer it to those around us so that we might better understand this world in which we live. When AI forces us to “self-reference,” we will be tempted to keep the act a general “self-reference,” but the secret to the “mode” might be to go deeper (to “lean into it”) and engage in “(name)-reference.” More must be said, but the point is that Cadell has offered us an invaluable model for what we need to do. We must be “gifts,” a negated/sublated “given,” for if “a scalable rhizome with roots” is possible, as Cadell has discussed, it seems like it must involve something like this paradox.

Since there must always be an “excess” from the system, as precisely unveiled in “self-reference,” we are always to some degree potentially free, and freedom is terrifying. If this freedom is to prove negative/sublative, the model Cadell often shows in “Cadell-referencing” might be something we all need to get better at, which is to get better at “being gifts” (like “being there”) (intersuppositional). “The map isn’t the territory,” but mapmaking is part of it, and our age is one in which the territory is shaped by how we read our maps, because this shapes what we do to the territory. The map shapes the territory, as the territory shapes the map (form(ulation)). Tension is Absolute. Tension is a sign of life.

Today, we know ‘we potentially approach a post-human universe’ — how does that idea change and shape us?¹⁵¹ For Cadell, it means we must practice “Cadell-reference” (“singularity-reference,” to allude to Hegel), and this requires great work: we can only think the future if we accept that we must think us. If we cannot think the future with us in it, the future cannot be ours, and if systems and subjects are indivisible, that ironically means the future is for nothing human or human-made at all. Unless, that is, we can think the future with subjects and systems together. With Cadell’s guidance, not only can we rise to this challenge, but I think we can also prove all the better for it. A future which overcomes challenge is greater than a future which merely lingers on, but the challenge we must overcome is “spreading Childhood,” which is spreading the conditions which could inspire the majority to be mentidivergent (A/B) and “leave Plato’s Cave on their own.” Is this possible? Because we cannot know ahead of time, there is risk and thus possible courage in taking on the challenge. The one who fears in Affliction is not made perfect in the encounter of the surprising love of Attention.¹⁵²

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Notes

¹⁰⁹Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 431–432.

¹¹⁰110Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 14.

¹¹¹Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 14.

¹¹²Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 127.

¹¹³Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 357.

¹¹⁴Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 361.

¹¹⁵Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 358.

¹¹⁶Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 16.

¹¹⁷Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 20.

¹¹⁸Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 375.

¹¹⁹Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 24.

¹²⁰Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 22.

¹²¹Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 24.

¹²²Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 34.

¹²³Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 37.

¹²⁴Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 46.

¹²⁵Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 49.

¹²⁶Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 53.

¹²⁷Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 76.

¹²⁸Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 81.

¹²⁹Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal (Printed Edition), 2023.

¹³⁰Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal (Printed Edition), 2023.

¹³¹Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal (Printed Edition), 2023.

¹³²Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal (Printed Edition), 2023.

¹³³Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal (Printed Edition), 2023.

¹³⁴We should also note that science might “enjoy” entropy (think Lacan), as might we ourselves, because then we are victims of a universal process we cannot control. We cannot ultimately save the world, and so we are not responsible for not trying to help the subject rise to its own problem, nor should we be blamed if we spend all our time focusing on our research and experiments (why not, in the end?). Also, entropy might remove me from responsibility for say looking and cultivating sources of negentropy (perhaps in the subject), as I might enjoy imagining myself doing if not for “heat death.” Entropy gifts.

¹³⁵Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal (Printed Edition), 2023.

¹³⁶Perhaps Modernity was the realization that “there is no ground,” Postmodernity the practicing of “self-reference,” and Metamodernity the realization that we “must self-reference,” which suggests a negation that might be a sublation…

¹³⁷Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal (Printed Edition), 2023.

¹³⁸Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 99.

¹³⁹Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 108.

¹⁴⁰Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 119.

¹⁴¹Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal (Printed Edition), 2023.

¹⁴²Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal (Printed Edition), 2023.

¹⁴³Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal (Printed Edition), 2023.

¹⁴⁴Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal (Printed Edition), 2023.

¹⁴⁵Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal (Printed Edition), 2023.

¹⁴⁶Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 183.

¹⁴⁷Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 200.

¹⁴⁸Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 210.

¹⁴⁹Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal, 2022–2023 (early .pdf version): 331.

¹⁵⁰Many philosophers today agree that “the subject/object divide” is problematic and needs to be deconstructed, but that doesn’t mean there still isn’t “a life/belief divide” in the sense that we don’t necessarily live like what we claim we believe. If we really believed that “objects and subjects” were unified, then the way we talked, carried ourselves, and ascribed responsibility might be entirely different. We say, “we are all one,” and yet we can still treat our neighbor like an alien.

¹⁵¹Last, Cadell. Systems and Subjects. Philosophy Portal (Printed Edition), 2023.

¹⁵²Allusion to 1 John 4:18.

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We must negate/sublate A/A into A/B and thus step out of Affliction into Attention; we’ve been able to make the mistake of A/A without great consequence, but as of our current historic epoch things may have changed. In fact, in the past, A/A arguably wasn’t even a mistake: it was a necessary step, and indeed we required Aristotle for Hegel. Affliction arises now with A/A because we are overfitting A/A, and though for now this mistake of “overfitting A/A” has not proven fatal, the clock ticks. We must cease planning to always live according to A/A and prepare for A/B. We must focus on preparing for the unexpected. We must prepare to face and integrate with “lack.” Yes, there are individuals doing this, but we must consider how we might “spread Childhood.” This will require unveiling that reality is abyssal and apophatic, that life is mystery.

Belonging Again II.1 (Amazon)

In (Re)constructing “A Is A,” there is an essay titled “The Gödel Point,” and what we can say is that history is reaching its “Gödel Point” (at “The End of (True) History”) where the ultimate insufficiency of A/A (as a “map”) is being unveiled. To borrow a section from that paper:

“The Gödel Point” is where we are “pinned down” between “the map” and “the territory,” “the rational” and “the truth.” This point is found where “autonomous rationality” and/or “complete coherence” is located and examined, for otherwise we cannot identify the difference with confidence between a spot where simply more reasoning is needed and a spot that is “essentially incomplete” because “maps” cannot be “territories.” It is where we realize “Gödel Points” are features of rationality not failures of rationality, but that means to successfully identify a “Gödel Point” (with confidence, thus removing possible rationalization against it to existentially secure ourselves), we have to “fill in” all spots lacking rationality that don’t have to so lack it (in other words, we must complete “The Philosophical Journey,” as descried in “Deconstructing Common Life” by O.G. Rose). Until we finish “the philosophical journey,” we will always have “reason to think” that an area of incompleteness in our “map” can in fact be completed if we only found the right information, right ideas, and so on. To really personally and fully experience a “Gödel Point” as a “Gödel Point,” we must go all the way. And knowing ahead of time that what awaits us is a Gödel Point might make it difficult for us to advance, but we must — hopefully the knowledge just makes clear to us what we must do when we get there — “The Absolute Choice.”

All systems must ultimately prove incomplete, which basically means that “no map can be its territory,” and it is precisely at the point where “the map” is unveiled not to be “the territory” that we can find the human standing with all his/her pathos, logos, and mythos — naked. The human subject is why systems are ultimately incomplete, which means what happens to the system is ultimately up to the human (“a flip moment”). So, if the human chooses to seek A/B and “Absolute Knowing,” the “essentially incomplete system” can practically (“as long as the human so practices it”) be “(in)complete,” which means the system or community “finds completeness in incompleteness,” a Hegelian state (of “belonging in not belonging”). “The Gödel Point” is where Affliction can be unveiled as open and Affliction most enraged — an opening.

“The Gödel Point” in which the human subject stands is precisely where we decide if the system or community is “hellish” or “heavenly” (it is where “subject and system” encounter the “/” to (perhaps) be subject/system). Same system, as God can be Heaven/Hell based on the relation, but based on what we do and become in this Purgatory (this place/point of Hegel’s “Phenomenological Journey”), everything is defined and changed accordingly (and will seem as if it was “always already” such, which is the strangeness of “flip moments”). This hints at the wisdom of Alex Ebert’s thinking on death and relations, because if in “The Gödel Point” we fail to accept death and prioritize the individual over relations (A/A), both “the map” and “the territory” will become cancerous and exclusive, which is to say we will die alone. The hope is to make death good by accepting it, for the living to die alive (A/B).

Another way to put this is that “The Gödel Point” is where we decide if we will undergo “negation/sublation” or “effacement” (as described in “Negation Versus Effacement”). “The Gödel Point” can be our opening into Absolute Communities or the beginning of our effacement if we do not design mechanisms for dealing with pathos at scale and/or spreading conditions which can incubate and “spread Childhood.” Both with the “loss of givens” and approaching the Technological Singularity, we face the Gödel Point, which forces upon us a choice: Is “groundlessness” empty or apophatic? This is the Final Absolute Choice, and the Child chooses the apophatic. Can the majority be a Child? To ask this is to ask, “How do we break out of Affliction?” How might we leave Plato’s Cave on our own? We must be “toward” that which cannot be “captured” by Affliction, and that would be something “lacking” and “apophatic,” which is what we can “Absolutely Choose” a Gödel Point to unveil. If the world is accelerating toward a Technology Singularity, and if the world is losing “givens” due to Pluralism, this would mean we are at a historic moment where the majority are increasingly being forced to face “The Gödel Point,” which would suggest the majority will be forced to make “The Final Absolute Choice” (one way or another). This is easily an opportunity for “Childhood to spread,” but it’s contingent on the majority not pathologically reacting to Gödel Points. Precisely not reacting this way is a characteristic of a Child, which begs a question: Must we be Children before we encounter Gödel Points or can the encounter so change us? It is possible the encounter would so change us, and this would suggest a more “self-correcting model,” and indeed Hegel teaches that what history needs to negate/sublate itself often lies in “the implicit” that becomes “explicit” precisely when so needed (as I have spoken with Dr. Filip Niklas about in Ep #77). This is possible and hopefully is the case; however, there is also room to read contingency into Hegel, that it is not necessarily given that we will prove able to negate/sublate our historic moment. Furthermore, if this problem “takes care of itself” and we’ve learned to better “spread Childhood,” even though it might seem we’ve wasted our time, I would argue that “being a Child” opens up a higher quality of life, for one because it entails “intrinsic motivation,” which for me is easily the meaning of life (for if we are intrinsically motivated life has meaning). We also move beyond Affliction into Attention, which means we move beyond self-effacement. In this way, even if the problem “takes care of itself,” we will have acted well to “spread Childhood.”

Gödel Points are points where we must face a “nothingness” that’s meaning we must “Absolutely Choose,” and on this point we can consider Nihilism by Stanley Rosen (who I’m glad Guy Sengstock brought to my attention). Rosen wrote:

‘Nietzsche defines nihilism as the situation which obtains when ‘everything is permitted.’ If everything is permitted, then it makes no difference what we do, and so nothing is worth anything. We can, of course, attribute value by an act of arbitrary resolution, but such an act proceeds ex nihilo or defines its significance by a spontaneous assertion which can be negated with equal justification.’⁹²

Doesn’t this negate the possibility of a Child? On rational grounds, absolutely (which is a reason why Affliction (A/A) is so powerful), hence the necessity of nonrationality (Attention, A/B), and furthermore this description is precisely why Childhood cannot be bestowed (say by rationality, practicality — anything). Childhood must be an Absolute Choice, and a choice which is itself and only itself, upheld by the act of choosing and “(be)coming” itself. This is radical and strange and only possible where nihilism is the case, and if there is something about this choice which makes possible perhaps “the highest way of life,” then it is a blessing. Is “lack” a blessing (or RSI)? Perhaps.

Rosen will discuss the “language games” of Wittgenstein and consider silence, which ‘in the context of nihilism, the various forms of silence reduce finally to just one form, or rather to formlessness.’⁹³ Silence then “points toward” the ultimate “groundlessness of being,” and yet silence is also what makes possible the speech which infringes it. That said, ‘[s]ince silence is rendered articulate by speech, and receives its formal diversification from the reflexive shaping of discursive consciousness, it loses this articulateness when treated as the source of significance.’⁹⁴ What does this mean? Silence only has meaning as “pointing toward ultimately groundlessness” because we speak about it, which means we understand silence by losing it, in the same way that we can be “toward” nihilism precisely because we have be-ing. There is a paradox here, similar to how in Hegel we need Understanding (A/A) to move into Reason (A/B), and yet Understanding threatens Reason. The possibility of nihilism then possibly opening us up to “highest being” is only present because we exist in a “state of being” which seems to suggest that nihilism is false (for there’s something instead of nothing); furthermore, we exist in a natural state that, when we first encounter nihilism, naturally orientates us to interpret “groundlessness” as evidence of “pure nothingness” versus something “lacking” and apophatic. We seem arranged to fail, but this is only “seemingly” the case because there is no way for us to exist in the first place (with the possibility of advancing into Childhood), without us starting in Understanding, (the possibility of) Affliction, A/A, and the like. To exist we must be at risk (there can only be value where there is risk, after all).

Rosen sets out to defend reason and clarify why we don’t have to choose between “nihilism” and “reason,” which is one of the reasons he critiques the idea that truth is found in pure silence (if that was true, there would be nothing to reason about). Absurdism is often associated with nihilism, and Rosen would like to break that association, as would I, and I also support Rosen’s defense of reason, for his is not an “autonomous rationality” but a practice which dialectically relates “rationality and nonrationality” (his defense is A/B not A/A). Furthermore, as Rosen wants to connect nihilism and reason, he also wants to make clear that what has traditionally been considered a “transcendent” like goodness, beauty, or truth are not totally outside the realm or access of reason (thinking this is one of the reasons we have fallen into the mistake of connecting “nihilism” and “absurdism”). ‘The link between modern rationalism and historicism lies ultimately in the separation between ‘reasonable’ and ‘good,’ Rosen writes. ‘Thanks largely to the combined influence of mathematics and Christianity (in a positive and negative sense), the good was said to lie beyond the domain of the rational investigation of this world.’⁹⁵ This has been a terrible and arguably Kantian mistake (contributing to break between “The Truth” and “The Absolute,” as Cadell and I have discussed), leading to a “bracketing out” of the subject from the world, leading to problematic philosophy, and a lack of preparation for the Singularity which awaits us. This move also contributes to “silence,” for we have “silenced the subject,” and though silence has a role, its role is dialectical not autonomous.

‘One does not defend reason by refusing to speak of the unreasonable; neither does one defend it by refusing to speak of reason. The fashionable contemporary defense of reason amounts to silence.’⁹⁶ This will not suffice, for we must speak around “silence,” as we see modeled in Dialogos, Circling, and Cyphers; simply being silent will not move us into preparation or Childhood. Rosen here does not ‘presume[] to ‘solve’ the problem of nihilism’ in his work, ‘if by a solution is meant a recipe for extirpating the unwanted phenomenon. Nihilism, to repeat, is a perennial human danger: it cannot be ‘solved’ without the dissolution of human nature.’⁹⁷ I completely agree, accepting RSI, and as Michelle and I spoke with the LFMI about (Ep #135), it is precisely “lack” which makes us human (and possibly toward the ever-creative apophatic). To remove the threat of “bad nihilism” (A/A) would be to remove the possibility of “new life” (A/B); to be free of Affliction would be to lose the possibility of Attention. Our situation is one that needs management not erasure.

Rosen proceeds after his tremendous opening to critique “ordinary language philosophy,” the notion that ‘[w]hat counts as correct philosophical procedure is […] justified by recourse to the normative function of ordinary language,’ a notion which can ultimately set philosophy to problematically end up in “pure silence.”⁹⁸ This take on philosophy suggests that, ‘however much talk has been generated by the ‘doing of philosophy,’ philosophy has not genuinely appeared or transpired. We are at bottom totally silent, mere farceurs or satirists of sobriety.’⁹⁹ And so the road has been paved toward a Neo-Pragmaticism of a Richard Rorty or “mystical knowing” that remains in silence: the role of philosophy (and even theology) becomes questionable and even irrelevant. Rosen seems to have sensed this and thus ‘object[ed] to the polemical aspects of ordinary language philosophy [and/or] their attacks upon ‘metaphysics’ and ‘traditional philosophy,’ ’ an effort I support.¹⁰⁰ As such, “ordinary language philosophy” has contributed to us not preparing ourselves for Gödel Points and falling deeper into self-effacement: our supposed liberation from philosophy was us stepping away from the resources of Attention and Childhood and locking ourselves inside Affliction as Last Men. Certain. Silent.

‘The language game is the source of Being, i.e. the source of meaning. And man, the speaking animal, is the source of the language game.’¹⁰¹ Yes, and speaking is necessary for philosophy, but we cannot reduce philosophy to mere speaking — that is the error. The subject of philosophy is ultimately “nihilism” and “groundlessness” (“presuppositionless”), but it doesn’t follow from this that nihilism is proof of “mere nothingness.” Nihilism could be Apophatic Mystery (“lack” could be a blessing): ‘[i]t is more than possible to maintain that nihilism arises not from the absence of truth, but from its tedious presence.’¹⁰² If this is so though, since we naturally and necessarily exist as “beings of Understanding” (A/A) (to start, at least), we find ourselves necessarily facing paradoxes (‘[m]an preserves his humanity by speech,’ for example, ‘yet in speaking, he destroys it’).¹⁰³ Rosen tells us that ‘desire is the desire for speech,’ for speech is needed for a Cypher in which the Mystery desire seeks can be realized (as we’ll discuss), ‘but speech [also] ‘alienates’ us from our desires.’¹⁰⁴ How do we navigate this tension? It would take philosophy to find out and practice our lives accordingly…

Bringing Hegel’s fascination with tautologies to mind, Rosen also makes the point that ‘perhaps we are mistaken in assuming that (A = A) = A. Does not the left-hand side of the equation actually say more than the right-hand side?’¹⁰⁵ Tautologies were discussed in “How Do Humans Solve Problems and There Still Be Mysteries?” by O.G. Rose, inspired by my talks with Dr. Filip Niklas, and the idea in that work is that, in reality, there really is no “equal to” only “like” (a point which also brings the work of Alex Ebert to mind, found in Enter the Alien from Philosophy Portal). To speak of something changes it, and even if we say, “A is A,” the second “A” is different in quality to us because it came after the first. But the “to us” is central and entails the subject which Modern Philosophy has “bracketed out,” and so it becomes natural to think that “equal to” is possible in this world. Hence, philosophy can become “equal to” speaking, and nihilism “equal to” mere nothingness. Speaking and orientation change nothing. “Equal to” is “end of.”

If speaking doesn’t participate in being, only represent it, then it would seem that nothing can be done about nothing: we can represent what nothing lets us represent, but that’s it; there is no hope of “participating in” or “accessing more” Apophatic Mystery. Speech that is ordinary becomes all there is; philosophical speech accomplishes nothing other than what ordinary speech can accomplish (that’s the “end of” that). But if this is so, our argument has been that we are stuck in Affliction, and doesn’t the existence of neurodivergence and mentidivergence suggest that thinking can at least be different? Even if it was true that the only possible speech was “ordinary speech,” it wouldn’t follow that only “ordinary thought” was possible — in fact, that would risk discriminating against neurodivergence in favor of the neurotypical (perhaps fating us to “the suboptimal results” of Nash Equilibria).

For Hegel (and I think Rosen agrees), things we speak about can “gather in them” what we say about them. For Hegel, if we say that “a cat is an animal,” then what we mean by “cat” is not the same then had we never spoken. The moment we finish speaking, it “seems like” nothing has changed, but indeed nothing has changed (nothing has enough being to change). Little by little, we gain more of the “everything that is permitted” in our failures to access everything. Failure is the way, hence why fearing error is fearing truth for Hegel, but we have often “understandably” interpreted failure as evidence of “going the wrong way.” Yes, perhaps because it simply seems to follow (A/A), but we might also have subconscious incentive to avoid failure, because failure can be a Gödel Point in which we encounter Lacan’s “The Real.” If nihilism is evidence that philosophy has failed, then we can be finished with philosophy as opposed to take it deeper with the guarantee of failure, which is practically a guarantee of encountering “The Real.” Perhaps we want philosophy to just be “a language game” so that we can avoid “The Real” while telling ourselves that we are just being rational and practical (as Affliction and Discourse would have it) — but this game of self-deception seems to be historically coming to an end. Reality will not allow us to avoid “The Real” forever. It’s coming. Are we prepared or still clinging to our plans to “plan the Real away?” If we can avoid this temptation, we might prove Real-facing subjects who could “universally birth” — but we will see.

A final consideration though presents itself: If nihilism is true and “everything is permitted,” why can I feel guilt? Why can it “just feel wrong” to spit at someone? Why is it I can “just sense” when someone said something true? Why is it I can “sense fields” or just tell that a conversation is entering a “flow space?” There are things which seem “invisible” that are in operation and organize our action even though everything is permitted. How? It all could be a trick of our minds, acts of self-deception, but this is up to us to choose and decide (“The Absolute Choice”). It could be evidence of a “Meta-Structure” which reality manifests in and with that isn’t “Totally Other” from reality and yet not reducible to reality as we experience it all the same. If there is a noumenon, it is part of us.

Everything is permitted which is permittable, and the more we “diligently fail” the more that can be permitted. There seems to be a meta-structure in nothingness, suggesting an Apophatic Mystery we can “orbit” like a (“form-ulating”) Cypher (that if we love we can do what we want, to allude to Augustine). This meta-structure seems to be something we can “butt-up against” here and there (in Beauty, in Dialogos, in creativity…), and then it is up to us to choose if this “butting-up against” is an illusion or “pointing toward” Something More. Again, this is “The Final Absolute Choice,” and I would note here something exchanged between Ryan Sprague and Jacob Kishere (on SENSESPACE, Ep #37), regarding how “knowing the answer ahead of time” can help us keep going in the word, for we “know there is an answer” and hence can keep heart. I think this beautifully describes the relationship mysticism is supposed to have with philosophy and theology: mysticism unveils that there “is an answer” to inquiry, and hence that there is reason to keep going. Likewise, if we “Absolutely Choose” to interpret “lack” as an Apophatic Mystery, this can give us motivation and hope to keep doing the work of being human. Might we be self-deceived and deluded? Yes, but it is precisely that risk which might make the work meaningful and noble.

If “everything is permitted” but there is something we cannot say or something we cannot do, there is “reason to think” there is some meta-structure keeping us from speaking or acting. Since nothing is everywhere, then this realization can occur anywhere, including within Plato’s Cave. A Child approaches nihilism as Rosen encourages, and it is possible for someone in Plato’s Cave to turn toward nothingness in the way Rosen discusses and, in that nothingness, see reason to “leave the Cave on their own.” Nihilism makes “everything permittable,” and that would include “leaving Plato’s Cave on our own” — but that would also include us staying within Plato’s Cave forever. This is central: nihilism as Rosen discusses makes possible both endless Affliction (A/A, Discourse) and endless Attention (A/B, Rhetoric). We “always already” have what we need to do either (nothingness), so shall we, this day, choose life? If this choice can always be made, hope isn’t naïve. Where there is nothingness, there is hope. We might be a “rive-hole” or a “white box” anywhere and everywhere — a point which leads us to Systems & Subjects by Cadell Last.

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Notes

⁹²Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: xiii.

⁹³Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: xiii.

⁹⁴Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: xiii.

⁹⁵Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: xv.

⁹⁶Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: xvii.

⁹⁷Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: xx.

⁹⁸Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: 2.

⁹⁹Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: 3.

¹⁰⁰Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: 4.

¹⁰¹Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: 10.

¹⁰²Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: 198.

¹⁰³Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: 231.

¹⁰⁴Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: 211–212.

¹⁰⁵Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1969: 34.

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There could be value in offering “an arch” between two series by O.G. Rose, The True Isn’t the Rational and Belonging Again, so that we might see better how the importance of ideas in Gödel Points relates to our “new address,” taking “incompleteness” into account, with reference to Shera and Hingl’s work (see “The SCM and ‘Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness’ by Kurtis Hingl and Marcus Shera”), notably regarding “rules” and “ideas.”

Our terms:

S = “The Social”
G = “Givens”
I = Ideas
R = Rules
X = (Worldview and) (Ultimate) “Value” (God, Freedom, etc.)
SCM = “The Social Coordination Mechanism”

The Social (S) requires shared coordination, and this can be made possible by rules and/or ideas. Rules (R) require a Value like Justice or Freedom to not just be for their own sake, which we will represent with “X,” and to the degree R is made “toward” X is to the degree the rules gain legitimacy and authority (R and I without authority fail). Where R fails, then Ideas (I) are needed for a people to continue to be “toward” X, and Global Pluralism can be characterized by a lessening of shared orientation toward X via “the loss of givens” (G). The loss of G can be made up for by an increase of R or I, but there are limits to what R can make up due to “combinational explosiveness” and because “the map is not the territory”: it is beyond human capability to think of every possible scenario we will need orientation and guidance for managing. Hence, it is inevitable we need I, but I is not “set in stone” like R can be “set in law”: the presence and generation of ideas contingent. We are the contingency, which is to say our capacity will determine to what degree I can be generated when needed. If we are not trained and ready to supply I when needed for a people to be “toward” and share in X, then S will likely be lost.

S can be lost because of an inadequate supply of R, I, or G (and in an age where G is lost, R and I must fill in the gap). But S can also be lost between people who don’t share in X, and not all people agree in/on the same X (some are Christian, others Muslim, etc.). X must be of a shared quality for people to “believe in” the fitting R, I, and/or G, and people who disagree on X will not be compelled by the same set of R, I, and G. Is it possible for people who ascribe to different X(s) to form an S? That is the million-dollar question of “belonging again,” and the first claim we have made is that Global Pluralism will require an emphasis on I over R, which will require an SCM. But we are still left with the question of the quality of X, which people can disagree on — so are we doomed? Well, only if every possible take on X does not entail a quality that could make every possible take on X somehow possibly related, and that is possible if every “internally consistent” take on X must necessarily entail a Gödel Point (that makes every possible X more apophatic, but not so much so that it is unintelligible and we unable to make it relatable to other takes on X).

An X that is not “internally consistent” can be deconstructed by critique and rationality eventually over enough time in history, and I believe the internet accelerates this process, and that our moment in history is defined more by “the problem of internally consistent systems,” not “internally inconsistent systems” (mere “networks of notions”). The great challenge of Global Pluralism is “the problem of internally consistent systems,” and each of these align with a unique X. If each X does not entail a quality that somehow makes them meaningfully relatable to all other possible Xs in their very internal consistency, then Global Pluralism seems doomed. Our argument is that every possible X that cannot be deconstructed must entail a Gödel Point and hence be a “(GP)X.” History is a process of deconstructing every (apparent) X that is not actually a (GP)X, and our moment is defined by a realization of (GP)Xs that cannot be deconstructed. This seems to be our doom, but the (GP) that makes an X indestructible is also what gives it a quality that makes it relatable to all other (GP)Xs. Our hope is in the indestructibility of (GP)Xs, oddly enough.

We need every possible X that is not deconstructible to be realized as (GP)X (which has an apophatic quality, please note), and that is work “history” has done for us. If every X that isn’t deconstructed must be a (GP)X, then every X must entail acknowledgment of that which excesses it: every X must be a “map” that is not “the territory,” and “incompleteness” is what every (GP)X must have in common. Hence, it is possible for them to relate meaningfully without anyone changing their specific (GP)X (there is the possibility of something “perennial” in orthodoxies, without abandoning them, which is crucial). But what if it is only a possibility? Well, determining that would require “knowing the whole territory,” which is not possible, and so we can never say with certainty that what every (GP)X has “in common” is only a possibility. It might actually be actual, and that very “necessary possibility” is undeniable (an “Anselm argument for Pluralism,” perhaps). Nevertheless, the point is valid, and hence we need a “Manhattan Project for Gödel Points,” which in itself could be a unifying effort — but more on that at another time. For now, to lay out our line of thought:

1. S, G, I, and R require (an) X.

2. When X is realized as an X, then G is lost.

3. S after G requires more I than R, and that requires the SCM.

4. For every possible X to exist together without undermining one another (and authority), every X needs to be realized as a (GP)X, as every possible X must actually be if not deconstructible (by us, history…)

5. An SCM plus realization of (GP)X(s) are “conditions of possibility” for “a new address.”

Further:

A. Belonging Again focuses on the problem of needing I more than R across Global Pluralism, and why this requires the SCM.

B. The True Isn’t the Rational focuses on the problem of needing a plausible take on every possible (indestructible) X that makes every possible X relatable (“X like X(s)”). The trilogy argues that every possible X entails in our relation to it a Gödel Point, and hence every possible X is a (GP)X.

C. Pluralism entails all/many possible X(s), and all of them have something in common as “(GP)Xs,” which requires more I to navigate then R. This makes the SCM necessary.

D. Without the SCM, R will eclipse I, which cannot manage (GP)Xs but instead must favor a single X, and so “a new address” will not arise.

And this is the work, work which is not doomed because “the way is shut,” as Studebaker describes. In fact, what “the way is shut” to seems doomed due to a lack of ideas, which is what the SCM will focus on cultivating. Watching this happen from inside the sealed fortress of the Capital-Nation-State, those inside might “open the way” themselves to join the SCM — or be forced to join, lest “institutional incompleteness” be their demise, as Marcus Shera and Kurtis Hingl discuss. Of all acts that could be revolutionary, perhaps none is greater than that which “attracts” those in power to come out of their domain and change.

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Alright, but how do we “get better at ideas,” and why believe ideas can make such a difference? And will the SCM lead us in the right direction? The SCM might have a tendency toward something like the B-20, but what that is exactly and why the possibility of the SCM helping incubate “a learning society” could be so significant still needs to be explored. For that case, we will now turn to the work of Stiglitz and Greenwald, followed by Lene Andersen on “The Nordic Bildung”…

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It is common sentiment that “institutions are failing” today, and why exactly is often attributed to corruption, not being able to keep up with technology, and the like. This is true, but a more precise diagnosis is needed, one Kurtis Hingl and Marcus Shera can help us think in their incredible publication, “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness,” a work that can also help us further understand the importance of the Social Coordination Mechanism (SCM) and its relevance for the problem of failing institutions. Through their essay, we can further understand that Global Pluralism is marked by “a loss of givens” and increase in “surprising situations” which are not addressed or covered by any rules, “incompleteness” which must be filled in by ideas. And where the quality of ideas and their generation are low and inadequate, so too will be our coordinative capacities beyond rules. Where the SCM is lacking, with unfortunate consequence, I find shortcomings inevitable.

Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness

Hingl and Shera use Kurt Gödel to think institutions and introduce the concept of “institutional incompleteness,” which I find invaluable (please check out their work for yourself at , , and , and I apologize for any misunderstandings on my behalf).

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A blog by Kurtis Hingl. On Economics. Usually.

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Celebrating price theory and the economic way of thinking

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‘Institutions are incomplete when their constituent rules fail to induce behavioral beliefs about the strategies of others and hence fail to achieve an equilibrium,’ and they argue that ‘there will always be unanticipated situations not covered by the rules that can only be settled ex-post, especially in a complex and changing environment.’¹ When this occurs, ‘[a]t this crux, people creatively invoke focal points generating ideas. Ideas act as guides for coordination when rules cannot.’² Especially in Global Pluralism, the SCM can help us coordinate our actions by ideas well, creatively, and effectively. Hingl and Shera describe “a focal point” in their work (from Thomas Schelling’s, The Strategy of Conflict), which seems to overlap with what I mean by “a Gödel Point” — points which the rules don’t cover or explain and “shared expectation” can breakdown — but the difference seems to be that “a focal point” is a successfully managed and shared “Gödel Point,” which I can be gesturing toward when I speak of “dwelling in the Gödel Point.”³ What Hingl and Shera discuss about institutions is a problem embedded in every “internally consistent system” (“map”), suggesting an isomorphic problem between the institutional and the phenomenological. For this articulation, I’m indebted to Hingl and Shera.

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‘If no focal points can form, further institutional collapse occurs’; likewise, if no “Gödel Point” can be encountered and “dwelt in,” Global Pluralism will continue to fragment and ever-worsen “existential anxiety,” ushering in and intensifying the problems described with Philip Rieff in Part I.⁴ Hingl and Shera note that ‘[t]o understand which ideas guide better, economists will have to investigate an idea’s content,’ a point I agree with, but I would also note that in Global Pluralism, to avoid problems, this investigation needs to occur in experience and “encounter,” as the SCM affords while also enabling idea-generation, as needed for where rules fail.⁵ Rules are needed, but Global Pluralism is marked by an increase and intensification of spaces where rules come up short, and this “creates demand” (a key notion in Belonging Again) for “ideas” which the SCM can help meet (without the pathologies of “top-down action,” force, etc.).⁶ What is needed is an acceptance of ‘institutional change due to incompleteness while also allowing the requisite room for ideas in explaining the patterned yet indeterminate trajectory of humanity.’⁷ Completely agree.⁸

I

There is a longstanding debate between if pragmatics and materiality are primary or ideas, and Hingl and Shera open their essay considering this debate. ‘Do ideas matter, and if so, when? [They] argue that ideas play the critical role of guiding action when institutional rules cannot.’⁹ They go on to define “institutional incompleteness” in light of this point: ‘institutions are incomplete when their constituent rules cannot readily coordinate the expectations of the participants.’¹⁰ And then a key line: ‘When rules cannot guide, ideas fill the gap.’¹¹ Though all institutions must eventually encounter such limitation of themselves, perhaps in the past it was easier for institutions to function as if they were “practically complete” by proving able to, more often than not, avoid situations where rules failed. “Givens” helped, as did the lack of situations of “encountering diversity,” but Global Pluralism is when increasingly rules fail and ideas are needed (the emphasis is flipped). We are perhaps realizing what was always the case, that institutions are “technically incomplete” and that people (we ourselves) must address their limitations with ideas.

Rules entail ideas to come into existence, but rules cannot cover the whole of all possible ideas that can prove needed. And these “ideas” are needed precisely so that a people can continue to be “toward” a “value” (say justice, freedom, equality, community, God…) which the rules guide a people in and by when those rules fail to apply adequately. ‘In only the most self-referential and empty moral philosophy does anyone follow rules for rules’ sake. The purpose of a rule is to translate a higher idea into concrete practice.’¹² There are hardly rules where there are no values, and those values are not reducible to the rules: they exceed them, at least in the sense that the rules cannot entail every possible situation which the values must be manifest into and according to (that would cause “combinatorial explosiveness,” as Vervaeke discusses). Ideas are what can keep us “toward” a value when rules and/or “givens” fail. There is strong overlap between “rules” and “givens,” though “rules” can be made more explicit and still hold their authority. Though “practically” very similar, “givens” seem to align more with the values themselves which rules are “toward,” and where “givens” fail, more rules and/or ideas are needed to fill the gap. Hence, we could say that though ideas and rules have always been with us, with “the loss of givens,” the role they play must grow, and either we will have more “rules” (risking totalitarianism) or more “ideas” (meaning an SCM is needed). (Please note that ideas are not “purely mental”: their generation requires work of the subject on the heart, mind, and body, and must be done so socially, hence a reason the SCM is needed, not just a classroom or book or gym but all of them at once.)¹³

“Rules” provide a basis of shared intelligibility so that a diverse people can coordinate together, and “ideas” can keep that coordination “together” and going when the rules fail, because both the rules and ideas share in and are “toward” the same value, seeking practice and action that maintain alignment with it. Without ideas, this value could have never been realized in the first place, and so the rules would have never been created, and in this way it is not a hard division between “rules” and “ideas”: they inform one another. “Rules” are “codified ideas,” we might say, notably into laws, and which “ideas” will be so codified isn’t something we can know ahead of time and has to be tested through time — a point that leads us into considering jurisprudence, which we will avoid for now.¹⁴ We need movement, discernment, and flexibility by which to encounter and think the ideas we will need for “the surprising” (so that we stay aligned with our value), and for then codifying (some of) those ideas into rules — and this process must be kept alive and dynamic. The greater the complexity, the more the process will need to spread and accelerate without falling into “autonomous logic of Capital,” making the SCM necessary.

II

‘Any economist interested in rules will need to be interested in ideas,’ Hingl and Shera point out, but ideas can be hard to think (about), because they arise when rules fail, and we can’t know which rules will fail until they do.¹⁵ How can we take ideas seriously before they are needed, especially if living under rules can train us into habits that make generating idea harder? To start, we must consider in our models “incompleteness,” which is odd but necessary, or else our models will be set for “miss-fitting” and totalization (A/A).¹⁶ Hingl and Shera discuss “awkwardness” in their essay (which I love), and economists and intellectuals more generally need to take “moments of awkwardness” more seriously. As Hingl and Shera define it:

‘Despite […] deficiencies, we usually organize social affairs, private and public, around explicit rules and codes. When we come to agreements, we do so with words. Whenever it is possible that two men have different ideas in their heads and may miscoordinate their actions, rules are useful to lessen ambiguity. Our reliance on explicit rules broadly covers our practical needs but can leave us naked in unexpected moments. Without formal social clothing, we have no clear idea of what to do. We call these moments ‘awkward.’ When a guest says something that violates a social norm, the dinner party is thrust into an awkward situation. The norm was not clear enough (or the guest was uncouth enough) that it did not help us coordinate.’¹⁷

“Awkwardness” does not occur where there are no expectations or presence of the social: it requires a sense of “how things ought to go” that can be violated. ‘Awkward moments are always defined relative to a given set of rules,’ and their occurrence is not the same as “a mistake” or “someone doing something wrong” — those are more clear on what needs to happen.¹⁸ “Awkwardness” is more when something occurs that doesn’t “violate the rules” but is more “outside of the rules,” and so we can feel paralyzed in our response (similar to “The Real” in Lacan). This is a central problem of Global Pluralism (with direct and intentional violations being more secondary), which means we must be able to handle and work with and through awkwardness if Global Pluralism is to prove to our benefit (which suggests we need “automastery in ideas”).

There is no awkwardness where there are no rules, and if awkwardness can incentive change and transformation, we need rules which make change possible precisely thanks to their incompleteness, not despite it. “Avoiding awkwardness” is not the address, for that would be “totalization” (A/A), stagnating, and autocannibalistic.¹⁹ An important section from the essay by Hingl and Shera:

‘Every set of rules has a set of questions that it cannot answer […] a particular set of rules might change when it fails to answer a question, and the particular rules define the questions it cannot answer. Hence, institutions are an indirect input into their own change. It is obvious why an exogenous change would make deviating from an institution attractive. It is less obvious how rules themselves might fail to coordinate to a changing environment and even less obvious how coordination develops when rules fail. Life cries louder for an explanation than death; institutional survival cries louder for an explanation than institutional decay.’²⁰

Fantastic, and the mystery of ‘how coordination develops when rules fail’ (say alongside “givens”) is at the heart of our concern about Global Pluralism.²¹ Another key line: ‘Hence, institutions are an indirect input into their own change.’²² Beautiful. We need institutions and rules so that there is something to “surprise us” and bring about indirect change, not to erase or “plan away surprise,” suggesting institutions can dig their own graves in their very efforts to live.

When “rules” (or say “maps”) fail, if there is no given value we can (re)align with, then ideas cannot readily be generated and shared to alleviate the awkwardness, and it can prove fatal.²³ ²⁴ That’s a risk under Global Pluralism, but assuming a lack of value is not our issue, what keeps awkwardness from ‘devolv[ing] into chaos’?²⁵ Ideas. When something awkward happens, ‘[t]he dinner party is not immediately upended […] The host of the party might clarify the norm going forward and ease the tension [or some other idea].’²⁶ Quick thinking, discernment, wit, and/or “live thinking” can make all the difference: it’s not always clear the role of the host, but managing awkwardness is part of it, as pronounced under Global Pluralism (in which the SCM can train us). Hingl and Shera note ‘some characteristics of institutions that may be more or less amendable to generating focal points in awkward moments [such as] formal hierarchies, informal embeddedness, impartial judges, foundational documents, abstract rules, totalitarian regimes, and intellectual traditions,’ and I find it productive to consider the SCM in light of these dimensions (and it made me very happy to see McCloskey mentioned).²⁷ For more on these topics, I consider the whole of their work, such as their YouTube channel, “The Econ Playground.”

The Econ Playground (YouTube)

III

I am finding it hard not to cite their entire paper — please do read the whole essay — and I will force myself only to touch on their points about ‘institutions-as-equilibria,’ and they make a strong case that this ‘approach [is] more powerful than [just] an institutions-as-rules approach,’ for the logic of equilibria helps capture far better the dynamic relation between ideas, rules, and awkwardness.²⁸ They make the critical point that ‘[i]n an environment with multiple possible equilibria, culture is left to select between the multiple equilibria that are proposed; the folk theorem is overcome by introducing culture.’²⁹ I agree, and without the SCM, we cannot coordinate culture well in terms of Global Pluralism. Hingl and Shera also discuss Gödel and Hayek to help us understand how ‘[a] complete institution is a set of rules which provides clear instructions across all possible situations, while an incomplete institution leaves some contingencies uncertain,’ for which “ideas” are needed when “awkwardness” (inevitably) occurs.³⁰ Institutions like ideologies are necessarily “incomplete,” and hence an SCM is needed or else “overfitting” and trouble are “practically inevitable.”

‘[I]n awkward moments the social rules unexpectedly fail to generate common knowledge about what to do.’³¹ As Hingl and Shera describe examples of this happening in law, so we could say that “the loss of givens” is “a growth of awkwardness,” and I agree with them that ‘[a]wkwardness is not only an apt description of mundane and humorous social circumstances but also of some of the most critical moments of history.’³² Also, as I think it can help clarify what “existential anxiety” can feel like, so ‘awkwardness helps us make concrete the idea of institutional incompleteness.’³³ ‘Awkwardness ensues when we reach a moment where the institutions that we live with fail to perform […] the institutional incompleteness comes to fruition.’³⁴ What happens in these moments can determine the fate of entire institutions, and what Hingl and Shera help us see is how “ideas” make or break these moments. Maybe we don’t need institutions at all? We do, or else there would be chaos, and yet Global Pluralism is increasingly defined by their “failure to perform” — though oddly that “failure” is necessary, just like “maps” and their failure are necessary so that they work. We need institutions to fail, so that there are spaces where rules (and “maps”) don’t reach or apply; otherwise, there is nothing we will be trying to extend (to) with our ideas. We won’t be trying to extend our rules and “maps,” which are needed for social intelligibility across different people. Ideas couldn’t serve the Social; without rules, they would only serve individuals. And that is better than nothing, but it is not our “new address.”

The SCM helps us coordinate where rules don’t apply and yet we are not in violation of rules, for we are in places of “incompleteness.” The work by Hingl and Shera can be seen as an effort to explain how institutions change, which admittedly ‘sounds oxymoronic’ (as it sounds impossible to discuss “similarity across difference” and others major concerns of O.G. Rose).³⁵ Institutions develop without collapsing through a dialectic between “rules” and “ideas,” as possible because of “institutional incompleteness,” which allows change and development without self-undermining. But these opportunities of change must be during times when ‘[participants] no longer have stable expectations about what others will do,’ which is a failure of rules, which could risk the collapse of the institution.³⁶ “Common knowledge” is lost (like “givens”), and so people have to decide for themselves what to do, and it is likely people will just “act for themselves” if they don’t know how to communicate, lack a good “host” or leader, can’t generate ideas, can’t handle “surprise” or difference, etc. This could be a disaster, but also ‘[t]he more likely a situation in which the rules cannot generate common knowledge about proper behavior, the more likely the institution will be subject to change.’³⁷ If the institution is problematic, this could be an opportunity.

Hingl and Shera write that ‘[i]nstitutional change due to incompleteness can be called endogenous, that is, the institution itself influences how and when it changes,’ which means what constitutes “incompleteness” depends on “the map” which is proving incomplete (there is a unique “incompleteness” for each incomplete thing: every “Gödel Point” is unique and depends on its “map” for its uniqueness, hence why “a universal procedure of incompleteness” is impossible).³⁸ How we deal with a space outside of rules depends on the rules, as how we deal with incompleteness depends on the “completeness” in which “the lack” manifests. Also, institutions and “maps” might be precisely why we end up outside of them: they ‘may propel [us] into unchartered waters.’³⁹ The very effort to maintain a “map” or orthodoxy that can lead to people encountering a “Gödel Point” (and in fact I would argue it must be this kind of effort or else the “incompleteness” will not be “surprising” and hence not actually “incomplete”), and in this circumstance, the encounter is not due to an effort of deconstruction but faithfulness. What Hingl and Shera help us understand is that a commitment and faithfulness to an institution can eventually lead to an experience beyond the rules, unless that is the institution becomes “closed off,” totalitarian, pathological, narrow, and the like — temptations for us today. Experiencing the limits of rules is not outside of rules but in our faithfulness to them.

“The limits of institutions” have always technically been present, but for most of history they were arguably “practically irrelevant” because they were not so regularly or often encountered by the majority (as it goes with “givens”) (though it could be argued that many key moments in history were marked by this kind of experience, and today how often we have these experiences could be increasing). But as the world has interconnected and technology advanced, so the need of institutions to take their incompleteness seriously and with intention is growing. Hingl and Shera note that ‘[w]hen institutions allow or even incentivize technological innovation, they will have to interpret the use of these technologies in light of the existing rules or risk chaotic expectations. The same is true for any society which encourages individuals to experiment, explore, or transgress boundaries whether they be geographic, cultural, or intellectual.’⁴⁰ Our age is one where increasingly everyone and everything is caught up in technological acceleration and the crossing of boundaries (or “the heretical imperative,” as Peter Berger discusses and ), and so everyone finds themselves having to interpret these realities in light of their institutions and worldviews, and this is a very cognitively demanding process. It requires ideas and for us to be capable of them, which I think the SCM can afford. Without the SCM and its habituation, institutions simply won’t entail the people who can face change to the degree technology and Global Pluralism demand of us, and they will in response likely fall back into “old strategies for belonging” which we in our “new address” deny.

‘Rules that allow for technological change […] are likely to create awkward moments,’ as are worldviews that allow individuals to think for themselves, realize themselves, etc. — the problem of incompleteness is inevitable if we are not to be repressed or “totalized” problematically.⁴¹ To speak of “individuals” is begging for “incompleteness,” but to deny individuals is to prime us for “banalities of evil” and other problems from Part I. What is needed is an infrastructure by which individuals can be “individual” but also handle their incompleteness with ideas that maintain institutions and the Social (hence, “(in)dividual”) — the SCM. ‘Your institution is incomplete, and you’re facing an awkward situation. Where do you turn? What is left to fill in the gaps? Ideas.’⁴² But how do we prove able to access or capable of quality ideas (the question of which ideas are “best” is one Hingl and Shera note requires great work to determine)? Education? Yes, but a particular kind of education that must be lifelong — the B-20 of the SCM, in the likeness of “The Nordic Bildung,” as we will discuss with Lene Andersen.

IV

Ideas are needed where rules fail, but relative to when and what are these ideas generated and made? Hingl and Shera make an example of baseball:

‘In a so-called ‘trap ball’ maneuver, a defensive player can intentionally fail at making an easy play to gain a larger advantage and keep the offensive team from advancing. When attempted in 1893, the umpire refused to allow the play and simply called the offensive player out, citing that while the play is technically within the rules, it violates the spirit of the game — we shouldn’t encourage purposeful mistakes […] The umpire’s decision was initially extra-legal but was soon legislated into the rule book as the ‘infield fly rule.’ The purpose of the legal institution, in baseball and, say, in common law system, is to promote an abstract but practically meaningful idea: sportsmanship in baseball, and justice in the common law.’⁴³

How can we make a call or decision outside the rules? By appealing to “the spirit,” and where rules fail this seems necessary. But what is that exactly, and who decides? Indeed, that is a major question, and what we see here is that such a question is inevitable (at some point) because of “institutional incompleteness” and the reality that rules will not cover all possible situations (and there are severe consequences if this is denied and repressed). Once that occurs, if we are incapable of identifying “the spirit” and generating “fitting” ideas aligned with that “spirit” (alluding to Karatani), the institution can fail. “Givens” could bind people to a “spirit,” both so that the rules themselves also feel “given,” but also so that when “institutional incompleteness” was encountered, the “range” of where we could end up was only so much, binding “ideas” to a field to help avoid chaos and a loss of “shared intelligibility.” Perhaps a reason we can find “hard empiricism” appealing after “the loss of givens” is because we have no idea how to “bind people” to a “range” if we venture beyond the rules. But the “hard empiricism” and problematic Scientism are insufficient (as discussed in The True Isn’t the Rational), meaning we must take “incompleteness” seriously, but by what “spirit”? Who decides? It’s not “given,” and yet we must keep the matter of “spirit” from being controlled and decided on by a single person (that would risk totalitarianism), from making decisions in such a way that if there is a mistake there is dire consequences (things are too fragile), and the like. That we do this is hard enough, but it also matters how we do it—fortunately, the SCM helps us in both, and it does so indirectly via aesthetics and the environment (elaborated on in II.2). As “the medium is the message” for McLuhan, so “the coordination is the spirit”: the question of what “spirit” we (can) appeal to is connected to the means of coordination by which we operate? (Lack? Beauty?)

Thomas Jockin

Dignity is a Mnemonic of the Beautiful

What safeguards reality from collapsing into mere availability…

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3 months ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Thomas Jockin

Global Pluralism is an age when average person increasingly encounter “incompleteness and the limits of rules,” forcing them to turn to ideas or repress and deny the situation — a reason I think we are seeing a revival of philosophy, a hunger for “a new education” online, and other qualities of the SCM. If people have not read Hingl and Shera’s paper, they might still increasingly intuit the problem. ‘It is ideas that provide meaning to rules, and it is ideas that must be referenced to make a ruling decision.’⁴⁴ And critically, a decision ‘must be made’ (emphasis added) — it is not optional — and increasingly the average person is finding themselves, whether they like it or not (“surprisingly”), in situations where a decision must be made (a reason our age is so existential).⁴⁵ If the “game,” institution, etc. is to continue, this situation of encountering incompleteness cannot be ignored, for it is something that has been encountered because of the rules that the rules do not address, and that threatens their legitimacy, our trust in them, their usefulness, our “existential stability,” and other things discussed in Part I. I think much “deconstruction” occurs when people “encounter incompleteness” due to the rules that the rules do not cover and yet nevertheless a decision must be made, and either ideas cannot be sufficiently generated to address the situation, or the institution denies its incompleteness and the need for these new ideas. If the SCM and all the groups forming thanks to it are to not contribute to some deconstruction, it will help both people generate ideas and help institutions be accepting of its incompleteness and those ideas, which institutions naturally resist (because to change threatens their legitimacy and structure, but if they do not change, they will perish or we will wish for them to fade).⁴⁶

‘The spirit of baseball, like justice, is ineffable as a whole and thus cannot be simply legislated into being,’ and that means baseball, to be itself, must entail situations where there spirit must be honored, but there are no rules on how exactly to honor it.⁴⁷ So it goes with Global Pluralism, being human, and the like. What might happen in these times? Hingl and Shera note that either:

‘(1) ideas will generate a focal point that aligns with the institution, and the institution carries on with a new vitality, (2) ideas generate a focal point that conflicts with the institution, and the institution makes a sharp pivot, or (3) ideas fail to generate a focal point, and the players play uncoordinated strategies resulting in a quick dissolution of the institution.’⁴⁸

Likewise, at a Gödel Point, we either come up with ideas that revitalize our “maps,” or we generate ideas that force our “maps” to creatively adapt, or we fail to generate ideas and our “maps” might unveil themselves to not even be “maps” but just “networks of notions.” What ideas do is ‘coordinate expectations in the awkward moments when the rules cannot,’ which are inevitable occurrences because “incompleteness” is inevitable, and critically these “tests” are always ‘unique,’ for every ‘awkward situation is a particular situation with its own context for uniqueness,’ and hence we cannot “systemize” them away — each must be uniquely “encountered” and “negotiated” one by one (as discussed in II.1).⁴⁹ And if we fail these “tests,” a hard and problematic “deconstruction” is likely, for ‘[i]deas […] play a very important role in framing a new circumstance into an old set of meanings,’ and if they are lacking, that “sublation’ cannot occur, and “the old meaning” ruptures and fails.⁵⁰ But we have to be Children to handle the ideas needed for Global Pluralism, hence why “spreading Childhood” is paramount.⁵¹

Hingl and Shera can help us understand why the SCM is not anti-institution and in fact it is what institutions need to avoid deconstructing themselves, which can follow from a poor response to “institutional incompleteness,” which encountering in our moment of history and Global Pluralism is “practically inevitable.” To acknowledge incompleteness is meant to save and help institutions, not abolish them, for we need them. Hingl and Shera offer reasons why:

‘Institutions might be preferable [in certain circumstances, if not often,] to ideas for two main reasons. First, idea deliberation is time-consuming and costly. If a rule applies, it is more expedient to appeal to the words written in stone. Second, ideas may not produce consistent agreement on focal points; different agents may have different interpretations of the same ideas. Even if deliberation is costless we may argue ourselves in circles without reaching a determinate answer. Rules, perhaps bluntly, prevent this cycle from starting by fixing an expectation. Institutions can be incomplete, but they are consistent. Ideas can be complete, but they may be inconsistent.’⁵²

Ideas are indeed energy intensive (and could be lacking if there isn’t “a culture of learning” or “mediums” for it, as we’ll discuss with Joseph Stiglitz, Bruce Greenwald, and Lene Andersen), and if we lack “place-holders” for them, the energy demands would be too high and unrelenting. Institutions are “memory-holders,” we might say, as suggested when Hingl and Shera write ‘[i]f an awkward moment is surmounted, and the institutions exist for the solution to be remembered, a whole class of awkward moments in the future are no longer awkward.’⁵³ Without institutions, progress cannot be “saved” and chaos would ensure, and yet at the same time institutions without ideas can fail when they encounter their incompleteness — and yet ideas themselves can threaten institutions in drawing incompleteness out and bringing about change. Institutions are needed so ideas don’t overwhelm us and progress be “held” or remembered, but ideas are needed so institutions aren’t deconstructed by their incompleteness — and the very generation of ideas can threaten institutional legitimacy. If all these tensions are not held together, the social order can suffer.

We should not blame ideas for “incompleteness,” even though it can seem like ideas are to blame because they can acknowledge and make us “realize” the “incompleteness” (they make it “vivid,” as discussed in “Incentives to Problem-Solve” by O.G. Rose). Rather, we should understand that institutions, in being what they are, necessarily entail “institutional incompleteness.” And as a map not being the territory doesn’t mean the map is wrong, so the “incompleteness” of an institution doesn’t mean it’s invalid — “incompleteness” is just a structural reality — even though the “existential anxiety” which “incompleteness” can cause can make it feel like “something is wrong.” But that is no the case: a map is wrong so that it can be useful; likewise, it is because an institution is “incomplete” that it can stand the test of time.⁵⁴

Hingl and Shera discuss ‘self-reinforcing institutional elements and self-undermining institutional elements,’ which I think we can apply to culture at large.⁵⁵ They write:

‘There are two ways in which a set of rules-in-equilibrium can be self-reinforcing: (1) they can generate focal points in crises or (2) reduce the need for focal points by avoiding awkwardness altogether. Self-undermining rules do the opposite: they lack the capacity to generate focal points or they lead people into crisis.’⁵⁶

Perfect, and I might say that “a good institution” avoids “unnecessary awkwardness” but not “awkwardness” entirely; likewise, “a good map” avoids “unnecessary failures to guide” but not “failures to map” entirely (or else it would be “the territory” and so useless). But how can we tell what is “necessary vs unnecessary failure”? I would say we cannot always ahead of time—we must “surprisingly encounter” our limits—but we can say such a failure is “unnecessary” if it has already happened in history and we’re just repeating the failure, hence why history has a critical role, not in helping us “avoid incompleteness” but in helping us avoid repetitions. (But how do we learn history? That’s a good question, one discussed in Second Thoughts.)

‘An idea is better positioned to produce a focal point if other institutional elements exist that facilitate communication about how to coordinate with others’ — this is important from Hingl and Shera.⁵⁷ Communication is critical (bringing Habermas to mind), and our argument is that the SCM can afford us the kind of communication which is sufficient and “fitting” for Global Pluralism. At least partly because we lack an SCM and ideas, this moment entails a “Meaning Crisis” and breakdown of global relations. Overall, if we are to change course, at least four requirements seem necessary:

1. An authoritative “spirit” to which we can appeal and maintain Global Pluralism.
(Lack/Beauty)

2. An infrastructure that helps us coordinate effectively for ideas (to address increasing encounters with incompleteness).
(SCM)

3. Training that makes us capable of ideas and handling them.
(B-20)

4. Real world changes in spaces, laws, etc. that make people more receptive to ideas.
(Wordspread)

The SCM can meaningfully manage “computational explosiveness” in training us to handle ideas, to prove capable of generating them, to prove skilled in live interpretation and application, and the like. Perhaps a “Dream of the Enlightenment” was that “awkwardness” would erase all “maps” except one; instead, we have come to realize “awkwardness” is a feature of all “maps” and cannot be systemized or “planned” away. If there is a world, “awkwardness” is possible, and with “the loss of givens” and growth of Global Pluralism, the likelihood of “awkwardness” is far higher. But this gives us opportunity if “awkwardness” incentives the creation and use of ideas, and it is ideas which ultimately generate wealth (as suggested in McCloskey). An “awkward world” could be more creative and so be more enriched — or it could devour itself. The fate that befalls us will correlate with how well we can generate ideas and to the degree those ideas honor Global Pluralism versus try to repress it — and we cannot do this well without the SCM.

“The Meaning Crisis” could be seen as an “Awkward Crisis,” where we find ourselves outside of rules and needing ideas to coordinate our lives — but we cannot find or generate those ideas. This is a reason why the feeling of nihilism compels people into the SCM: there is an intuition that faced with such emptiness and anxiety, what we need are new ideas, new ways to coordinate ourselves, our communities, and our lives outside of rules. The SCM trains both our capacity to generate ideas and share them, for it profoundly trains our speech, which trains both articulation and creation simultaneously (“shadow work” often overlooked). The better we are at generating ideas and articulating them to generate consensus, the more we can operate outside of rules and not be overwhelmed. Institutions which expect their “incompleteness” could invest in the SCM to address their “institutional incompleteness,” but otherwise the challenges of Global Pluralism will only intensify until institutions no longer deny they must accept their incompleteness and act accordingly. To deny the SCM can be to deny “institutional incompleteness” — a deep mistake.

Toward the end of their essay, Hingl and Shera offer magnificent “concluding remarks” and stress that their work is not dooming institutions but empowering them, as I believe stressing Global Pluralism will not cheapen beliefs, worldviews, and/or orthodoxies but actually enhance them and make them more antifragile (we cannot realize the fullness of our orthodoxies without Otherness, hence perhaps why Jesus sat with sinners, not to cheapen his religion but to enhance and fulfill it). ‘Recognizing the inherent incompleteness of institutions and the pivotal role of ideas in navigating this incompleteness offers a richer understanding of institutional stability and change’ — beautifully written, and I think the same goes with “maps.”⁵⁸ ‘We cannot simply relax on a pile of rules. Maintaining an institution requires constant attention.’⁵⁹ Exactly, bringing Simone Weil back to mind (II.1) and the hope of her example. ‘[I]ncompleteness creates an opportunity to use good ideas to break out of path-dependent inferior equilibria. Both danger and hope lurk beyond the margins of institutions,’ and Global Pluralism has “thrown” us beyond those margins — meaning paradoxically, “on the silk roads,” there is hope for our institutions.⁶⁰

V: A Way to Think of an Arch of O.G. Rose

‘If there is an explicit moral at the end of a children’s story, why do you need the story as a preface? Perhaps just to make it memorable, but arguably, you need the story because the moral — the rule — cannot be understood without the context of a narrative. So too, institutional rules cannot be aptly applied without their contextual ideas. Every situation is novel. Most situations, however, are sufficiently similar to past situations that they can be reflexively interpreted into the institutional framework. We argue that there is no situation in which ideas are not to some degree informing institutions, but many of these cases are so routine that referring to the ideological context is unnecessary for standard analysis. In many cases, knowing the conventional interpretation of rules in a stable environment is sufficient to generate predictions of their effects. But to study the role of an institution in the long run or in the context of the entire society, one must understand the ideological content upholding the institution. For an analysis of any institution beyond a static routine environment, the economist must immerse themselves in the grand conversation of humanity. There is rich cultural and ideological content behind all routine maximizing behavior. But direct engagement with ideas is indispensable when institutions are incomplete.’⁶¹

Hingl and Shera have given us a gift — I will be referencing their essay for years. They also point to how next we should consider ideas, suggesting in my view the importance of life-long learning, B-20, the SCM, and other topics of Part II:

‘Naturally, a proper analysis of the role of ideas would be an interdisciplinary affair. To understand the content of the ideas that rule a society, one needs to know the history of philosophy and religion not just in retrospect but precisely why one idea leads to another and why one faith can incorporate a novel reality and another couldn’t. Literary studies would provide a window into the popular and intellectual culture of the time. Sociological analysis could describe how ideas were received and interpreted into daily practice. The relation between morals and law is a long-standing discussion in legal theory. Further, advances in cognitive science aim to understand precisely how human beings relate to one another and their environment, especially in situations of uncertainty.’⁶²

The SCM can help with all of this work and living it out, and it is here that I think there could be value in offering “an arch” between two series by O.G. Rose, The True Isn’t the Rational and Belonging Again, so that we might see better how the importance of ideas in Gödel Points relates to our “new address,” taking “institutional incompleteness” into account. Our terms:

S = “The Social”
G = “Givens”
I = Ideas
R = Rules
X = (Worldview and) (Ultimate) “Value” (God, Freedom, etc.)
SCM = “The Social Coordination Mechanism”

The Social (S) requires shared coordination, and this can be made possible by rules and/or ideas. Rules (R) require a Value like Justice or Freedom to not just be for their own sake, which we will represent with “X,” and to the degree R is made “toward” X is to the degree the rules gain legitimacy and authority (R and I without authority fail). Where R fails, then Ideas (I) are needed for a people to continue to be “toward” X, and Global Pluralism can be characterized by a lessening of shared orientation toward X via “the loss of givens” (G). The loss of G can be made up for by an increase of R or I, but there are limits to what R can make up due to “combinational explosiveness” and because “the map is not the territory”: it is beyond human capability to think of every possible scenario we will need orientation and guidance for managing. Hence, it is inevitable we need I, but I is not “set in stone” like R can be “set in law”: the presence and generation of ideas contingent. We are the contingency, which is to say our capacity will determine to what degree I can be generated when needed. If we are not trained and ready to supply I when needed for a people to be “toward” and share in X, then S will likely be lost.

S can be lost because of an inadequate supply of R, I, or G (and in an age where G is lost, R and I must fill in the gap). But S can also be lost between people who don’t share in X, and not all people agree in/on the same X (some are Christian, others Muslim, etc.). X must be of a shared quality for people to “believe in” the fitting R, I, and/or G, and people who disagree on X will not be compelled by the same set of R, I, and G. Is it possible for people who ascribe to different X(s) to form an S? That is the million-dollar question of “belonging again,” and the first claim we have made is that Global Pluralism will require an emphasis on I over R, which will require an SCM. But we are still left with the question of the quality of X, which people can disagree on — so are we doomed? Well, only if every possible take on X does not entail a quality that could make every possible take on X somehow possibly related, and that is possible if every “internally consistent” take on X must necessarily entail a Gödel Point (that makes every possible X more apophatic, but not so much so that it is unintelligible and we unable to make it relatable to other takes on X).

An X that is not “internally consistent” can be deconstructed by critique and rationality eventually over enough time in history, and I believe the internet accelerates this process, and that our moment in history is defined more by “the problem of internally consistent systems,” not “internally inconsistent systems” (mere “networks of notions”). The great challenge of Global Pluralism is “the problem of internally consistent systems,” and each of these align with a unique X. If each X does not entail a quality that somehow makes them meaningfully relatable to all other possible Xs in their very internal consistency, then Global Pluralism seems doomed. Our argument is that every possible X that cannot be deconstructed must entail a Gödel Point and hence be a “(GP)X.” History is a process of deconstructing every (apparent) X that is not actually a (GP)X, and our moment is defined by a realization of (GP)Xs that cannot be deconstructed. This seems to be our doom, but the (GP) that makes an X indestructible is also what gives it a quality that makes it relatable to all other (GP)Xs. Our hope is in the indestructibility of (GP)Xs, oddly enough.

We need every possible X that is not deconstructible to be realized as (GP)X (which has an apophatic quality, please note), and that is work “history” has done for us. If every X that isn’t deconstructed must be a (GP)X, then every X must entail acknowledgment of that which excesses it: every X must be a “map” that is not “the territory,” and “incompleteness” is what every (GP)X must have in common. Hence, it is possible for them to relate meaningfully without anyone changing their specific (GP)X (there is the possibility of something “perennial” in orthodoxies, without abandoning them, which is crucial). But what if it is only a possibility? Well, determining that would require “knowing the whole territory,” which is not possible, and so we can never say with certainty that what every (GP)X has “in common” is only a possibility. It might actually be actual, and that very “necessary possibility” is undeniable (an “Anselm argument for Pluralism,” perhaps). Nevertheless, the point is valid, and hence we need a “Manhattan Project for Gödel Points,” which in itself could be a unifying effort—but more on that at another time. For now, to lay out our line of thought:

1. S, G, I, and R require (an) X.

2. When X is realized as an X, then G is lost.

3. S after G requires more I than R, and that requires the SCM.

4. For every possible X to exist together without undermining one another (and authority), every X needs to be realized as a (GP)X, as every possible X must actually be if not deconstructible (by us, history…)

5. An SCM plus realization of (GP)X(s) are “conditions of possibility” for “a new address.”

Further:

A. Belonging Again focuses on the problem of needing I more than R across Global Pluralism, and why this requires the SCM.

B. The True Isn’t the Rational focuses on the problem of needing a plausible take on every possible (indestructible) X that makes every possible X relatable (“X like X(s)”). The trilogy argues that every possible X entails in our relation to it a Gödel Point, and hence every possible X is a (GP)X.

C. Pluralism entails all/many possible X(s), and all of them have something in common as “(GP)Xs,” which requires more I to navigate then R. This makes the SCM necessary.

D. Without the SCM, R will eclipse I, which cannot manage (GP)Xs but instead must favor a single X, and so “a new address” will not arise.

And this is the work, work which is not doomed because “the way is shut,” as Studebaker describes. In fact, what “the way is shut” to seems doomed due to a lack of ideas, which is what the SCM will focus on cultivating. Watching this happen from inside the sealed fortress of the Capital-Nation-State, those inside might “open the way” themselves to join the SCM—or be forced to join, lest “institutional incompleteness” be their demise. Of all acts that could be revolutionary, perhaps none is greater than that which “attracts” those in power to come out of their domain and change.

Alright, but how do we “get better at ideas,” and why believe ideas can make such a difference? And will the SCM lead us in the right direction? The SCM might have a tendency toward something like the B-20, but what that is exactly and why the possibility of the SCM helping incubate “a learning society” could be so significant still needs to be explored. For that case, we will now turn to the work of Stiglitz and Greenwald, followed by Lene Andersen on “The Nordic Bildung”…

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Notes

¹Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 1.

²Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 1.

³ wrote a wonderful article titled “Holy Impasse,” which brought to mind the experience of being caught with the choice of trying to “dwell in a Gödel Point” so that it might become “a focal point.” She wrote: ‘I cannot speak for him, but for me, a quiet awareness emerged where the roles we had inhabited were no longer sufficient. The coordinates that once organized our lives had expired. I could have left or forced coherence and continued performing the familiar script. Instead, I hesitated and remained in the pause […] What I have discovered is that when both people remain present and resist the urge to cover over the rupture or rush toward a new meaning, something unexpected begins to unfold. The impasse itself becomes strangely fertile. The tension opens and becomes alive. Something begins to change at the altar of what had failed.’ Might that world of Global Pluralism learn to do this with(in) itself? To experience what LaVonne calls a “Hagiaporia’? From her essay: ‘Hagios meaning holy or sacred, and aporia meaning an impasse, a puzzlement, an unsolvable difficulty. Together the two Greek words describe a holy impasse. They name the moment when two people reach the edge of what their shared language can contain.’ To the degree we can “dwell” and handle such moments is to the degree we can address Global Pluralism and prove worthy of (extending) humanity.

For more, check out the recent Philosophy Portal Anthology Publication, Rosy Cross, which can be found here:

Rosy Cross (Amazon)

⁴Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 1.

⁵Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 1.

⁶Please note that each idea for each unique situation beyond rules is “one-of-one” and non-fungible, meaning that we are in an age where there is potential for “the infinite creation of demand” based on ideas, which could help us overcome Stagnation described in II.1 — a major development, especially perhaps if a mechanism is developed through which ideas which address “situations” can be compensated. Web 3.0 might be part of this initiative, considering Anthony Morely works and what we wrote on “demand and internal coordination” in II.1.

Demand and Internal Cordination

⁷Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 1.

⁸As we discuss in II.2, this acceptance would better align us with “the road thinking” we discussed with Quinn and Frankopan: acknowledging “institutional incompleteness” is a step away from the “civilizational thinking” that has distorted our understanding of our world against Voicecraft and “spreading Childhood.”

⁹Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 1.

¹⁰Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 1.

¹¹Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 1.

¹²Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 2.

¹³“Given,” rules, and ideas seem to form a social and institutional triplex, and when one of the three fail, one of the two or the other two in proportion grow together to fill the gap. If we lack the capacity to generate ideas, so habituated out of that capacity ironically by Capital (as discussed in II.1), then what will follow “the loss of givens” is likely a growth in rules to guide the Social and/or an effort to “practically replace” the Social with “the logic of Capital” (and so AI). That could be our trajectory, but not if we employ the SCM, an infrastructural effort to take seriously and with intention the spaces and “silk roads” that incubate ideas beyond rules and institutions, spaces which manage “institutional incompleteness” from becoming “institutional deconstruction” by preparing subjects for when the rule don’t apply (in Lack) to still be “toward” Value and Beauty nevertheless (where rules don’t apply are not spaces of “nothing” but “(institutional) lack,” a critical difference which means an orientation toward Value and Beauty is still possible, for there isn’t nothingness). And as I think history gives us reason to think if those “spaces” are actually primarily for “wealth generation,” oddly, then we might be heading toward a Second Great Enrichment precisely at this moment when hope for improvement can seem lost.

¹⁴For more, see “What Is a Judge to Do?” by O.G. Rose (tentative title). Also, the necessity and reality of jurisprudence itself suggests a need for the SCM, especially if Global Pluralism entails to much “combinatorial explosiveness” for “the Supreme Court” to handle—there needs to be a decentralization of the work to the people, but that assumes people are capable of that “idea work.” There is something to be said about how we “all need to be lawyers now.”

¹⁵Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 2.

¹⁶“The roads” have to be just as important as “the civilizations,” per se, and without the SCM we lack “adequate roads” — for the movement of Spirit, for people, for the Social.

¹⁷Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 2.

¹⁸Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 2.

¹⁹“Awkwardness” is an experience of incompleteness (A/B) needed for “extending humanity,” so it is not to be done away with somehow. Instead, we want to avoid too much awkwardness too soon (“Love(craft)”), but what exactly constitutes “too much too soon” is not something anyone can decide ahead of time, hence the need for constant testing, flexibility, experimentation — what the SCM makes possible (as “a constant test of ratios between ‘use’ and ‘accuracy’ ”). We need awkwardness, as we need “The Real” and “failure of maps” and the like, and yet there is also real danger if we are not the subjects who can handle what we need. And yet we also can’t just “will” to be the right kinds of subjects: the development must be more indirect and emergent. How might that be possible? With the SCM.

²⁰Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 2.

²¹Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 2.

²²Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 2.

²³Value needed for Global Pluralism must be apophatic in its quality (as Benjamin Studebaker stresses we need), or else there will not be “space” (“incompleteness”) in it by which its “internal consistency” (“orthodoxy”) can be maintained (and so people not feel like they have to give up their beliefs, but instead can become more faithful and true to their beliefs) and yet meaningful “space” for (relation with) the Other still be possible. But how do you make “rules” around something apophatic? It can’t be done directly, but “rules” can be made in something “designed around” the Lack, and the point of these “rules” would be to keep us orientated toward the apophatic while at the same time keeping the apophatic indeed “apophatic.” There is always the risk of it slipping back into the cataphatic, too “present,” but if the Lack is too unknowable, we cannot relate to it meaningful. The “rules of the space” would be for maintaining the right “mean,” but how that is done is not obvious, hence the need for great experimentation in the SCM.

To switch from a focus on the cataphatic to the apophatic means we switch from say 80% rules and 20% ideas to 80% ideas and 20% rules. This is a dramatic change, but please note that 0% rules would cause chaos, so we do need rules to some degree: rules just can’t play the dominate role. This seems impossible to systemize into an institution, seeing as rules are what institutions “do,” per se, and further because institutions intentional about ideas are intentional about their own incompleteness. How is that possible? By focusing on “the silk roads” between them, as the SCM makes possible. Without the SCM, there will likely be a single Value that is treated as “practically complete,” and that will be “the logic of Capital.”

Also, why would anyone care about the apophatic? It could be needed for Global Pluralism, but if nobody cares about it, then our efforts will fail. Well, this is why it is important to argue that Lack and Beauty go together, and that experiences of the apophatic create care for them. Is that true? On the SCM, I believe this can be experienced for ourselves.

²⁴Aren’t “rules” opposite of Dream-Equality as “binding determinations,” and yet the suggestion is that “rules” favor A/A? A great point, and for Dream-Equality, the point of rules is to achieve a state where “I am the rule(r)”: what I want “is,” for I am unbound by Determination. “Rules” are a path to a world where I am the “rule(r),” while a need for “ideas” means there are Determinations beyond my control that I will have to live manage and approach — a limit on my power.

²⁵Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 2.

²⁶Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 2.

²⁷Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 2.

²⁸Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 3.

²⁹Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 3.

³⁰Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 6.

³¹Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 6.

³²Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 6.

³³Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 6.

³⁴Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 6.

³⁵Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 7.

³⁶Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 8.

³⁷Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 8.

³⁸Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 8.

³⁹Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 8.

⁴⁰Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 8.

⁴¹Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 8.

⁴²Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 8.

⁴³Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 8–9.

⁴⁴Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 9.

⁴⁵Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 9.

⁴⁶Until the SCM, we couldn’t readily appeal to a “spirit” of Lack, the Apophatic, Beauty…and so we have not made a mistake (yet). What has brought on (the realization of) Global Pluralism is also what we need for its “spirit.” Sure, but what is “the spirit” of our world? I would argue it is Global Pluralism in some way, for “deep difference” is reality, but by that I don’t mean a “Total Difference” that would make intelligibility and relatability impossible. What “spirit” makes “Global Pluralism” possible versus just an assertion of chaos and incapability? Lack. The Apophatic. Beauty. Beauty is “the spirit” of life, and when the rules come up short, we are to appeal to that “spirit.” (The fate of beauty is the fate of us.)

For more on this, please see the important essay by , “Dignity is a Mnemonic of the Beautiful”:

Thomas Jockin

Dignity is a Mnemonic of the Beautiful

What safeguards reality from collapsing into mere availability…

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3 months ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Thomas Jockin

Also, on the tension of how institutions or traditions can change without destroying themselves, if we take the Church as an example, there is often the point that “the Church needs to evolve with the world,” and there is truth to this but also a danger: if the Church changes, then it is “conforming to the world” and rendering itself meaningless. If the changing world helps the Church “realize what it always was,” then that’s better, because we are now maintaining consistency and legitimacy. But what if there is another option, where it is the world that in a sense changes around the Church (while perhaps the Church “realizes what it always was” in light of that contextual transformation)? It requires expansion, but I believe this last option is critical, but it begs a question on how the world around the Church might change? Aren’t facts “facts” and “what is the case” whatever the case might be? Yes and no.

What does it mean to change the world? Isn’t what threatens the Church precisely that the world is changing? Ah, a key could be changing the world metaphysically, which the world never necessary has to change to us in terms of — that change is up to us. Though in terms of its facticity the world is always changing (and yet that constant changing is what about the world is never changing and “stable enough”), a kind of change the world doesn’t have to undergo and/or realize is a metaphysical one, say in coming to see the world as “a place where things are real” versus “a place where relations are real.” No experience the world must make me switch from one metaphysical view to another (from A/A to A/B), and yet it is possible for me to make that change. And if I change through realization the world around the Church (from a place where “things are real” to a reality where “relations are real”), then the context in which I decide the meaning of the Church’s teachings can change, and so “change the teachings without the teachings changing” (a potential “sweet spot’).

Metaphysics could be at the heart of overcoming the problem of “changing tradition” and/or “changing the unchangeable,” and so it goes with “changing institutions” and the like. The world must always change physically — that never changes (causal) — but that world doesn’t have to change metaphysically — that’s a real change (creative) — and yet a metaphysical change doesn’t change what “is” physical, only how we categorize it, what categories we think are real and valid, what dimension is “real” (say “thinghood” or “relation”), and so on. In metaphysics, the world can change with nothing changing (into “lack,” perhaps).

Does science “change the world” as does metaphysics? It can, hence a reason why we have turned to it, but it might create tensions more than reconciliations. Fair enough — I’m making a point here that needs a lot more elaboration (a point that also might be wrong) — but I believe metaphysics can be better positioned to help “things change without changing” than can science, mostly because science also tends to lead to policy changes and changes in institutions because “the facts say” we must do x. Science tends to change one thing at a time, which causes tensions, while metaphysics almost has to be a universal change, which oddly can mean nothing has to change, because everything changes all-together (what is gained is a different quality to everything, while a scientific change can be a qualitative and “directional” change, which can serve power). More must be said, but metaphysics can help with the issue of legitimacy, which perhaps we have turned to science to deal with, but that can deal with the problem by deconstructing it via undermining the institutions in favor of a science-based institution. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, but this can end up just adding a new institution that has its own “institutional incompleteness,” so we have not addressed the problem only moved around the pieces. We need a universal change of all institutions and things that currently exist, and while a scientific insight can change how we see one thing in one way, a new metaphysics can simultaneously change the quality of all things at once. That is key.

⁴⁷Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 9.

⁴⁸Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 9.

⁴⁹Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 9.

⁵⁰Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 10.

⁵¹We need a (meta)physics and Spirit of the Gödel Point itself. Lack. Beauty. “Toward” these is what the B-20 and SCM must be, which means they must “incubate Childhood,” and they must be so indirectly, aesthetically, via constraints, and/or environmentally.

⁵²Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 11.

⁵³Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 11.

⁵⁴This brings to mind “The Internet as a Constant Test of Ratios Between ‘Use’ and ‘Accuracy,’ ” by O.G. Rose, which is why institutions need the SCM in an age of constant “surprising encounter” with Otherness (“the rate of testing” needs to radically be expanded and accelerated).

The Internet as a Constant Test...

⁵⁵Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 11.

⁵⁶Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 11.

⁵⁷Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 11.

⁵⁸Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 15.

⁵⁹Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 15.

⁶⁰Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 15.

⁶¹Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 15.

⁶²Hingl, Kurtis, and Marcus Shera. “Ideas, Institutions, and Incompleteness.” Journal of Institutional Economics, vol. 21, 2025, article e8. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137424000365: 14.

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Samuel Barnes and Owen Leyshon (“Owen in the Agon”) discussed at Schizo FM the power of “high trust societies,” a topic that also came up when Barnes and Tyger Cho talked. Barnes discussed how in nations like Korea he could leave a laptop on a table in public and come back an hour later and it would still be there, and he also voiced how he could interact with others and not worry about all the ways they might misread or misunderstand him. There’s still interpretation, of course, but people on average are more likely to “get you” and/or give you the benefit of the doubt. People aren’t always ready to defend themselves, nor do they constantly worry about their things or safety as they move around in public: things just flow (“like magic”). Barnes describes the move from a “low trust society” to a “high trust society” as “ontologically shifting”—is this part of “The Meaning Crisis”? Easily.

In our Voicecraft conversation (“What Are We Accelerating Toward?”), Benjamin Studebaker warns us not to forget that many “high trust societies” we admire were built up by America after WWII, so we should keep in mind that what makes possible a prosperous “high trust society” might require another nation to pay a price (and keep in mind what we said with Bauwens on Development, Trust, and Meaning). Also, “social trust” can reflect a strong national ethos, which risks “the banality of evil” (for good and for bad), and in Global Pluralism this could require isolationism. Greater diversity, individual expression, and creativity threaten trust, not necessarily because people can’t be trusted, at least at first, but simply through misunderstanding that leads to hurt, then bitterness…And where trust is lost, people are likely to separate, isolate intro tribes, and/or atomize just to avoid anxiety. We discussed this in Part I, and yet I would agree with Barnes and Owen that we are in trouble if we do not restore “social trust”: my hope is that the SCM can help. Not because we trust so much that people we encounter will “get us,” but because we come to trust our and their capacities to handle surprise, encounter, diversity, and the like. That kind of “high trust society” of Childhood is one we are yet to see, but that is easily due to us lacking “the conditions of possibility” for it.

Without boundaries, people lose definition and trust, but misplaced boundaries can cause conflict and disfunction—a major “contradiction” for Global Pluralism. As discussed by Jim Rutt and Alexander Bard, “membranics” is a study of this tension, considering the proper means between exclusion and inclusion, closedness and openness, etc. It is a study of relationships, points of encounter between tribes, and all of this while boundaries are maintained: we might think of our political and social challenges today as tied to the question of how we might form and manage membranes. We need them to function, but what kind of membrane is of a quality of (in/ex)clusive that is best for addressing Global Pluralism (and who decides)? What quality ultimately doesn’t just prove a decentralized arrangement that is vulnerable to either “A Moral Real” shattering it (like the American Civil War) or military takeover (like Ionia according to Karatani)? Decentralization and centralization are key questions of politics in history, and it has seemed that a key reason history has repeated is because we have not been able to figure out the right proportional relationship between these and/or how to maintain that proportion.

More emergent, the membranes that form through the SCM often result from a coordination based on quality that allows experimentation, reconfiguration, diversity, and great speed for adaptability (and as C Money noted, “the good” is more about adaptability for “fitted-ness” than a constant state), and that can help us with the severe political tension between centralization and decentralization. Conversations form membranes and hold people together (possibly according to “self-forgetful flow”), and yet not in a manner that doesn’t allow the membranes to keep developing, changing, and growing (which is important if everything is its “otherness” eventually). Granted, there are differences between “social membranes” formed between people and “institutional membranes” formed on the level of the State, but both influence one another, and if social membranes can be maintained and provide spaces of thriving, that will help governments and societies gain legitimacy. Where people feel like they can “flow,” develop, and change easily and meaningfully, they will be more likely to accept their institutional arrangement.

In the end, we can’t predict all the consequences of a spreading SCM and a Childlike culture that habituates people into being able to think and act differently, and no doubt some of those consequences will be negative. However, I see more potential in it than loss, and I think the risk is worth it. Dr. Greg Henriques argues that we can associate evolution and emergence with the advent of new information processing systems like language or the internet, and with these systems also arise “new causations.” Does the SCM possibly afford us new causations as a new information process? If so, there is no telling where it could take us, and if we don’t have any idea how we could get out of the situation we’re currently in, the address will likely have to be something we haven’t thought of and perhaps can’t think yet: we’ll need a new “cause and effect.”

It’s fitting our hope is hard to think, as perhaps hope must always be, or else it would only be a calculation. And if our age is one that suffers because of “the mistake of autonomous rationality,” then we should expect the address to be one where all plausible deniability is gone that rationality alone is the way — it must be undeniable that (non)rationality, imagination, and “the human” are prime movers. Would gaining this clarity lead to the Leibniz dream of “a universal science” (as Anthony Morley discusses), which is to say we learn how to coordinate according to quality versus quantification, relation and pattern versus say category? Indeed, the SCM, a new information processing system, might be this Leibnizian realization, as Morley has suggested, which might be necessary if we are to realize our fullest potential for “flow, healing,” and revelation, as Jacob Kishere and Matthew Green discuss. Until the dream of Leibniz is realized, there will always be (“overfitting”) divisions and categories to allow coordination according to quantity, all of which threaten flow, healing, and revelation. “Quality Coordination” is needed for a coordination based on attraction and “dance,” per se, for otherwise we will decide what we discuss, who we meet, etc. according to quantifications which hinder the dream of Leibniz. ‘How we speak is strongly connected to the space we speak into,’ as Kishere put it, and currently we must speak into quantification, and so we are spiritually quantifiable (we easily forget that ‘this moment of our time together will never happen again,’ as Green voiced). The SCM can improve “spaces”; it can help there be potential for “quantum change” — there is no point at which there must not be hope. The more dire things become, the more energy and willingness there can be for change: hopelessness can be hope.

Pointing to The Map Is Indestructible, without imagination, it is hard to see how a person could “leap” from “truth-fact set A” to “truth-fact set B” (from one ideology, worldview, etc. to another), especially if we accept the premises that empathy requires imagination and that “empathy is critical thinking” (see “On Critical Thinking” by O.G. Rose). It seems that imagination might be the only hope we have to move out of “a map,” if indeed “the map is indestructible,” seeing as we cannot move beyond (what we are in) “what is” to (what we aren’t in) “what isn’t” without imagination, for “what isn’t” is beyond our “horizon.” Even if maps are indestructible, maps can be moved from and between, but perhaps not without imagination (to the detriment of economics, politics…)—the problem is that people don’t have to move if they don’t want to (and they naturally don’t). Does the B-20 with the SCM function as infrastructures which incubate in us imagination? Our current system mainly incubates rationality but not (non)rationality—is there hope for an alternative? Yes.

The Next Five Years by Justin Murphy

Benjamin Studebaker speaks of monasteries and our need to regain something like them today, how monasteries helped people gain an “aura” and way of being that was hard to pin down. Monasteries could seem escapist and anti-civic, and yet they arguably had very civic purposes in helping people be toward the divine, for without a sense of “something higher” (A/B), the social order suffers. Monasteries could strengthen the soul, grow motivation, and possibly train people not only to know divinity but also to create experiences of divinity for others. The “creation of divinity for others” is arguably the highest virtue, as Studebaker discusses, but also the most difficult, and might we see in the SCM a way by which people create “divine experiences” for one another? Perhaps it wasn’t until now that we had the social coordination system needed for us to realize the fullness of this high virtue. If anywhere could incubate imagination to function in a dialectic with rationality “toward” Childhood and the possibility of spreading “theuristic virtues” from “maps,” a monastery like Studebaker describes sounds right. In “The Next Five Years of Other Life (Part 1),” Justin Murphy tells us that ‘all of American high culture is up for grabs,’ and the SCM could be how Children and “monasteries” grab culture for the end of “extending humanity” before our AI-Causer. (Land waits).

Diverse not just in appearance but in use of mind, the SCM also invites “neurodiversity” and can train “mentidivergence,” which we spoke in II.1 as critical for Childhood that avoids Game Theory problems (a point indebted to Lorenzo Barberis Canonico’s work that also overlaps with Bernard Hankins’s presentation, “Integrating People of Color”). The SCM makes possible a “collective consciousness,” and Lorenzo’s point is that such is at its best when it is decentralized, independent, an aggregate, and entails cognitive diversity that isn’t reducible to a single metric—all of which the SCM affords. However, greater diversity increases the probability for conflict, so can the SCM also help train us in disagreement? Hopefully, though that will require conversational experimentation (as discussed in “The Net (134)”), perhaps even “Cultural Startups” like described by Rachel Haywire. Also, especially outside Lorenzo’s specifications, we should not assume that “collective consciousness” is a force for good; as Jacob Kishere and Samuel Barnes discussed (in “Should We Talk?”), such collectivity can be dangerous. We discussed “the mass” and “the mob” in Part I, and a third possibility being suggested is “the dialogos,” per se, or “the harmony.” This “third” seems needed today, and yet it requires training that becomes increasingly unlikely to be widely-enough-implemented at scale. This “third” needs a basis like love versus ideology, but that suggests a new medium/material condition is needed for the right incubation and habituation of the subject; otherwise, the natural tendency of collectives toward ideology will likely prevail, which will serve AI at our expense at “The End of (True) History.”

The Cultural Futurist

Cultural Startups - The Next Frontier

Remember when startups were about building apps and disrupting fallen industries? How quaint. We're about to enter an era where the most exciting ventures aren't about coding, unless we’re talking about coding entirely new cultures. Take a minute and think about the last time a tech company…

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a year ago · 45 likes · Rachel Haywire

“Good/Costly Pluralism” seems impossible without a new Social Coordination Mechanism, and not even guaranteed then. The stakes are high, and though it seems unlikely for us to succeed at “Communities of Holy Spirit” and “Network Subjectivity,” as Cadell Last has discussed,” I think it is how we ignite something within us that works with and in the Kingdom so described by Brief Outlines (“Civilization Collapse, Jonathan Pageau and the Kingdom of Heaven”), capable of grasping a “sociology from below” described by Matthew Stanley, which, as I discussed with Matthew Allison (#139), points to the question of if we will prove Ever-Meta (“captured”) or “orbiters of Mystery” (“captivated”), the latter of which provides an invitation to be “stewards of extending humanity,” which suggests Charles Eisenstein and Tyson Yunkaporta—but all this requires elaboration.

Moloch Theory

Fragments towards a sociology from below

I’ve noticed a strain of thinking which connects thinkers across the ideological spectrum, but I haven’t figured out a shorthand way to refer to them…

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2 years ago · 14 likes · 14 comments · Matthew Stanley

Mentidivergence can follow from the SCM if it trains us in “encounter” and “surprise,” for we must be able to think the unexpected and even be quick on our feet, and this is not what thinking is typically educated to address. This also suggests flexibility, which aligns with Samuel Loncar’s claim that the book and printing press helped give us “flexible memory” (discussed with Theory Underground), but until now we perhaps didn’t have a “flexible information processing systems” so that we could fully realize this potential: we gained flexibility from the book, but then used our flexible minds to take a shape stagnant like the book. We have not had a “medium condition” which adequately encouraged and enabled the mental flexibility which reading made possible; now, I think we do. Books made possible a new qualia-tative subjective experience, but realizing that potential required a more effective social coordination and networking, like the SMC, which in possibly providing this new qualia-tative mode, might also help with the problem of honoring particularly without losing universality, for everyone can be a Child in their own way, and the world changes vertically more than horizontally, meaning we do not need to employ force or power to change things, risking trouble. For things are not changed when we change vertically; they are more so deepened and given dimensionality. They are enhanced as what they are/(be)come. But if things are deep yet we lack an SCM that can habituate us to that depth and help us feel it, we easily won’t realize it.

What the SCM might spread is not so much a particular ideology but a way, mode, orientation, and/or skill of comprehension, mainly Attention (A/B) (over Affliction, A/A). “Spreading Childhood” in this way is more like “spreading literacy” than it is spreading certain complicated ideas, even if this Attention might help people with complicated ideas (that’s secondary, nevertheless). And the very fact the literacy seems able to spread across gender, race, IQ, class, etc. should give us reason to think that it is possible to spread “modes” around the world: perhaps not everyone can learn physics, but it doesn’t seem crazy to say that basically everyone can learn to read if given the right conditions. That “if” is an important clause, but even in acknowledging it, we can still say that if “spreading Childhood” is more like “spreading literacy” (or “spreading the mode of consciousness afforded by the printing press”), the effort is not outright doomed. Perhaps it’s unlikely, and perhaps it will take time, but there is reason to think it is not necessarily impossible.

We might also associate “spreading Childhood” with “spreading courage/virtue” or “the ability to handle discomfort,” neither of which seem impossible outright for anyone to be able to cultivate. We might also think of “spreading Childhood” like “spreading a religion,” which I don’t want to push too much, but I mean it in the sense that religions don’t depend on people going to college, having certain interests, etc.: a plumber can be a Christian as can a college professor. Religions can be adaptable and accommodating, and if Childhood is similar, we shouldn’t assume it can’t spread. Yes, within say Christianity, there is always the concern that Christians could be doing better or aren’t “living out their faith,” but that doesn’t mean people lagging can’t be (seen as) Christian. So it could go with Childhood: we can always gain more courage, better metajudgment, better dialectical thinking, etc., but that doesn’t mean we fail to engage in Childhood at all. And as arguably economic and social problems are major challenges and inhibitors for people to live out their Christian faith (take the tension between becoming a missionary or starting a family), so it could be for Childhood (say in there being a lack of timenergy), but again it doesn’t follow from this that Childhood can’t spread to some degree. Not all conditions equally incubate our capacity to “leave Plato’s Cave on our own,” but even if all the conditions did was give us the thought that we might be in a Cave, that is a real change in “conditions of possibility.”

“Attention,” Gurdjieffian subjectivity, alignment with Luber’s “Theme,” the meta-evaluation of Layman Pascal—it seems wrong to assume that genetics, class, etc. determine the degree to which these are part of our world, even if social factors play a role. To ask if everyone can have a sense of Lack/Mystery is different from asking if everyone can read philosophy; to ask if we might train students in school to evaluate situations more than focus on knowing the right answers seems doable. Sure, but is Childhood really “like literacy,” which seems wrong to say some people will never learn? I think it is more a mode and capacity than it is specific ideas, and with Jurij Jukic (#172), we thought of it like a “mental nimbleness” that could be based on evolutionary adaptability, for which ultimately natural selection could select (in a complex and diverse environment). What it means to “flourish” could also be tied to growing in “mental nimbleness,” for this can help us feel like we aren’t stuck, that we’re able to improvise, that we can create new possibilities when those afforded to us are inadequate, and the like.

We can associate school and learning with passing down and memorizing information, but we should begin to associate learning with gaining capacities for better decision-making, courage, Attention, nimbleness, improvisation, encounters, and the like: school focused just on passing down information in an age of AI seems odd, and perhaps all it did was contribute to class formation. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about passing down information at all, only that this should be secondary to us compared to overcoming Disablement for Enablement (Illich), for example. Might this emphasis end up relying on if people are self-motivated? It could, but though this might seem like a dream, I would be amazed if there was ever a child who never taught themselves anything. The potential for self-motivation is in all of us, I would wager: we simply need incubating environments and “medium conditions” that grow this developmentally. Every child teaches themselves different things: it’s just that they don’t necessarily teach themselves a particular thing in a particular amount of time (as a curriculum might demand), which means it can’t be quantified or made intelligible, and so we can claim that self-motivation is useless, can’t be relied on, or that it only exists randomly. Personally, I’m of the opinion that we haven’t had the material condition to meaningfully “run the experiment” to see if everyone can be “intrinsically motivated,” creative, “open,” or the like, so mostly the question has been speculative. Now, I think the SCM helps create environments where such inquiries can be tested.

We can’t on a dime “will” self-motivation: as Jung spoke of ideas having us more than we having ideas, so it can seem that motivation has us more than we have motivation. We often don’t know what would self-motivate us and instead must “stumble upon” it. But the likelihood of this is very low if our environments are not vibrant and alive, if we are lacking “living architecture,” as Nikos Salingaros discusses, and if the world has been made in the image and likeness of the ideals of utilitarianism. If we are lacking a “medium condition” by which we might “overhear” the trickles and flows of a River-Hole, it cannot self-motivate us, for it cannot be “glimpsed” and come to dwell within us. Doesn’t this mean there is Bestowing, looking back to II.1? Fair, but “Glimpsing” and “Bestowing” are not the same practically: a Dante who glimpses Beatrice and lives in light of that vision is not the same as someone who day in and day out is receiving instructions from others or validation from some external force. Dante has to work on himself to remember his vision, which arguably he forgets at the start of the Inferno. A “glimpse” can be lost. We must be motivated to keep it alive in us. If the Cave incubates in the prisoner a fire to leave, the prisoner is a different subject than if he or she is dragged out.

We don’t always know what we want to learn until it washes over us, and what “flows by” that I can grab and hold on is something I relate to differently than what I memorize from an assigned book. This has “shinned out” to me, “glimmered” with some quality that “calls” me (nous, as Jockin discusses): I experience it as choosing me more than me choosing it. I do not experience it like math the teacher tells me I will need to know one day; I experience it as that which doesn’t need my validation, robust and dynamic. It lives without me; it asks me if I will follow. For this experience and Childhood, we can need facilitation more than teaching, though of course teaching has a role. This distinction was brought up in “The Liminal Future of Education [Past/Future Education III]” at SENSESPACE, and we might say that teaching is a direct transfer of information while facilitation tries to stay “in the background” and create spaces for self-direction (remembering that “information” is “in-form(ation)”). Courage, vulnerability, creativity — these are qualities of Childhood that cannot be directly cultivated (especially since few likely think they lack these qualities); they must be facilitated (“spaced”).

On this point, in “The Philosophy of Lack (5),” we discussed how we can seek “A Return to the Womb” instead of “A Return to Fertilization,” that mysterious moment that seems transubstative. To borrow a paragraph from the paper “The Love(craft) that Moves the Sun and Other Stars” (published at Philosophy Portal), which can be associated with “the Sabbath rest of the saint” I discussed with Jedidiah Paschall (“Glimpses and Glimmers in Plato’s Cave”):

‘In a way, the question is if we might become more like Artificial Intelligence, not in the sense that we become less human, but in the sense that we ‘automatically face’ challenges, problems, and the like. Can we ‘automatically struggle’ like Artificial Intelligence, which takes on and solves problems ‘without thinking about it?’ Our mistake is to try to have Artificial Intelligence save us from difficulty, as opposed to suggest to us that the miraculous and incredible is possible where ‘automatic struggle’ occurs. Can we ‘Absolutely Choose’ to be like AI versus let AI struggle for us (‘in our place’)? Perhaps a reason AI threatens to replace us is because it is willing to ‘struggle’ more than us, and the universe (evolutionarily) goes to those who will struggle.’

For us to become a being who “automatically faces struggle,” we cannot simply be taught; we must be facilitated. We must be put in a space where we become such for ourselves. And we will easily only do this, developing “grit,” if we feel something has chosen us more than we chose it, perhaps “apprehended” in an “overflow” (on the SCM). Is this to say we learn how to lose ourselves in a “flow” of some kind? “Flow” and “self-forgetfulness” will be key qualities of the Child, but we also should not forget that “flow” isn’t inherently good; as Eliot Rosenstock points out in “Why Enlightenment Doesn’t Exist”:

Hyperpsychology

Why Enlightenment Doesn't Exist

Flow as a Negation…

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a year ago · 7 likes · Hyperpsychology

‘Advocates of flow often skip over the negative potential of flow. Flow is non-judgmental and non-analysis, it is intuitive action based off of previous judgments and analysis. If one needs to re-analyze, flow is not sufficient for the task, despite flow being an ideal state of mind for many people to inhabit. Flow is a negation of both reflective measurement, as well as the division of something into parts. Flow is also the highest unified realization of action with previous analyses of nature, technology, and humanity itself.’¹²⁹

“Flow” without negation can be a form of dangerous “thoughtlessness,” hence a reason why we want the self-forgetfulness and automastery we advocate to be linked with a Childhood that entails “Absolute Knowing” and “encountering limit.” We need environments that can ever-surprise us, and people can provide ever-surprise, being ever-Other and ever-a-lack. As Nance put it in “Ethical Processing Units”:

‘The Self is not a pre-existing entity but emerges through a dialectical process, a constant negotiation with what it is not. This constituent negativity, the inherent contradiction between the Self and the Other (and thus, the Identity, as the identity is rooted in the world of the Other), is not a flaw to be overcome, but the very engine of self-consciousness. We become who we are through the struggle to understand and be understood, through the friction and resistance encountered in the face of the other’s difference. If this difference were to be abolished, if the interiority of the Other were rendered completely transparent and accessible […] then the dialectic collapses. There is no longer a not-I against which to define the I. The self, deprived of its defining opposition, dissolves into a homogenous, undifferentiated mass. We cease to be subjects and become mere nodes in a network, cogs in a machine.’

Beautifully written, and indeed we are tempted as RSIs (discussed in II.1) to dissolve the lack that constitutes us precisely before the other who makes us feel that lack. But this would be a mistake, and any “flow” we entered in committing this error would be inhuman. In “The Intelligence Arms Race,” Matthew Stanley writes:

Moloch Theory

The Intelligence Arms Race

The shuttle finally arrived at 6:17 PM. I was shivering in the dark outside LaGuardia, and although I had been awake since 3:30 that morning, I was still staring down a couple more hours in a van before I arrived in New Haven, CT…

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a year ago · 22 likes · 8 comments · Matthew Stanley

‘Sellars and Brandom try to demonstrate that […] socio-semantic structures, contra Kant, indicate that consciousness is something which happens in language and between individuals within a communal context with certain supportive practices and norms. This social and historical process is primarily comprised of the giving and evaluating of reasons by rational agents within a linguistic community […]’¹³¹

Where language was replaced by some transhuman telepathy (to overcome lack), “The End of (True) History” would be upon us. Furthermore, just any use of language will not suffice to move us into Childhood: it requires particular qualities we see in say Dialogos and on the SCM, which constitutes the subject differently from Heidegger’s (Kafkalike) “chitchat” (which if we are habituated into, will make ‘a critical and nihilistic perspective’ seem to have a point when it ‘unmasks much of human reasoning as a veiled cover for power relations or the fluctuations of libido […] portraying [such] consciousness as deluded about its own function and cosmic importance’).¹³² Fortunately, giving us hope before our AI-Causer, Stanely further writes:

‘In a wonderfully Hedeiggerian move, Negarestani closes by arguing that it’s the human awareness of our own eventual extinction, of our individual and collective own contingency, which creates the type of freedom which is needed for consciousness to detach from the flow of material forces and necessity in order to be come playful and self-determining. This ‘disinterest’ in necessity allows human intelligence to begin to devise its own rules, realizing that these rules are not given in nature, and must be collectively invented and revised.’¹³³

Divine: it is when hope seems lost that creativity can spring, hopefully in favor of creating new “medium conditions.” We need vibrant, incubating environments — of “overhearing,” of “stumbling upon” (“The Net (141)”) — for the possibility of “intrinsic motivation” and/or “spreading Childhood,” which is for us to overcome “Bestow Centrism” in favor of (be)coming. This depends on if we can inspire Circling and Cypher-like infrastructure by which the average person might often and regularly experience a River-Hole, that which is beyond AI, so that we might habituate ourselves to Attention (A/B) over Affiliation (A/A), thymotic nimbleness over stagnancy. “High order” Voicecraft (Rhetoric) or “low order” Kafkalikeness (Discourse) make the word; socioeconomics are (meta)physical; to engage in Voicecraft is to focus on (meta)physics; the more we spread “Net Tradition” and/or SCM, the better we will on average think qualia-tatively to be capable of Voicecraft; a profound way we can do this is to reform education and our environments to not favor Kafkalikeness. My claim is the B-20 can profound aid with this effort. Where’s the proof? I think social change follows an expediential curve: the evidence comes toward the end and overflows. There is a choice between feeling foolish today and feeling foolish tomorrow. Might that just be rationalization? Yes, hence the need for courage. Might that “courage” just be foolishness? Yes: so it must be for courage to be courage.

Isn’t the internet overwhelming us? What is the difference between “overwhelm” and “overflow”? A sense of value. A sense of orientation. Conversations online might not overwhelm in the same way information does, for it is necessarily filled with “relevance realization,” as John Vervaeke call it. It is a perpetual practice of people deciding what is most valuable to say, what is most “fitting” to incorporate, and so it is a model and trainer of metajudgment and “flow,” a constant experience of flexibility and meta-evaluation. It is hard to know where to start with raw information, but there is a higher chance that people speaking freely and improvisationally in discussion are saying things they really believe and that really matter to them, as there is a higher chance that what is brought up generates value. To be “washed over” by this conversational overflow is very different from drowning in informational overwhelm, though of course even conversation can be overdone, and we also need to note again that, despite the overlaps, there is a difference between podcasts and the SCM.¹³⁴ Podcasts generally focus on content, while the SCM focuses on social coordination and transformation: mere podcasts do not readily address Pluralism. As Ross Byrd wrote on, we will not readily find there “a cure for the modern cyclops,” a habit-forming way to reorientate desire.

Patient Kingdom

The Cure for the Modern Cyclops

Our sophistication, like Odin's, has cost us an eye, and now it is the language of poets, insofar as they create true metaphors, which must restore this lost unity conceptually after it has been lost from perception…

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2 years ago · 28 likes · 18 comments · Ross Byrd

An internet that is primarily in the business of creating and offering us content is one that will easily overwhelm us and prove consumeristic (Attentionalism), but an internet that is mainly a “Cypher Infrastructure” facilitating encounters and surprise is one that could train us into Childhood, not primarily through information but formation. The internet is best a place for surprise more than content, arguably the opposite of consumption and a critical training for “encountering difference” and Global Pluralism. “Surprise” is also a test superior to certification, I think, but in a world that basically associates avoiding error and surprise with progress, then we must progress into certification and Kafkalike Disablement. This does not seem sustainable, and if it is, what lasts seems mediocre.

Insighter

🌀 Belonging in an Age of Hyper-Fragmentation

When society's fundamental assumptions collapse, we are left with a dizzying freedom — one that tempts many to retreat into isolation or cluster into ideological communities where radical difference never truly confronts them…

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4 months ago · 2 likes · Artem Zen

I obviously place a lot of hope in the SCM and see it as an infrastructure and “medium condition” that makes possible what in politics, sociology, economics, and “common life” was never possible before, while at the same time training and developing subjectivity to receive and realize this potential. But more of that case needs to be made, a work we will now embark on, but not without an overview that can help situate us. Artem Zen invited me to a conversation titled “Belonging in an Age of Hyper-Fragmentation” (March 2026), and in an article he published about the conversation, he offered an invaluable summary and list that beautifully covers major points of the work of O.G. Rose so far:

‘Ten Takeaways from my conversation with Daniel L. Garner:

‘1. Society is caught between givens (unchosen structures that stabilize identity) and releases (freedoms from those structures) — and we haven’t figured out how to hold both simultaneously at scale.

‘2. The more people are freed from givens, the more everything must be chosen — and chosen things feel less authoritative, less grounding, and more existentially destabilizing.

‘3. Belonging and meaning are not the same thing. You can find deep meaning in ideas or practices that actually increase your isolation.

‘4. The very conditions that create belonging also create the conditions for the banality of evil — the quiet normalization of harm. This is the core dilemma.

‘5. When people can’t find belonging in new ways, they default to old ones — tribalism, strong men, isolationism. People will get their belonging one way or another.

‘6. Global pluralism isn’t just knowing other worldviews exist — it’s when your neighbor holds them. That daily, unexpected encounter with radical difference draws your deepest identity into question at any moment.

‘7. The moment of discomfort when encountering radical otherness is not a failure — it is the actual site of transformation. Lack and negativity are openings, not obstacles.

‘8. Real belonging can’t be built only in intentional or retreat spaces. It has to begin with the unfiltered, unselected encounter with real difference in everyday life.

‘9. The form of subjectivity needed today is one that holds its worldview as useful and authoritative while simultaneously knowing it is not the whole truth.

’10. The most dangerous thing is not what you know you don’t know — it’s what you don’t know you don’t know. Regular encounters with otherness are the only reliable antidote to self-deception.’¹³⁵

A fantastic list, and I would also stress the need for a new “Manhattan Project” to formulate “a costly perennialism” based on Gödel Points. We’ve discussed these points through our journey, but restating them here is useful to reorientate us before our next steps, after having discussed Dream-Equality and why we are not naturally “toward” forming the subjecting we need to be Children (A/B). A new infrastructure is needed to (re)form us indirectly, as the SCM can. But let us begin making that case and also argue why we are justified to focus on the SCM, seeing as “the way is shut.” If we fail, Hikikomorism and Rage await.

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Notes

¹²⁷What seems to have been individually experienced by mystics now seems globally needed to spread to some degree of critical mass. Manifestation sublates overcoming, blossomed in the attentive waiting for the hour, as difficult and paramount in the Fourth Turning.

¹²⁸For more, please see Writing for (a) First Cause from Philosophy Portal Press, as can be found here:
https://philosophyportal.online/all-books

¹²⁹For more, please see “Why Enlightenment Doesn’t Exist” by Eliot Rosenstock, as can be found here:

Hyperpsychology

Why Enlightenment Doesn't Exist

Flow as a Negation…

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a year ago · 7 likes · Hyperpsychology

¹³⁰For more, “Ethical Processing Units” by Nance could be found at
https://nanceee.substack.com/ethical-processing-units

¹³¹For more, please see :The Intelligence Arms Race” by Matthew Stanley, as can be found here:

Moloch Theory

The Intelligence Arms Race

The shuttle finally arrived at 6:17 PM. I was shivering in the dark outside LaGuardia, and although I had been awake since 3:30 that morning, I was still staring down a couple more hours in a van before I arrived in New Haven, CT…

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a year ago · 22 likes · 8 comments · Matthew Stanley

¹³²For more, please see :The Intelligence Arms Race” by Matthew Stanley, as can be found here:

Moloch Theory

The Intelligence Arms Race

The shuttle finally arrived at 6:17 PM. I was shivering in the dark outside LaGuardia, and although I had been awake since 3:30 that morning, I was still staring down a couple more hours in a van before I arrived in New Haven, CT…

Read more

a year ago · 22 likes · 8 comments · Matthew Stanley

¹³³For more, please see :The Intelligence Arms Race” by Matthew Stanley, as can be found here:

Moloch Theory

The Intelligence Arms Race

The shuttle finally arrived at 6:17 PM. I was shivering in the dark outside LaGuardia, and although I had been awake since 3:30 that morning, I was still staring down a couple more hours in a van before I arrived in New Haven, CT…

Read more

a year ago · 22 likes · 8 comments · Matthew Stanley

¹³⁴For more, see the conversation with Jacob Kishere on SENSESPACE titled “The Medium IS the Message,” as can be found here:

¹³⁵For more, see “Belonging in an Age of Hyper-Fragmentation,” as can be found here:

Insighter

🌀 Belonging in an Age of Hyper-Fragmentation

When society's fundamental assumptions collapse, we are left with a dizzying freedom — one that tempts many to retreat into isolation or cluster into ideological communities where radical difference never truly confronts them…

Read more

4 months ago · 2 likes · Artem Zen

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O.G. Rose (YouTube)

Deleuze and Guattari have always been righter and more prophetic than what I have wanted to admit, and for years I have circled them, taken them on, pulled back, orbited them again, and reengaged. I find them impossible to be finished with, however much I might want to be, and I do wish they would not have positioned themselves in stark opposition to psychoanalysis with their schizoanalysis: as the great Terence Blake also argues, I don’t think reconciliation is impossible. Here in II.2, I find myself having to consider them again, particularly in light of the SCM, which I would argue they needed for their socioeconomic and political project to not ironically favor the fascism that Michael Foucault saw D&G as opposing (they were too early). Perhaps only because we have not gone “far enough” in their liberating project? Perhaps. Always perhaps. (Land waits).

In his Preface to Anti-Oedipus, Foucault describes ‘the three adversaries’ of the text as 1) ‘those who would preserve the pure order of politics and political discourses’; 2) ‘psychoanalysts and semiologists of every sign and systems — who would subjugate the multiplicity of desire to the twofold law of structure and lack’; and 3) ‘the major enemy […] the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us’ (A/A-ness, of Dream-Equality).⁶³ Foucault goes on to list ‘essential principles’ that can be extracted from D&G’s work; he writes:⁶⁴

1. ‘Free political action from all unitary and totalizing paranoia.

2. ‘Develop action, thought, and desires by proliferation, juxtaposition, and disjunction, and not by subdivision and pyramidal hierarchization.

3. ‘ […] Prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic.

4. ‘Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant […] It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation) that possesses revolutionary force.

5. ‘Do not use thought to ground a political practice in Truth; nor political action to discredit, as mere speculation, a line of thought. Use political practice as an intensifier of thought, and analysis as a multiplier of the forms of domains for the intervention of political action.

6. ‘Do not demand of politics that it restore the ‘rights’ of the individuals […] The individual is the product of power. What is needed is to ‘de-individualize’ by means of multiplication and displacement, diverse combinations. The group must not be the organic bond uniting hierarchized individuals, but a constant generator of de-individualization.

7. ‘Do not become enamored of power.’⁶⁵

A remarkable list, one I believe the SCM expresses. Foucault ends his Preface with a description of D&G’s work:

‘The traps of Anti-Oedipus are those of humor: so many invitations to let oneself be put out, to take one’s leave of the text and slam the door shut. The book often leads one to believe it is all fun and games, when something essential is taking place, something of extreme seriousness: the tracking down of all varieties of fascism, from the enormous ones that surrounded and crush us to the petty ones that constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our everyday lives.’⁶⁶

Well written, but my concern has always been how D&G might devolve into chaos and “the loss of social intelligibility,” without which the average person will be overwhelmed by “existential instability” into desiring the very fascism which D&G worked to stop. Without the SCM, I don’t this irony can be avoided — D&G came too early, before the needed material infrastructure — but that will have to be explained. To do so, we will focus on a concept that has helped me grasp D&G anew. Admittedly, I do not feel equipped to elucidate D&G’s work well — for that, see Terence Blake — nevertheless, “transversality” has helped me understand D&G and relate them to the SCM (even if it is all a great misreading).

Terence Blake (Website)

“Transversality” is a mathematical notion regarding intersection, but while something “tangential” touches on a single point and even “coincidentally” — if things are said to “be tangential,” we suggest their connection is not significant in some sense — what is “transversal” touches and makes contact in a very significant way without blurring and becoming identical. In a sense, what is “tangential” doesn’t really intersect, while what is “transversal” does, and it is this reality that deserves attention, for it defines the world far more than we often realize: everything around is “always already” a multiplicity. When I am emotionally stressed, there is a multitude of processes that occur simultaneously even if they are not identical, meaning the processes aren’t tangential but transversal: there is a biological reality (my heart rate increases), a psychological reality (my mind races), a social reality (my status could be at risk), and so on — Alexander Elung might call these “vectors.” It simply seems impossible to be stressed and not have all these processes occur at the same time, as it seems impossible for the phrase, “I am happy,” to be meaningful to others without it incorporating many dimensions and processes at once: we require the language, the sounds, the associating of smiling with a certain emotion, the possibility of spatial connection, and so on. What Deleuze and Guattari (D&G) want to stress is that these processes relate not coincidentally but much more necessarily, meaning it is this transversality that we should focus on versus each vector by itself (that biological, psychological, emotional, etc. processes occur together, not each independent of this simultaneous arising). Is there something like a “substance” between vectors making them act together? Well, in a sense, if “relations are real.”

In the past, I have thought about the epistemology of D&G as seeking “overlap” between worldviews, systems, etc., and though arguably a misunderstanding, I don’t think “overlap” and “transversality” are radically at odds: the idea of overlap was that if x appeared in System 1, 2, and 3, there would be reason to believe x was worth investigating. This is distinct from investigating System 1 or System 2 to realize internal consistency or something; when we look for “overlap,” we are looking for something that keeps manifesting in difference circumstances, meaning there is likely something to it (“overlap” can help us find something like “correspondence” without falling into a problematic “correspondence theory of truth” — but it also could be madness). Where there is “overlap,” x might transverse 1 and 2, meaning x participates in both without collapsing 1 into 2. In a world where we are susceptible to being “captured” by our “systems” and/or “maps,” seeking “overlap” and what “traverses” them can be a powerful tool to help us avoid enclosure. And in my view, the SCM could help us live and spread “an infrastructure of epistemological overlap,” which could help with “the problem of internally consistent systems” and other matters discussed in O.G. Rose.

For the first time, the SCM materially affords possibilities of “Deleuzian Ontoepistemology” to humanity. As an example, what are the chances that people who specialize on different thinkers will encounter each other and find “overlap” without regular encounters like what the SCM enables? Low, and even if specialists with overlap potential did encounter one another in the past, the likelihood they realized that potential due to “the introduction problem” was unlikely: it was too difficult to get “everyone up to speed” on average enough to make possible new associations, ideas, connections, etc. The “academic conference” sought to overcome these problems, the full potential for which the SCM can help realizes. (Is this why philosophy can feel like “it’s just getting started”?)

We’ll go into much greater detail later, but countless conversations are happening on the SCM, which is “a flow of multiplicity” that can interact not just tangentially but deeply: a single person can watch five different conversations, bringing them together within themselves. In the past, it was remarkably difficult to attend five different college lectures on five different thinkers, but now I can listen to one as I do my laundry, another as a fix a cabinet, and another just before bed (without spending much money): whereas in the past logistically and temporarily coordinating myself to attend each lecture would have been onerous and something I couldn’t do often (especially with work and kids), now it is far easier and something I can do daily. Furthermore, I can rewatch any of the lectures anytime, change the playback speed, pause, type notes — the ways I can interact with the material is far greater. I can leave comments which might start conversations, find people who want to discuss the material who themselves have uniquely “gathered up multiplicities” into themselves (affording “social network effects”), and more. The SCM also reduces the sheer manual labor of learning and research, making it much easier to achieve mastery and so realize deep “overlap” between fields, people, notions, etc. It’s also easier to find people with specialization who are willing to talk and engage across fields (not all specialists are), which the SCM affords while also reducing the logistical demands, making it easier to keep this engagement ongoing and developing. The fruits can also be recorded and shared with people who can enjoy them on their own time and in a way that matches their learning style, and if a viewer hears two experts say something the viewer doesn’t understand, the viewer can pause the video, go do some research, return back later, and so on. And there no grades, so people won’t feel judged for their learning speeds, styles, etc., or feel a need to justify themselves to others.

As helpful for handling diversity and making it relatable in Global Pluralism, for most of history, “the introduction problem” (as we’ll discuss) was too great for a critical mass of people to arise who could find “overlap” between their different interests, specialization, etc. at a deep level: connections and comparisons were possible, but they were often simple and tangential. Now, infrastructure is in place for more transversal connections between Heidegger and Hegel, Economics and Sociology, Language Game 1 and LG 2, etc. — a “Transversal Generalist” is now possible versus a “Tangential Generalist,” which profoundly enables Childhood and its spread in it affording us greater potential to make difference and “otherness” more relatable (and meaningfully so). In the past, if there were “overlaps” between Christianity and Hinduism (for example), which could afford connections and means of relations between the two religions, the likelihood of us realizing those connections or “overlaps” due to “the introduction problem” — which is generally the issue of having to learn enough about a thing to meaningfully discuss it — were low. Perhaps a scholar who dedicated years of work to the study could find them, but even if a scholar so succeeded, he’d have to go manually share his findings with others (he lacked recording and distribution technology), and how many people could that one person reach before the internet and easy access to videos and recording? Furthermore, it was a lot harder to get multiple people informed enough in both Hinduism and Christianity to discuss and debate the “overlaps” between them, and ideas need interaction to fully develop and be tested. It was harder to form a community around the potential connections, meaning that the connections could seem more imagined by some lone individual who wanted to see connections — it was far harder to form “plausibility structures” around new “overlaps.”

Also, if a scholar found connections between Christianity and Hinduism, what about between Atheism and Hinduism or Hayek and Kirk? It could take years to find, realize, and defend “overlap” between x and y that was significant and deep (transversal), let alone between x and z or x-informed-by-y and z (work which again could help make difference and “otherness” intelligible). The rate by which we “encountered otherness” has accelerated and is greater than what traditional education and scholarship could keep up with, and a result the “diversity” has mostly been to us unintelligible and overwhelming. Education with “overlaps” was not something we ourselves could easily participate in or know about unless we worked in or attended a university, meanings its resources for handling Global Pluralism were out of reach for most. But the SCM has changed everything, greatly accelerating and expanding the scope of scholarship, making it possible for us to not only find “overlaps” quicker and deeper, but to also spread and share those “overlaps” online to people who can now learn about them while doing laundry at forty with kids. This is the “lifelong learning” necessary for D&G’s political project and for Global Pluralism to avoid self-effacement: the problem has been that Global Pluralism arrived before did the SCM.

The problem of “tangential overlap,” of false connections, has been a significant problem in history, and so for good reason there has been a skepticism of “the connecting generalist” in favor of “the focused specialist” — but I would argue this follows from a lack of infrastructure, not some essential reality of learning and thinking. It is remarkably hard to find overlap in Difference that honors Difference without watering it down, and simply before the SCM we didn’t have the infrastructure to “connect well” on average; hence, we were not ready for the Global Pluralism (we brought on early). Also, before the SCM, we mostly had to decide to search for connections between things, say Hegel and Aristotle, versus “find ourselves surprised by grasping possible connections,” which makes a big difference and leads to “pre-framing problems.” If we look for connections, we might see things that aren’t there because we’ve primed ourselves to see them, but in the past, it was arguably impossible for us to be regularly and easily “surprised by connections,” due to the logistical demand and restraints. Might we just have happened to come across two people discussing Hegel and Aristotle? Sure, but that was unlikely, meaning we had to find and bring together those people, an effort which could make us invested and so wanting to find connections to make the time, energy, and money not feel wasted, reducing the chance that those connections were valid.

If we search for connections, we set the frame in which that search occurs, “framing out” possible connections from the start. But how could we put together an academic conference without using a “frame” that made that conference intelligible so that we could attract scholars, funding, etc.? We couldn’t, decreasing the probability of valuable “overlap,” meaning a better bet for putting together a conference would be to design it around specialists and specialization. Specialists discussing the details and fine points of their subjects aren’t so much at risk of seeing “false connections,” and everyone in attendance would also generally share a similar “language.” A conference which on the other hand brought people together of different specializations might put a bunch of people together in a room who don’t understand one another, especially not at a high level, and experts might not take kindly to being put in a situation where they felt like novices again (note also that the likelihood of realizing “valuable connections” can correlate with how much the people of different specializations personally like one another, which is hard to realize when dealing with Difference, and without an SCM this arrangement would be rare). And so the conference would likely fail, making such an effort irrational, and indeed, before the SCM such efforts were in a way irrational, but not because they were irrational, but because they needed infrastructure which was not yet present.

Now, of course, there is still searching online, but the likelihood of “stumbling upon something” or “overhearing something” is far higher. “Surprising connections” (which we are prepared for) are more reliable (though not always) than “planned connections,” but before the SCM there was no infrastructure that increased the likelihood of “surprising connections” for the average person: the closest we had was arguably the university system, where diverse people of diverse background could “surprisingly encounter” one another (and please note how much of an impact such spaces have had on the world, suggesting the potential of the SCM, which greatly enables such spaces). How exactly to “best realize surprising connections” is not obvious, but the SCM allows efforts, reconfigurations, and experiments that in the past were too onerous. An academic conference can take months to organize, but an SCM gathering can be every Thursday with people from all around the world for an hour before dinner.

Psychoanalysis and Transversality

Anyway, to return to D&G, though I don’t believe the point is misguided, nevertheless “overlap” is not a term D&G notably use (as far as I can tell). “Transversality” is more appropriate, a term which Guattari is the first to use in “Psychoanalysis and Transversality” that Deleuze later absorbs, and admittedly, the term is not used often by Deleuze, though I think its spirit permeates his work. As an example, the term appears in A Thousand Plateaus where he writes with Guattari (I’d suggest the whole section, “1837: Of The Refrain”):

‘[…] a distinction between matter and life, or rather, since there is only one matter, between two states, two tendencies of atomic matter […] Stating the distinction in the most general way, we could say that it is between stratified systems or systems of stratification on the one hand, and consistent self-consistent aggregates on the other. But the point is that consistency, far from being restricted to complex life forms, fully pertains even to the most elementary atoms and particles. There is a coded system of stratification whenever, horizontally, there are linear causalities between elements; and, vertically, hierarchies of order between groupings; and, holding it all together in depth, a succession of framing forms, each of which informs a substance in turn serves as a substance for another form. These causalities, hierarchies, and framings constitute a stratum, as well as the passage from one stratum to another, and the stratified combinations of the molecular and molar. On the other hand, we may speak of aggregates of consistency when instead of a regulated succession of forms-substances we are presented with consolidations of very heterogeneous elements, orders that have been short-circuited or even reverse causalities, and captures between materials and forces of a different nature: as if a machine phylum, a destratifying transversality, moved through elements, orders, forms, and substances, the molar and molecular, freeing a matter and tapping forces.’⁶⁷

More prominent concepts are “rhizomatic” and “(de)terrorization” in D&G, but I think these both relate and can be thought with “transversality.”68 Guattari’s use of the term “transversality” is not metaphysical like how it is in Deleuze, and yet nevertheless there is overlap with an orientation to “liberation” from over-terrorization. As Helen Palmer and Stanimir Panayotov put it:

‘Transversality begins for Guattari with the dismantling of the dual analytic relation between analyst/analysand in favour of a more collective psychotherapy. Rather than transference, which is the libidinal tie between analyst and analysand that allows for pathologies to be enacted and eventually cured, transversality opens previously closed avenues of movement and perception to produce an entirely new constitution of the institution or group. The degree of openness of these avenues is what Guattari calls the coefficient of transversality.’⁶⁹

“Transversality” enables movements and “flows” between all levels, coherences, and systems, and the greater the movement, the greater the potential for connections, surprises, emergences, etc. Guattari did not seek to erase organizational distinctions, but to make sure there were continual “flows” and movements between the organizational levels; that way, something new could emerge via transversality (though without the right infrastructure, say the SCM, all this would inevitably collapse). And this “transversal” could then hold the organization together, as metaphysically it is the “transversal” that a thing “is” (as a “(be)coming”) that makes it (itself). As Deleuze writes in A Thousand Plateaus:

‘What holds all the components together are transversals, and the transversal itself is only a component that has taken upon itself the specialized vector of deterritorialization. In effect, what holds an assemblage together is not the play of framing forms or linear causality, but, actually or potentially, its most deterritorialized component, a cutting edge of deterritorization.’⁷⁰

A notable expression by Deleuze of “transversality” can be found in Proust and Signs:

‘in a world reduced to a multiplicity of chaos, it is only the formal structure of the work of art, insofar as it does not refer to anything else, that can serve as a unity — afterwards […] But the whole problem is to know on what this formal structure rests and how it gives the parts and the style a unity that they would not have without it. Now, we have previously seen, in the most diverse directions, the importance of a transversal dimension, in Proust’s work: transversality. It is transversality that permits us, in the train, not to unify the viewpoints of a landscape, but to bring them into communication according to the landscape’s own dimension in its own dimension, whereas they remain noncommunicating according to their own dimension. It is the transversality that constitutes the singular unity and totality of the Méséglise Way and of the Guermantes Way, without suppressing their differences or distance […] Such is time, the dimension of the narrator, which has the power to be the whole of these parts without totalizing them, the unity of these parts without unifying them.’⁷¹ ⁷²

What are the philosophical and practical ramifications of this point? Well, to inquire into what “is” biology is not the same as looking into the simultaneous occurrences of biology, emotion, and socialization, and what D&G want to stress is that “sense” arises “between” and thanks to this co-occurring of heterogeneous processes (what D&G means by “transversality” perhaps relates with “the metaxological” of William Desmond). ‘What is signified is never sense itself,’ because “the sense” is “between” what can be signified, and there is “always already” multiple things that can be signified at the same time, meaning there is always opportunity for “making sense.”⁷³ Nothing would make sense if nothing occurred together, and there is nowhere where things don’t occur together, meaning there can be “sense” everywhere (and perhaps “where more occurs together,” like on the SCM, the more sense that is possible). And yet everything occurring together is not the same as each occurring “by” each: everything can make sense because everything is a multiplicity. And this seems empirical: to truly find a truly isolated process seems impossible. Math? Math is done in a physical world through a mind? When has math just “unfolded” with math?

As Deleuze puts it in The Logic of Sense, ‘the serial form is necessarily realized in the simultaneity of at least two series.’⁷⁴ What does this mean? By “serial form,” we can think of “a sequence,” and consider that a biological process follows a sequence of occurrences (“food is eaten; there is digestion; energy is gained”), as a chemical process follows a sequence (“alkene to alcohol to aldehyde”), and so on regarding Physics, Economics, Literature, etc. Especially for humans, what Deleuze is arguing is that no series occurs by itself: there is “always already” multiple series at once; to act as a human is to always act across vectors (if Biology is undergoing a sequence, so is Chemistry and Physics). ‘The serial form is thus essentially multi-serial,’ as Deleuze says, which means there is “a multiplicity unfolding together”: there is no “single series unfolding” or “isolated process” (which suggest how “relations could saturate into relata,” as Alex Ebert puts it).⁷⁵ And these series aren’t identical — ‘[t]he law governing two simultaneous series is that they are never equal’ — and yet series must be simultaneous to “make sense.”⁷⁶ Do things have to make sense to exist? Or do only things that make sense exist? That’s an important question, one we might have to consider another time with Hegel and things “dialectically unfolding” (which might not be as opposite to “transversality” as it can seem).

Deleuze writes that ‘when we extend the serial method — in order to consider two series of events […] — homogeneity is only apparent: it is always the case that one series has the role of the signifier, and the other the role of the signified, even if these roles are interchanged as we change points of view.’⁷⁷ Ultimately, ‘[t]here is an essential lack of correspondence,’ and yet even if a given series cannot be said to necessarily correspond with this or that, the reality two or more series arise together can be said to occur (there is “an event” versus “correspondence”).⁷⁸ I might not be able to say what “emotion is,” but I can say that the experience and actions of emotion occur with the biological processes that afford them, as those biological processes occur with the chemical processes that afford them, as those chemical processes occur with the physical processes that afford them, and so on (likewise, I might not be able to say that x idea is right on the SCM, but I can say x brought up and/or connected with y, etc.). What each of these vectors mean, and if it is possible for me to understand them alone, is what D&G suggests many intellectuals have mistakenly done for most of history. Instead, D&G wants to focus on the simultaneous occurrence of all these realities (“overlap”), focusing on connection and “situation” (alluding to Korzybski).

As far I can tell, there is a double meaning of the term “transversal” in D&G: it suggests “radical contact between processes, vectors, etc.” and at the same “that which traverses through processes, vectors, etc.” — an ambiguity I think is intentional so that D&G avoids suggesting there is an identifiable thing that crosses processes (the radical interaction generates “the thoroughness” between them: never does what emerges through them leave them behind). There is no stable “being” only “becoming,” and “transversality” seems to point to the reality that 1) there is always multiple processes occurring at once, and 2) “things” are “becomings” which emerge thanks to the deep interactions of the multiple processes. Since there are no “stable identities” in D&G, “transversality” must point both to the way the world “is/‘processes’ ” and that be identical with (the things in the world)/(how the world manifests). D&G are famous for the term “dividuals” versus “individuals,” and “transversality” means regarding people both “dividuals” and the world that affords “dividuals,” or else there will be a break between them that individuates. Is there no room for “individualization” in D&G? Well, it depends: the person can be a point where “flows” are fully realized, and in that sense we can “individualize” — and yet that is also a point in D&G where we no longer can identify the line between us and the world (like the schizophrenic, a loss of “AT Field,” per se): “the individual” hence “saturates” into “the dividual” (alluding to Ebert) — or self-effaces (both?).

Also, when there is “a surprising encounter,” there is more reason to believe that the processes which occur simultaneously must arise together (“transversal”): if the encounter is not surprising, there’s a chance someone or something coordinated them together somehow (say subconsciously) (“tangential”).⁷⁹ What occurs together when we aren’t expecting anything is that which is more likely to actually be together somehow (though not necessarily, hence a need for regular testing), and so an environment of “surprising encounter” is optimal for discerning the tangential from the transversal.⁸⁰ Describing “difference-in-itself,” the Early Deleuze makes the example of a lightning bolt, an example which can also help us think “transversality” and why it necessarily has a “surprising quality”; he writes:

‘The difference ‘between’ two things is only empirical, and the corresponding determinations are only extrinsic. However, instead of something distinguished from something else, imagine something which distinguishes itself — and yet that from which it distinguishes itself does not distinguish from it. Lighting, no example, distinguishes itself from the black sky but must also trail it behind, as though it were distinguishing itself from that which does not distinguish from it. It is as if the ground rose to the surface, without ceasing to be ground […] Difference is this state in which determination takes the form of unilateral distinction. We must therefore say that difference is made, or makes itself, as in the expression ‘make the difference.’ ’⁸¹

“Lighting” is “difference-in-itself,” arising distinct from the clouds thanks to various “processes” overlapping and really intersecting, and yet it isn’t reducible to those enabling conditions. It is “surprising” and unpredictable, which is evidence that we are dealing with something “transversal.” Similarly, looking to the SCM, when ideas arise together that were not planned to rise together “in surprising encounter,” there’s a better chance these ideas aren’t just tangential. When we plan to think Heidegger and Hegel together, our connections are more likely just tangential, but when we are prepared to think them together and “just find ourselves doing such,” there’s a better chance for transversality. Couldn’t the connections be false? Of course, but that the connections occurred indeed occurred, and that they occurred could be creative to discuss and think all the same. Even if we’re wrong about what we think is there, there could nevertheless be “something there.”

Is the transversal character of reality necessary? Until we experience a reality of isolated processes, I would say there’s no reason to think otherwise. We can’t have certainty, no, but “practical certainty,” yes, and so it is fair to live as if reality is transversal, and so as if what is transversal is real. If this is so, the more we can be “transversal,” the more we might be “like reality,” which there is a long history of philosophy and theology encouraging. The SCM can help us be “transversal,” which means it can help us be “more like reality” and ourselves. It is the infrastructure we have needed to “have being,” which ultimately in Hegel is “becoming,” and it turns out there is only “transversal becoming,” an “unfolding multiplicity together” — like Dante’s turning birds in Paradiso. The more we design social spaces that are transversal in character, the better the chance we’ll be like reality and so align with it. If the classical notion of “alignment with being is important” has truth, this matters. Furthermore, it is one thing for us to be transversal without knowing it, and another thing for us to live with our minds formed transversally, which is a matter of habits and so “spaces” we inhabit.

If reality is more transversal than tangential, then it is important we are “toward” reality as if it is such — and yet our institutions might have habituated us the opposite way. The division of school into specialties that only “tangentially touch,” for example, in helping form environments that then habituate us against the transversal (in a transversal reality), could be self-effacing. But the SCM could help correct this: it is a social infrastructure that gives the average person increasing access to environments where transversality can occur and be experienced. Though I don’t always use the language of “transversality,” I often discuss “surprise” and Encounterology, which we can associate with D&G in this way (and honestly this seems like another example where something that seemed new wasn’t so new after all). But is society really “against transversality” somehow? We’d seemingly only need a new social infrastructure if the society formed us “against transversality,” but does it? Perhaps much more in the past, before “the loss of givens,” but this is where D&G wants us to consider Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the latter of which I will capitalize to signify the ontological and metaphysical sense by which D&G mean it. For D&G, the schizophrenic patient is a revelation of Schizophrenic reality, which puts them at odds with ontological Lack suggested by Žižek and Lacan, but perhaps not as much as it would seem (or so I think and Terrence Blake argues, considering Lack could be a River-Hole). Capitalism works because it most embraces Schizophrenia without becoming schizophrenic, but how it succeeds in this can be problematic (and doomed to expire given economic stagnation).

II

Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a two volume set by D&G consisting of Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus (or three volumes if we include What Is Philosophy?). We could consider Vol I as focusing on people in systems (lowercase schizophrenia), while Vol II is more focused on reality itself (what I’ll call uppercase-Schizophrenia). Again, Terence Blake is more equipped to explain these books than me, and I will speak very broadly, but it seems to me that Vol I is primarily trying to challenge psychoanalysis as a ruling paradigm for understanding people in favor of schizoanalysis, while Vol II then makes the step of arguing that this move is justified by, and alignment with, reality itself. The final paragraph of Anti-Oedipus frames well key differences between schizoanalysis and psychoanalysis:

‘What, finally, is the opposition between schizoanalysis and psychoanalysis, when the negative and positive tasks of schizoanalysis are taken as a whole? We constantly contrasted two sorts of unconscious or two interpretations of the unconscious: the one schizoanalytic, the other psychoanalytic; the one schizophrenic, the other neurotic-Oedipal […] We have seen how the negative task of schizoanalysis must be violent, brutal: defamiliarizing, de-oedipalizing, decastrating; undoing theater, dream, and fantasy; decoding, deterritorializing — a terrible curettage, a malevolent activity. But everything happens at the same time. For at the same time the process is liberated — the process of desiring-production, following its molecular lines of escape that already define the mechanic’s task of the schizoanalyst. And the lines of escape are still full molar or social investments at grips with the whole social field: so that the task of schizoanalysis is ultimately that of discovering for every case the nature of the libidinal investments of the social field, their possible internal conflicts, their relationships with the preconscious investments of the same field, their position conflicts with these — in short, the entire interplay of the desiring-machines and the repression of desire. Completing the process and not arresting it, not making it turn about in the void, not assigning it a goal. We’ll never go too far with the deterritorialization, the decoding of flows. For the new earth […] is not to be found in the neurotic or perverse reterritorializations that arrest the process or assign it goals; it is no more behind than ahead, it coincides with the completion of the process of desiring-production, this process that is always and already complete as it proceeds, and as long as it proceeds. It therefore remains for us to see how, effectively, simultaneously, these various tasks of schizoanalysis proceed.’⁸²

This paragraph helps deconstruct the notion that there is “pure positivity” in D&G — there’s room for negativity, as Dr. Blake stresses — as it also helps us see why D&G can lead to Accelerationism, as popularly associated with Nick Land. If reality is Schizophrenic, efforts to repress and deny this are arguably doomed (efforts D&G seem to associate with psychoanalysis), and since Capitalism is already “like Schizophrenia” socioeconomically, what we can do is simply intensify Capitalism to itself until commodification can no longer manage to “hold back” the “flows” and multiplicity, ‘[…] the process of desiring-production.’⁸³ This is the revolutionary potential in Capitalism that is Capitalism, possible in Capitalism fully realizing itself beyond commodification as Schizophrenic. What will happen? If we could say ahead of time, the result would be commodifiable: it must be “an event” that cannot be predictable before it occurs, or else it will only be appearance of revolution that serves the established.

To slow down and elaborate, D&G associate schizophrenia with a state where no associations, connections, “flows,” or the like can be denied: the schizophrenic subject finds themselves a pure multiplicity, saying “yes” to all of it. “Cat” rhymes with “hat,” so the schizophrenic must think of “hat”; the tree outside looks like the tree by the local grocery store, so the schizophrenic looks outside and discusses the local grocery store; and so on. Connections are reality: it is not so much that they are possibilities as they are “the case.” While most people might naturally experience the world “as if a collection of stable facts,” the schizophrenic more so experiences reality as “a multiplicity of flows” (“flows” replace “facts,” we might say), which for D&G is a subjectivity more like reality itself. In this way, the schizophrenic is unable to generate a map that isn’t “like” the (Schizophrenic) territory, which means the schizophrenic map is “too much like” what it represents, and so, in its accuracy, it proves unusable (like the Borges story shows). The schizophrenic map can’t differentiate itself from the territory of “flows” and multiplicity, and so it can’t be meaningfully said by the subject to be distinct from it. The subject and/or “map” hence dissolve, but in realizing this, D&G wants us to realize the truth of Capitalism versus treat the schizophrenic as “other” and outside consideration.

Schizophrenia is when “nothing is held back,” for D&G: all “flows” run unimpeded. Alluding to Part I, Capitalism is schizophrenic in that it “removes all givens” and hence liberates all “flows” and processes: sexuality is no longer regulated by religion, so can “flow” freely; social spaces are no longer regulated by social etiquette, so the desires of people can “flow” in social spaces as they want; events like baseball games are no longer regulated by traditions where say the rich and poor both watch the game from the same bleachers (an example Michael Sandel makes in his book What Money Can’t Buy), and so money and capital and “flow” more freely into baseball; and so on. Capitalism wants access to every possible “flow,” because “flows” are endlessly productive (moved by their own movement) for the system, and so Capital removes “the givens” that keep it from accessing (endless) “flows”; once those are accessed, Capital then keeps those “flows” from overwhelming us by training us into “the metajudgment” of commodification.

For D&G, Capitalism works well as schizophrenic for it is the system most like reality as Schizophrenic. Reality is “ontologically Schizophrenic,” and so is Capitalism, but Capitalism manages to stabilize and contain the “ontological Schizophrenia” through commodification. There are countless, unstoppable flows and processes, but by spreading “the metajudgment” of commodification (“the equal sign,” exchangeability, A/A, etc.), the system is able to make reality “manageable, ”but do notice the double meaning of that term: Capitalism makes us able to handle multiplicity (as if all the same in commodification), but it also makes us something the system can handle. A problem D&G had with Capitalism is both that it made us “capturable,” and that it denied its schizophrenic core, which lead to it oppressing those who were schizophrenic and unveiled the quality of the system to itself. This was a great injustice and arguably unsustainable: it meant the system operated necessarily by power and oppression, and it also denied us the opportunity to see what the world would be like that deeply embraced multiplicity. To make Capitalism experience itself, D&G emphasized increasing and proliferating “intensities,” but how this is done matters. Is it done alongside a multiplicity of value-forms and metajudgments (as enabled by the SCM)? If not, self-effacement might spread.

Capitalism trains us into a metajudgment of A/A that makes Capitalism function, but Capitalism also unleashes “flows” from “givens” in order to create (ever-flowing) new markets and extend old ones. Capitalism seeks to “hold nothing back,” but at the same time it funnels everything through commodification so that we are not overwhelmed. The subtle difference between the schizophrenic subject and Capitalism as schizophrenic is that while the subject lacks a way to contain and direct the “flows,” Capitalism is in a sense not “totally schizophrenic” in that it can still manage the “flows” via commodification. We earlier in II.2 discussed “the metajudgment,” and what we can say is that Capitalism unleashes all possible “flows” (extending markets) precisely so that they are not protected from the commodification that at the same time protects us from those “flows.” In the A/A-metajudgment, the multiplicity all “equal” in exchangeability (A/A), and so the multiplicity doesn’t overwhelm us: we toy with Lovecraft and live (for now). And since we find “the understanding of commodification” pleasurable (as discussed in II.1), we happily engage in the work of managing the multiplicity via commodification in favor of markets, especially as Global Pluralism intensifies: the work of commodification saves us from this displeasure of anxiety.

How is D&G’s schizoanalysis distinct from Lacan? Whereas psychoanalysis generally wants to emphasis Capitalism as a system that uses our “lack” against us, in the sense that it promises us goods that will “fill our lack” though they never do, keeping the system ever-going, D&G wants to instead argue that there is an ontological reality of “flows” and multiplicity that are ever-going already, and that what Capitalism does is simply “tap into” and direct those ever-flow(s) to the point where we as consumers become like schizophrenics and cannot stop them, yet at the same time Capitalism trains us into “the metajudgment of commodification” so that these “flows” don’t overwhelm us like they do the actual schizophrenic. For D&G, these “flows” are actively productive and generative, and so Capitalism can develop and grow by employing them in its favor, versus the growth of Capitalism be due to a psychoanalytical “lack” that we are trying to overcome, and our efforts to overcome “lack” be what generate the system and economy. Since these “flows” produce (for good and for bad), Capitalism can increase its productivity by increasing the movement of these “flows,” hence why it erases “givens” that hold Capital back. But this risks making us schizophrenic, as following Rieff “the loss of givens” will cause existential instability which makes totalitarianism appealing. Are “existential instability” and “D&G schizophrenia” identical? There are differences, but I do think they overlap and that the risk of “growing schizophrenia” is indeed a growing likelihood of being controlled: “the loss of givens” can lead to the rising of “a strong man” or an AI which can manage us as we lose the capacity for self-determination in a kind of schizophrenia (it’s likely Rieff and D&G simultaneously).

For D&G, Capitalism unleashes “a multiplicity of flows” from restrictions and “givens” while at the same time training us into commodification (A/A) to not be overwhelmed by that multiplicity, while for Lacan, Capitalism takes advantage of our “essential lack” with promises of fulfilling our “lack” away, while at the same time training us into commodification to find that promise intelligible, plausible, and something only the market can provide. The political project of liberation for Lacan can be found in “integrating with lack,” while for D&G it is found in accelerating the spread and multiplicity of “flows” until Capitalism can no longer deny it is fundamentally schizophrenic, opening up new possibilities. Neither schizoanalysis or psychoanalysis can say exactly what might happen thanks to their revolutionary activity, but both also make the point that if they could the revolutionary would be too neurotic, “top down,” and likely already commodified, so their lack of a clear prediction is understandable. Nevertheless, both require a significant risk, and history is full of examples of people trying to make the world a better place who as a result make it worse. Couldn’t both of these efforts repeat this mistake? Yes, but the SCM could help with the benefits without the negatives.

It’s another subject that deserves a book to unpack, but Žižek and his views on “quantum history,” which entail an “essential lack,” can be contrasted with D&G, who favor “fundamental multiplicity.” With Blake, I personally think these positions can be thought together, but it’s still the case that there is a tension that should be honored. Still, I think both of them ultimately point to a need for the SCM (and both can serve Dream-Equality), so regardless which is ultimately right, I think there is “reason to think” we should focus on the development of the SCM. To elaborate:

1. There is “an essential lack” that we need to realize, face, and be habituated to handle.

2. Or there is “an essential multiplicity” that we need to unleash, experience, and be habituated to handle.

3. The SCM trains us in Encounterology, A/B, “handling Otherness,” which are qualities both of “encountering lacking” and/or “encountering multiplicity”

4. Therefore, with psychoanalysis or schizoanalysis, we need an SCM.

In II.1 we discussed how working to “spread Childhood” is worth doing even if ultimately “a new address” is impossible, precisely because the subject and person benefit; similarly, we are suggesting that regardless if Žižek or D&G are right, the SCM is wise to employ. This isn’t to say the debate between Žižek or D&G doesn’t matter — it matters a lot — but that we can focus on the SCM before that debate is fully resolved. My personal leaning is toward Žižek, but over the years I find myself appreciating D&G, despite how much I was initially repulsed (Terence Blake is an invaluable trailblazer).

D&G seem to want to emphasize how Capitalism controls us via a “funneling of flows” (into A/A) versus what we see in psychoanalysis where Capitalism works by helping us “deny our lack” (as not fundamental). Perhaps D&G would say that the whole point of Capitalism is to “unleash flows” to a degree we cannot handle so that we must cling to the commodity-form (A/A) that benefits Capitalism to avoid self-effacement? That’s fair, but regardless the idea is that reality is a collection of constant flows, a great multiplicity, but Capitalism habituates us into A/A-being precisely so that this multiplicity doesn’t overwhelm us. If Capitalism is failing though, then far from a liberation, this could prove Lovecraftian; nevertheless, if to the degree we can handle “schizophrenia” is to the degree we can “spread Childlikeness,” “create demand,” etc., this is a risk we must take. In my view, our only hope would be a new way to stabilize the flows, and this is the hope of the SCM.

D&G suggest revolutionary potential in accelerating and spreading Capitalism precisely to the point where it can no longer handle the “flows” which it has unleashed: if it removes social etiquette at baseball games in favor of market opportunities but doesn’t also deconstruct gender boundaries, the revolutionist of D&G would favor deconstructing gender boundaries. Not necessarily because the revolutionist is so much against gender or the like, but because gender at this point would be keeping Capitalism from “seeing itself to itself,” helping it maintain “plausible deniability” of what it does and how it functions. Is that the right move? Maybe or maybe not, but my point here is to highlight why D&G favor a radical release and expression of “flows”: it is for the sake not so much of individual expression or freedom, but for unveiling Capitalism to itself to change “the conditions of possibility” of what our world might realize.

The revolutionary act in Capitalism that is Capitalistic can be for D&G to say that not even “human” is a fixed category, affording us the space to “become animal” not in a sense of imitation but in embracing energies and “flows” that free us from fixity into new social formations like a wolf pack that co-creates both the wolf and the pack (though until the SCM, I don’t think this was possible without chaos). This might seem absurd, and certainly it threatens social intelligibility, but that’s also the revolutionary point: for people to free themselves from rigid categories and identifications is to force Capitalism to see what it is doing — all “plausible deniability” is lost. I don’t think D&G are entirely wrong, but whereas they would want to accelerate the “unleashing of flows” to intensify the schizophrenic multiplicity of the system (that aligns with Schizophrenic reality), I would want to instead accelerate the spread of different metajudgments and Value-Form Competition. Indeed, there’s a sense in which I favor accelerating Capitalism like D&G suggest, but that instead of “unleashing flows” I want to spread and multiply metajudgments and value-forms. Is that really “accelerating Capitalism,” though? If Marx is right that Capitalism trains us into metajudgments and value-forms to make itself possible (as we discussed with “The Situation of Capital”), I think so, but instead of just unleashing “flows” thanks to and (in)to commodification, we are focused on generating “a multiplicity of values,” or otherwise we will suffer self-effacement before “the loss of givens” and “unleashing of flows” (Lovecraft). I personally don’t think we can be trained and habituated into new metajudgments without “facing lack,” hence why D&G and Lacan must be thought together, at the very least because we have to face our “lack of capacity” to handle “too much multiplicity” and/or “too much Otherness” at once. Can we improve and learn to handle more? I think so, but the work is never finished: there will always be “lack,” but that is also why there can always be “intrinsic motivation” — life.

Anyway, Capitalism trains subjectivity to “funnel” all the “flows” into the commodity (A/A), hence why “the multiplicity” (A/B) doesn’t destroy us (for good and for bad). As we learn from Marx, the problem is that we are habituated and “enclosed” into A/A-thinking, and as a result we can only “metajudge” reality according to exchangeability and the commodity-form. We are not diverse enough in our values and discernment, and in my view, if we “intensify flows” without also training and diversifying metajudgments and value-forms, we’ll be self-effaced. The hope might be that intensification of “flows” would force us to diversify our metajudgments to survive, but I’m not sure in that situation if we would be able to think that we needed to diversify our metajudgments versus buckle-down and intensifying our (doomed) efforts of commodification: if we are habituated into A/A but the consequences of A/A become unsustainable, I would not bet that this difficulty would lead to us considering A/B, for A/B might not be something we could even think. I don’t blame D&G for this emphasis on “intensifying and spreading flows” though, for they lived in an age before the SCM: what we are considering was not yet possible, lacking material infrastructure. But again, I believe D&G through “the multiplicity of flows” without “the multiplication of metajudgments” ironically ends up creating conditions that favor the fascism which they worked to stop.

Much more needs to be said to fully unpack D&G and compare them with Lacan: our point here is only to suggest that rather schizoanalysis, psychoanalysis, or a combination of both is right, a focus on developing the SCM is wise. Today, our choice is between a “Transversal SCM” that cultivates Attention against Affliction or “Schizophrenic Internet” that destroys Attention to cause Affliction (and the clock ticks). As we considered with Lorenzo’s work in II.1, I believe D&G point us to neurodiversity and mentidivergence (as we discussed with Simone Weil), which gives us the liberating potential of “transversing.” The SCM enables us to possibly stabilize multiplicity to us via metajudgment without, to itself, reducing its diversity and “flows” (helping us avoid schizophrenia without denying Schizophrenia). While Capitalism stabilized ontological Schizophrenia with the metajudgment of commodification, the SCM endeavors to ever-“catch and release” Schizophrenia through multiple metajudgments and value-forms (unmeditated Schizophrenia is Lovecraftian). Looking ahead, for D&G, the world arises from “crossings to structures,” not “structures to crossings”: the paths, “between spaces,” “roads,” and the like come first. Why does this matter? Because it provides a metaphysical and ontoepistemological foundation by which to approach works like that of Josephine Quinn (for example), who argues that the Silk Roads were just foundational as the civilizations which it connected. If this is so, there is more reason to believe the SCM could be a prime movement in “the new address.”

If everything is “flows,” then we need an infrastructure that enables and can manage “flows,” and that is what we have in the SCM (in which managing we might “create demand” versus just stimulate it, negate/sublate desire into drive, and other matters discussed in II.1.) “Transversal Connection” might also be thought of as “a new mode of exchange” and relating, alluding back to Karatani (D&G could point to “Mode D”). “Overlap” is when x and y form a connection with one another, and in that sense “exchange something” between them, and yet this is an exchange where both parties get to keep what they brought to the exchange, and both parties get to equally enjoy and partake in the gains. Neither x nor y have power over the other, nor does x or y have to “reduce” the other to understand and desire what is brought (like the commodity can train our metajudgment in its favor). “Overlap” is like the gift (Mode A), might “enable” one another (Illich) to deal with unknowns without direct protection (Mode B), and both sides feel to equally gain (Mode C). The “overlap” of the SCM could be more like “a voluntary association,” an exchange that is more like sharing and gifting beyond family that is Non-Zero Sum (Mode D) (a matter of spread versus just scale).

Alright, this all sounds nice, but why should we think the SCM could accomplish so much? In addition to metaphysical justifications, we have examples from history that help make the case. To begin that consideration, which I believe aligns with D&G, we will eventually examine the work of Lene Andersen and the Nordic Bildung, an education of the generalist, “flows,” exchange, and realizing fully humanity (which also suggests German Idealism and D&G are not as opposed as often thought). What Lene Andersen describes shares a spirit with the SCM, and this could also be an alignment of our system and material condition with “the learning universe” described by Brendan Graham Dempsey in his series titled, The Evolution of Meaning, which could also provide a cosmological reason to believe the SCM is “like reality” and so more likely to work. But what exactly — to use language more aligned with Dempsey — might the universe, say in us, be trying to teach itself about itself? Perhaps the art of handling its Multiplicity, which requires “integrating with Lack” (say as what enables the possibility of handling Multiplicity)? Multiplicity could define the universe, but the universe in us at this point only knows how to “be” a Multiplicity; it doesn’t know how to “be conscious” of itself as a Multiplicity and that not overwhelm it, in the sense that the awareness requires too much energy (it is too entropic without negentropic potential, as Paul Krafel discusses). The universe has not taught itself how to be conscious of itself in its fullness, but this seems impossible, because minds are finite, and even if it was “theoretically possible” for us to use rationality to learn the fullness of reality, this would be “practically impossible,” because the energy demands would be too high and/or we’d run out of time before we died, but even if somehow one person could do this, this awareness would likely not be shared by significant numbers to afford “social network effects” to enable profound creativity and thought. Could AI do this work? It might help, but if there is something about “knowing fully” and “going through the process of learning” that cannot be separated, then we must do this work and undergo this process: AI cannot do this for us. What if AI replaces us and the universe follows AI to learn about itself? That seems to be the question before our AI-Causer…

The universe requires not just more thinking but a different kind of thinking (for the majority versus random individuals), that’s potential is latent in itself, if the universe is to become conscious and aware of its Multiplicity in its fullness without being overwhelmed. Regardless the use and importance, calculation and rationality cannot overcome its entropic limitations, even if they played an essential role to get the universe/us to this point; a different kind of thinking is needed, one we can associate with “The Right Brain” of McGilchrist, “The Gestalt Theory” of Jan Zwicky, and “apprehension” that I associate with Sam Green’s work (even Pierce’s “abduction” and Bergson’s “intuition”), all of which requires Attention to be possible. Classical thinkers like Plato understood that we seek to witness form, not just think it — thought thinks to witness — and a kind of “witnessing” seem to be to what these thinkers point.

What exactly is the capacity that the SCM can train and incubate us into which can add Value-Form Diversity to the world? “Apprehension,” notably. The only way we can realize the Schizophrenic quality of reality, its great Multiplicity (that could also be apophatic somehow), without being overwhelmed (into schizophrenia) is via what Jan Zwicky calls “insight” or what I have called with Sam Green “apprehension.” If we don’t have this capacity or can’t increase the conditions of possibility where we might develop it for a critical mass of people (say through “aesthetics” and “an incubating architecture”), then we will be stuck in calculation and rationality, and either the Multiplicity will overwhelm us or AI will replace us. The energy demands of calculation are high, but I think apprehension “grasps” instantly and even creates negentropy — this is our hope. The Multiplicity without calculation can be “apprehended” into a Gestalt (“form-ulated”) that doesn’t violate the Multiplicity (“top-down”) but is actually in the Multiplicity and possible thanks to it: the Gestalt is Transversal, perhaps like the “lightning bolt” Deleuze described. And where there is only calculation without apprehension, the rational without nonrational, we will feel “pulled along,” Kafkalike toward a Rational Impasse. And, to make an assertion, whatever we “gather” in our lives will feel dead if, in its presence, we never experience an “apprehension” or “insight” — that is the qualitative experience that can mark a difference between “a gathering” and “a collection,” a living vs a fragmentation.

Is the Gestalt just some “illusionary effect” or indication of Deeper Being? That could be a question of the Final Absolute Choice; here, we only need to establish that “apprehending gestalt(s)” in Multiplicity is necessary for Multiplicity — Global Pluralism — not to overwhelm us. It is this capacity that the SCM is primarily and uniquely positioned to train us in, for it “gathers” greater diversities into a container and space where “apprehension” might surprise us suddenly and all at once, as if “always already.” But now we must explain.

III

In “The Net (138),” we discussed how knowing we have a high IQ can make us fragile (as perhaps being told we are diverse makes us less able to handle Pluralism), how the terms “genius,” “skilled,” and “elite” need to be defined apart (I prefer “skilled” and the word “elite” in the context of skill), how “the teacher trivia(lizes)” while “the tutor frees speech,” how genius without vulnerability/nakedness is dangerous and likely to lead to the (autocannibalistic) “barbarism of refinement” (Vico), while humbled genius can be like the fish who realizes he or she is in water (“a metajudgment”) and thus move toward real, architectural insight that can incubate profound latent potential — which suggests the great mistake of associating genius with avoiding nakedness and vulnerability, supercharging “the barbarism of refinement.” We also discussed how we are trained in school to think “help” is “cheating” and so we are setup to avoid “(falsely) offered help” when we need it, while the real world consists of tasks that can’t be done alone, helping us not associate “help” with “weakness” but realism. It was a fun time.

Anyway, a point of that session I want to draw attention to is when Jurij Jukic discussed Michael Levin and the work Levin has done in Morphogenesis, Bioelectric Signaling Networks, and Collective Cellular Intelligence. Levin has shown that cells don’t just blindly follow genetic determinations but prove more active in solving problems. Now, I don’t think Levin would say different environments generate “new” information in cells, but instead constraints lead to cells finding new ways to reach the same goals: if for some reason they can’t form an eye like they normally do, they’ll find a way to form an eye in a different place (which in one sense is new, but in another is not). To at least make an analogical connection, it’s reasonable then to think that different environments could bring out different potential latent in human beings (that is at least “relatively new” to us). Where there is a lack of diverse environments, and where we lack an environment like the SCM, it is reasonable to wonder if there is potential in humans that has never fully manifest (at “a critical mass”). Also, though cells simply find new ways to realize the same goals, perhaps the goals humans have latent potential to realize change-without-changing based on how humans go about realizing them (a case perhaps unique to Mind)? Say our goal is “to be fully human,” which we’ll all find a way to accomplish given our environments and constraints — what if what it means to be “fully human” is uniquely indivisible from our constraints (this may or may not overlap with “teleology,” though I think Levin resists that language)? Our goal to “be human” doesn’t change, and yet what that means also does change based on our constraints (“changing-without-changing” might be a unique quality of the metaphysical) — might that be the case? Only one way to find out: do the work of diversifying environments, constraints, “limits” (Ebert), design for Encounterology…

We have spoken of architecture, mediums, environments, and metaaesthetics in O.G. Rose, and how the formation of things cannot be considered independent of the spaces in which they are situated: Levin seems to provide evidence for this case. In different environments, different “intelligences” show up, and if this is the case, then cultivating different modes of consciousness and greater “inner capacity” will not readily be accomplished by giving people more information or emphasizing different modes of thinking (“an emphasis shift” is not “an architectural shift”: if we start championing EQ within the same structure or design, there will be a change but not a change in kind; a change in emphasis cannot change how latent potential manifests, only a change in design). “The Nordic Bildung” seems to have realized this, as did Neil Postman in applying McLuhan’s famous “the medium is the message” to school itself. And if our problem amidst Multiplicity is mainly a lack of a capacity like “apprehension,” spreading this capacity will not be done so much through information but architecture. Yes, Levin notes “flows of information” matter, but increasing “flows” (Deleuze) is a matter of design. To play off Lewis like I often do, if we focus on architecture, we can get information as well (“meaningfully”), but if we focus just on information, it’s as if we get neither.

The SCM affords the creation of and coordination to new and different environments, “aesthetics,” and/or “medium conditions” (elaborated on in II.3), and Levin suggests that is critical if we are to achieve and realize the mentidivergence we associated with Simone Weil in II.1 and that we claimed was necessary for avoiding Game Theory problems like Nash Equilibria and Rational Impasses. I personally am shocked by the capacities that can come out of me in different environments (the different “me(s)” I can be): when I worked in a floral wholesale, I could remember the names of hundreds of flowers, which I would have never thought possible. I don’t think modern education takes this reality seriously enough: if it did, instead of just emphasizing different kinds of thinking or giving students more information, it would try moving kids through different environments and designs. Is this logistically possible? Perhaps not, so the mistake was historically reasonable, but now we have the SCM, and that could open doors. Also important, the SCM could help us continually experiment and try different environments, conversation-technologies, models of interaction, etc., which is extremely important because we don’t know which environments are best for which latent potentials at which times — a point that brings to mind Jonthan Rauch again in Kindly Inquisitors. The SCM throws us into unknown possibilities with unknown people with unknown ideas and models — exactly the “curated surprise” we need to realize latent potentials we don’t know how best to realize. Constant and continual social experimentation matters, but until the SCM are means for doing that we’re radically limited, handicapped by economics, time of life, geography, etc. That has changed: previous methods of social coordination like IQ tests, college credentials, or resumes are outdated.

The Bildung-20 affords new ways of thinking (“mentidivergence”) via environmental incubation and habituation, but what does this mean? To incorporate a literary analysis, “The Mermaid” by Sam Green points to unique uses of subjectivity that the SCM can train, opening possibilities of “speculative reason” that we cannot predict or limit. Sam focuses on masculine and feminine differences in her story, which we unpacked in Ep #211, and, as we discussed, “the ocean” in her work is feminine and what we can associate with the SCM: “traveling the philosophical silk road” can be like “going into the waters” of Sam’s story. It is an “apophatic void,” a possible “River-Hole” (Cadell Last): it is dangerous and unpredictable, and so it can heal and personally develop. Also, in Vervaeke’s “Dialogos,” people often find themselves discussing ideas they didn’t predict or ever think before, which is “an association of and by nothingness” that makes possible “personal development” — another important idea considered by Sam (that we can associate with literature more broadly). The full review of “The Mermaid” can be found in Third Thoughts; here, I wanted to touched on some of the ideas that are relevant for our purposes here. From the review:

‘[…] everything that is said on ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ are generalities that do not apply to everyone, for everyone seems to be a mixture of both to some degree that no one can judge for certain. Feminine logic associates and gathers to make a whole that a truth can be apprehend in, while masculine logic calculates and uses rationality to make a conclusion of a truth. To better understand feminine logic, imagine one of those pictures that are made of a lot of small pictures, which are put together in such a way that a large picture can suddenly be seen (from A Philosophy of Glimpses, consider the FedEx Sign that we can look at and suddenly see a negative arrow that was ‘always already’ there and yet easy to miss). As Sam noted, we can think of the female as verbally processing and telling everything that happened in their day in order to gather a collection of images, a whole, that ‘suddenly and all at once’ a truth can be apprehended in and from — it is an aesthetic and artistic act. Like making a FedEx sign, the feminine can do the same in gathering details, describing scenes, acknowledge emotions — all of this can be like gathering little images that put together, bit by bit, in hopes of suddenly and all at once there being a whole (‘a big picture,’ ‘Find What the Sailor Has Hidden’ in Nabokov) in which a truth is apprehended. The woman is gathering things ‘into nothing’ for most of the time, without any clear reason, and then ‘suddenly and all at once’ in the nothing there is a reason (‘suddenly and all at once’ there is the apophatic). The woman is making a void. And then suddenly that void smells like tulips.

‘ ‘Masculine logic’ does not so gather everything: it discerns what is relevant, narrows to save time and energy, and considers the relevant factors together into a relevant conclusion. It is much more efficient, for good and for bad, because if there was a ‘apprehensible truth’ in the variables with which the male worked, the male could miss it, because he would not gather all the variables together as necessary for apprehension and instead leave most behind […]’

The review discusses how the risk of feminine logic can be the conspiracy and seeing connections that aren’t there (“false gestalts,” as Zwicky puts it), while masculine logic can end up in reductionism and “autonomous rationality” that proves dangerous. Feminine logic entails an apprehension that happens mysteriously: when it will occur cannot be predicted or sequentially laid out, no more than we can predict the moment when someone can look at a FedEx sign and suddenly “see” the “negative space arrow” that was “always already” there. This in mind, please note again how often people in the SCM speaking of “saying things they never thought before” in the middle of a Dialogos. Is this a conclusion? Yes/no, it is a feminine apprehension (feeling like “a gift from the cosmos”), and arguably great “wealth creation” starts from this kind of act (discussed in II.1). Regardless, the implication is that the SCM is a place of “gathering” for the possibility of “apprehension” more than just “calculating to a conclusion.” That is why it is the case that “why it works” is mysterious and hard to explain, but it’s a mistake to conflate “hard to explain” with “fake.”

We cannot calculate our way to see the FedEx Arrow, only position ourselves to it to change the relation (a truth suggesting freedom). We also can’t calculate our way to “the truth” because we would “slice it up” along the way into something it wasn’t: it must be apprehended as a whole or it will be something else. And there’s reason to think everything is possibly like the FedEx Arrow, seeing as a poet and artist can “apprehend” a creation from any phenomenon (“a moment of inspiration”). Everything can be apprehended (there is endless material for the SCM), but everything in its fullness is like nothing. That is the challenge. And is the apprehension a result of causation? It involves causes, yes, but no cause can be called “the definitive cause,” which is to say that which necessarily would lead to apprehension. The moment is one of creation, like associations, which are linked not by causes and effects but by persons. We are transformed by associational connections more than causes, and we can’t will an association: they just happen, though we can stop them, seeing them as a waste of time…

Sam in her story associates the feminine with “the (apophatic, terrifying) void,” and what she means by this is elaborated on in the review. A critical point is that:

‘[i]t is in the void where it is possible to experience a personal development that must be a ‘personal development,’ for the associational logic that ‘unfolds’ cannot be attributed to anything outside the person; after all, in the void, there’s nothing there (just us).’

Likewise, as we’ve discussed throughout II.1, it is before Lack and “The River-Hole” that the same can be claimed: the personal must be here. The SCM, like literature and the humanities, is a space of associational and emergent possibility, and so it must be “personal development,” and better yet we really experience it as such. We feel ourselves change in the journey. We know that in the nothing was something, us, “always already” anew.

The “apprehension” that Sam Green describes through her short story “The Mermaid” aligns with the “insight” and work of the incredible Jan Zwicky, who defends “Gestalt Theory” against reductionism. I cannot suggest her lecture “The Experience of Meaning” (2013) enough: she is a profound and eloquent forerunner of much of the thinking that now defines the SCM. Zwicky tells us that we seek flashes of “insight (of Gestalt)” more than linguistic understandings, which is to say we seek and long for “strikes of Gestalt” (like “strikes of beauty”), which are the experience we seek when we seek meaning in our lives (or so is the claim). How might we think of these “strikes”? To take from her masterful book, The Experience of Meaning: ‘[f]or the experience of meaning — ‘getting it’ — is the gestalt phenomenon par excellence.’⁸⁴ We all know the experience of suddenly “getting it,” of reading a poem over and over again, of wrestling with a math problem, of listening to a lecture — and suddenly we “get it.” We comprehend. Why we comprehend now, at this moment, and not five minutes ago, is impossible to say, but we can tell the qualitative difference. Thomas Jockin has made the point at “The Net” that professors never know why or when “learning happens,” a point I align with Zwicky and that suggests “learning” is “getting it,” and so what Zwicky discusses is at the very foundation of what makes learning possible. And yet we hardly notice or think much of it, treating that moment of learning as not qualitatively distinct from the studying or calculation of a math problem or book that preceded it. ‘Underlying [our world], at its root, lies a particular conception of thinking — thinking as calculation — which has itself eroded our ability to see its limitations’ (as Kafkalikeness as made Voicecraft invisible to us).⁸⁵ We are so habituated to the experience of using calculation and rationality to solve our problems, that other ways and experiences of thinking are concealed from us, like untrained wine-tasters who can’t tell, or lose the ability to tell, the subtle differences between flavors.

Sure, there is working through “3 + 5” to conclude “8,” which doesn’t really entail much “getting it,” but that experience of reaching an answer is not the same qualitatively as staring at FedEx sign until we see the negative arrow or Zermelo working through a great problem like Russell’s Paradox until one day “getting it.” Well, perhaps it is on the same gradient somehow, but grasping what Zwicky is “getting at” is easier if we think of a great problem we don’t know the answer to, wrestle with for months, and then suddenly “see” the way forward (note this experience can often feel like “seeing it,” suddenly and all at once, pointing back to Plato). And when we “see it,” it’s hard to describe why “it is it” — to give an adequate “because” — but that’s what we should expect when it comes to that which must be “seen” (and that bringing into words changes, like writing down music we hear into sheet music); Zwicky captures this predicament well:

‘In many contexts, the right answer to the question Why did that viola just emit as F-natural? isn’t Because its C-string was stopped at the ratio 4:3; nor is it Because that’s how Beethoven’s Third goes. Or, as Aristotle might say, you don’t have an explanation until you’ve grasped the formal cause; a thing’s form is what it is.’⁸⁶

And when we do “get it,” there can be a fascinating feeling of experiencing something beyond our agency (“a freedom in determination,” as we discuss with Hegel, which I think is needed for us to feel “meaning” versus something arbitrary); Zwicky writes: ‘I can attest from personal experience that when an ensemble is ‘cooking’ or ‘in the groove,’ it feels, to the musicians, as if the music is playing them.’⁸⁷ What is experienced is not simply reducible to the choices and wants of the people involved: something “other” is experienced (A/B).

Zwicky argues that even the most adamant of analytical philosophers can’t avoid ultimately relying on some “getting it,” even if their work is devoted to making all claims expressible and justifiable:

‘After an attempt to ‘outline roughly’ what he means by ‘true,’ Frege concludes that ‘it is probable that the content of the word ‘true’ is unique and unidentifiable.’ He can’t explain further. You either get what he’s driving at, or you don’t.’⁸⁸

“Apprehension” will always be smuggled in somehow (though not all “smuggling” is equal), but with time we can lose the “refined epistemological palette” to tell its employment. And what happens in this employment? We “grasp a whole”? Yes, for when we grasp what the word “true” means, we are grasping an array of relations and uses with and in a whole world. We never grasp just “a point,” but a whole situation and network of causes, effects, influences, functions, and the like. To say something is “true” means that it behaves a certain way in relation to other ways and other things, which means we can reasonably expect certain behaviors, tendencies, qualities — or perhaps it means we expect to be able to share the notion with others without them disagreeing with our conclusions, and so on. What we “grasp” when we say “x is true” is based on memories and experiences in our world — a whole lot of things based on lived experiences (bringing Saul Kripke to mind). But funny enough we don’t so much “think about all that” but instead “just get it” when the word “truth” come up; now, we can of course stop and question that “getting it,” which Zwicky notes can be important so we avoid “false gestalts” and I would say “false apprehensions,” meaning nonrationality needs rationality, but the point here is that this mental activity occurs at all, and that which occurs is distinct from calculation and rationality. The wines are different, even if identifying the difference requires a trained palette.

The Stakes Between Wine and Lumber

Zwicky’s major claim is that ‘[a]ll understanding […] involves grasp of a gestalt.’⁸⁹ Looking ahead, in my view, the Nordic Bildung educates students “toward” taking gestalts seriously, which is part of the secret of its success and evidence that Gestalt Theory is valid. But what does “gestalt” mean?

‘The word Gestalt means ‘shape’ or ‘form.’ It came to prominence in German Philosophy and psychology with the work of Christian von Ehrenfels in 1890. Von Ehrenfels was interested in melody. Take ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat,’ for instance. Most of us couldn’t specify the sequence of relative pitches if our lives depended on it. But we can, almost without effort, hum the tune. We recognize it instantly, regardless of what key it’s played in. This means, von Ehrenfels argued, that we don’t perceive melody in aggregative fashion — first one note, then the next, then the next — and then stick these elements together with some sort of epistemic glue. The thing we hum and recognize, the thing we remember, is the melody as a whole, its aural shape. Von Ehrenfels called this shape ‘Gestalt quality’ — something that was, he claimed, more than the sum of its parts.’⁹⁰

(I think grasping of the “transversal lightning bolt” is similar to the grasping of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” — what Zwicky describes is “how” we are Deleuzian without self-effacement.)

“Gestalts” are wholes that we grasp as wholes versus build up to from parts, and Zwicky’s point is that understanding is always “grasping wholes” versus building up to them: it seems like we build wholes, because we can build and create the conditions of possibility that enable us to “grasp wholes,” but the building of the architecture for “grasping wholes” (indirectly) is not the same as “building wholes” (directly). It’s easy to miss this difference, especially if 99% of our effort is “building the conditions necessary for grasping gestalts” (like the SCM), but that last 1% of the “grasping” itself is nevertheless distinct (and sometimes can happen without any building at all). But again, if we are “untrained winetasters” of ontoepistemology, it is unlikely we will be able to tell the difference: all the “red wines” will “practically” be the same. Another reason it can seem we “build gestalts” is because we can through thinking break them down into “parts and wholes”; as Zwicky put it:

‘Of almost equal importance, [Gestalt Theorists] maintained, was the fact that we perceive wholes first and parts later. What we call the ‘elements’ of a thing are, epistemologically speaking, not elementary: they are the product of analysis. So-called elements are abstracted from an initial perceptual experience; they are not its foundation.’⁹¹

Analysis and thinking creates an effect of “parts and wholes,” and though this “breakdown” can be useful, it is not fundamental, but through time we can be habituated into forgetting this and forgetting we forget it (alluding to Plato). The very moment we start thinking about things, we can begin breaking them down, as if the act of understanding them makes them broken down, thus creating the impression that the meaning comes from them being broke down, and hence that the parts are more meaningful then the wholes, when this can actually be a loss of meaning (“the map” makes “the territory” meaningful in a loss). This does not mean “maps are bad,” but it means using them always the runs the risk of forgetting gestalts and then forgetting we forget.

‘Once they have come to our attention, parts can be isolated in perception — that is, we can focus on them — and in some circumstances they can be plucked from their contexts for separate examination. (A caddis fly from a pond; a hair from a head.) It is what parts do, the way they behave, that is determined by the ‘inner lawfulness’ of the whole. (Though, of course, what they do affects what they are; the situation is indeed metaphysically complex.)’⁹²

‘In such situations, the slightest gesture — the flick of a wing — can irrevocably change the shape of what happens.’⁹³

Zwicky argues that thinking must always be in relation to gestalts, either in breaking them down through analysis or “apprehending” them in “insight.” A mistake that plagues our age is “building gestalts” through rationality versus “apprehending gestalts” more from the start, and we compound that problem when we then come to believe gestalts don’t even exist, because we break them down into parts and forget the primacy of the wholes. Since gestalts are unavoidable, calculation and rationality will end up somehow relating to some gestalt, like in a “map” or “internally consistent system,” perhaps problematically — the only way to negate/sublate this tendency is to add “apprehension” to the development. Gestalts are inevitable, but there are “false gestalts” and dangerous ones, hence making it reasonable to try to avoid gestalts entirely (as perhaps “hard empiricism” does). But this is not the way. We must face the risk.

Zwicky gifts us with speculative questions and points that I cannot give full treatment here, but I will note them:

‘If we admit that the apprehension of structure, whole and unmediated, is the foundation of our experience of meaning, we can construct no merely materialist-mechanical story of how the mind interacts with the world. I believe this means that materialistic-mechanical accounts of the world are not wholly correct. It is, however, by no means clear what, if anything, to put in their place.’⁹⁴

(Lack? Beauty?)

‘What are we talking about when we speak of a ‘gestalt’? A perception, ‘in the mind’? A thing, ‘out there,’ in the world? This question may seem simply to be an attempt to get Wertheimer to declare for or against Idealism, but it is not. Idealists, too, distinguish between phenomena that appear to have mind-independent existence and phenomena that do not.’⁹⁵

(Again, “lack” might be a missing metaphysical category to approach this dilemma.)

‘What is a gestalt? A gestalt is what we perceive. What sort of thing is what we perceive? This question has no happy answer because of the way in which Western intellectual history delimits the ‘sorts’ that a thing might be.’⁹⁶

(Are things more like melodies than “things”? Are things themselves because of “lack”? Is thinghood “lack-hood”? Is “lack a thing”?)

Admittedly, it is difficult to say what “is” a gestalt because a gestalt is ‘interdefined,’ meaning it is itself by how it relates to itself within itself (a Hegelian sounding phrase).⁹⁷ We discuss often Hume and Hayek, and how we need to run a wedding venue to know what a wedding venue takes and entails (Thoughts), and likewise how we can’t know how many plastic straws we need to order for the McDonalds down the road unless we work there, even if we have two doctorates. In other words, we can only “really” think about that which we are “particularly” involved in. For Hume this is the revelation of “common life,” and for Hayek “the local knowledge problem,” but both of them help us understand that there are limits to what we can think without being involved in; similarly, what we can argue with Zwicky is that we cannot know which “wholes” are actually gestalts versus mere aggregates, unless we are participating in them somehow. Why? Because we cannot know what shares an “inter-dynamic,” and so is “internally and interrelation-ally defined,” except from “in” it: we cannot know that this particular G# “is (in)” Moonlight Sonata except by hearing it; otherwise, it could just be a standalone G# or a different melody (so it goes with knowing who is in a community or not, “music” which an SCM can be needed to hear, especially across Global Pluralism).⁹⁸ And please note that our “apprehension” of G# “as (in)” Moonlight does not change anything happening at all: it is like the transversal “lightning bolt” Deleuze discussed in Multiplicity, the grasping of a “through line” that’s grasping doesn’t reduce the Multiplicity to some unity — the #G doesn’t “become” Moonlight or something reductionistic.

Gestalts are deeply tied to experiencing them: I cannot realize that this G# “is (in)” Moonlight by thinking about a G#, but instead I must hear the #G played. Similarly, I must see the bird fly or the formulas on the board; I must hear the person speaking; I must touch. There is no “getting it” that isn’t experienced, and “apprehension” is the realization of that experience (I often wonder if a reason it is important to write is so that we can “apprehend” what is in our heads: I personally have never experienced “apprehension” regarding what I’m thinking until I put in front of me on paper and/or in the world somehow (“incarnated,” em-manifest)). “Apprehension” is tied to the realization of being “in” and/or “before” something that is interrelating and hence a gestalt, and if we can “apprehend” it we must be relating to it, and so in some sense part of it (and keep in mind there are no “parts” just wholes relates with wholes, relations as relata relating). A difference between “apprehension” and “calculation” is that I can calculate “2 + 2 = 5” without experiencing the numbers, as I can reason what x and y might do in a “two years from now” that I’m not experiencing, and so on: rationality separates “experience” and “conclusion,” while “apprehension” does not. Rationality and calculation cannot on their own determine which collections are (interrelating) gestalts, meaning apprehension and experience are essential for this determination.⁹⁹ And before the SCM, we could not train these capacities as needed for Global Pluralism.

Things “are” interrelating gestalts versus “wholes built out of parts”: “a thing” is more like “things” than one. If we are to think more “like” things actually “are,” then we need to be better at relating to and “apprehending” gestalts, which is arguably what the Nordic Bildung accomplished and what the SCM can help incubate as a material and “medium condition” (against our natural “one-sidedness of Understanding,” pointing to Hegel, an effort of which I think Iain McGilchrist would agree). If we are all networks and Multiplicities, we need to focus on an aesthetic and architecture to form(ulate) us “toward” our (in)dividuality, or else Dream-Equality will lead us to our self-effacement. Everything is interconnected, and there are gestalts all around us, but we cannot calculate our way to “grasping” them. We just must “apprehend” them, and that requires us to be indirectly trained by our environments (“place” matters, as expands on in “Eros and the Problem of Place”).

Thomas Jockin

Eros and the Problem of Place

Eros is not merely a psychological relation to desire, but a participatory event grounded in a shared place. If this is so, then the primary question is not only what eros seeks, but where eros occurs. Does eros require extensional place (topos), or can it exist in ideational place …

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5 months ago · 8 likes · Thomas Jockin

We will give Zwicky more attention later in O.G. Rose, but the main point for now is that we need to use nonrationality to begin with an “apprehension of gestalt,” that we then reason from, versus start with reason and then try “to reason to a gestalt” — the first step is critical. Are there times when it is acceptable to start with calculation and end with it? Yes, say when doing “2 + 9 = x”-like problems, but the dilemma is when we are unable to start any other way, due to habituation, moralization, etc. Our age is one where we naturally start with rationality and end with it, which is fine until there are situations where we need to start with “apprehension” or else there is a gestalt we never realize and that proves consequential. My claim is that the SCM trains us for “insight” and increases the probability it occurs. But doesn’t linguistic understanding threaten experiences of Gestalt, and isn’t the SCM primarily speaking? Yes, in the same way that Kafkalikeness and Discourse threaten Voicecraft and Rhetoric (to allude to critical work), yet that threat is necessary for the possibility of Childhood to be with us (there must be in A/B the possible interpretation/mistake of A/A, though that doesn’t mean the mistake must be realized). But here is where Alex Ebert’s work on “Fre(Q) Theory” is again useful, because in the SCM we work to “saturate language” to the point where our relationship to it changes: instead of language being used as an exchange of information and definition, it comes to be used more like a poet in “flow” and “self-forgetfulness.” As Sam Green describes it, the female “gathers” much together for the possibility of an “apprehension” or “insight” as Zwicky means it, so the SCM “gathers” (consider Heidegger) much together for the possibility of the same. We use language on the SCM to forget ourselves in the language and to cease employing reductionistic framings without realizing it: we become “open” (to something bigger, whole), for the SCM entails a linguistic practice of gestalt (Voicecraft is the speaking “of” gestalt, the use of words to break them “open,” for this is the best use of words to get at what as geometric and “form” cannot be brought to words). Dialogos and Circling “orbit” like D.C. Schindler describes, and then suddenly there is an “insight” and a “strike.” This is a use of language that aids in the experience of gestalt versus threaten it, as Zwicky discusses, but unfortunately this use of language is not common in our universities or institutions, where “Gestalt Theory” is rarely welcome, as Zwicky notes. If humans long for insight, if that is in some way what it means to be human, then our major institutions are in the business of making us less human. They serve Capital and AI even as they might critique them. (Land waits.)

Jan Zwicky teaches that we are right to emphasize a stress on simplicity, that our intuition, say in science or math, that “the truth must be simple and/or eloquent” is not wrong but misnamed. It is not simplicity we want, but “insight.” We long for “an insight of gestalt,” an “apprehension” of a whole/form. It strikes us as simple because we experience it like a perception, often with ease and without energy (in fact, we can gain energy), but the simplicity is just a description of the “insight” in being “apprehended” versus calculated. We just “get it,” like observing a triangle or (meta)geometry. Rilke in mind, Zwicky says that we might all in life be after “An Insight of Gestalt” so powerful that we must change our lives, that the search for this experience is that deepest hunger of human beings. The way of knowing experienced in art is what we long for in all fields: “insight (of gestalt)” is the analogous thinking and nonrationality from which we hope all our thinking and living springs. And I can’t prove it, but I often wonder if the secret of many greats in history is that they learned to “move through the world” in a way that increased the probability of “apprehension” and “insight” occurring — the SCM might democratize this “way of life” and conditionality, in that it makes available the possibility of this “way of moving through the world” more available to everyone. How might society develop then, especially when the “social network effects” kick in?

IV

Are “apprehension” and/or “insight” identical with “analogical reasoning,” which we have stressed in II.2 as at the heart of metajudgment (and please note “On Typography,” which argues that this “grasping” is the basis of metaphysics which isn’t deconstructed)? In analogy, we grasp how say water flows and compare it with the movement of electricity, or we come to understand the solar system and use that comprehension to help us understand atoms. There is formal similarity, but also in thinking together water and electricity, we are thinking about a shared form of “flow,” which is not reducible to either water or electricity: it is a “a way of unfolding in the world” that isn’t bound to just water or electricity, and yet both water and electricity can “point to it” and help us comprehend the movement. But do we “calculate” from water and electricity to “flow” like someone calculating together 2 + 3 into 5? No, we simply “grasp” the shared form and “get” what “flow” is via experience and witnessing, as Zwicky discussed.

I’m not sure if I want to say “apprehension” and “analogical reasoning” are completely identical, but I will say that analogy seems impossible without “apprehension,” and furthermore that “apprehension” is a “grasping” which analogy requires; hence, I think that to train one is to train the other. The difference might be that while “insight” is of a gestalt, analogy could more be “between” gestalts, but arguably this then realizes a new gestalt, so in that sense there is no “between” at all, only different scopes of gestalt(s). Perhaps I “apprehend” a bookcase as a gestalt, then “apprehend” an old piano as having a shelf inside of it if I open up the lid and take out the front and remove the hammers, and so realize I could make the piano into a cool bookshelf for a coffeeshop. Is it “apprehension” throughout this entire process, or do I “calculate” after realizing the structural similarity between the bookcase and piano that I could use it in a coffeeshop? That might be a matter of debate, but I would wager I more so “have the idea,” suddenly and out of nowhere. It just occurs to me. I just “get it.”

Regardless, I think “apprehension/insight” and “analogical reasoning” are on a continuum, hence why I don’t think it is wrong to suggest “apprehension” and “analogy” overlap—and the SCM trains that continuum. When I “grasp” the FedEx arrow, I comprehend the negative space as structurally similar to an arrow painted directly on a sign, which suggests that the whole reason I’m able to “grasp” the negative-space-arrow is because of the analogical relationship If I’d never seen an arrow painted on a sign or a sign shaped like an arrow, I’d never see anything of note in the FedEx sign: there negative-space-arrow would still be there, but it would never “stand out to me” as anything. In this way, the analogical relationship makes possible the apprehension, and so it would seem “analogy” and “apprehension’ are indivisible. But what about when I see that “bigger picture” made up of all the (“gathered”) smaller pictures (“find what the sailor has hidden”—Nabokov), or the two elders looking at one another in that picture of the musicians (“Old Couple or Musician” by Salvador Dali)? Again, unless we had seen elders in our lives, we would not see anything of note in Dali’s painting beyond the musicians (or vice-versa), which is to say that because we have had experiences of elders, it is possible for us to “grasp” the formal similarities between the painting and our experience, meaning analogy has “always already” made it possible for us to experience an “apprehension.”

Similarly, if we see a flock of birds flying together (“a gestalt”), we are able to tell that they are “moving together” because we have had experiences of “things moving together” versus “things only moving near one another”; if we hear sounds at the same time, we are able to tell from experience the difference between sounds coordinated together into a melody versus sounds just playing at the same time; and so on. We can “realize” gestalts because we have experienced differences between things that actually are together versus things that only seem together, and it this “form(ation)” that we “analogically apprehend” (perhaps “analogical reasoning” is always “analogical apprehension”?). Again, all this suggests “analogy” and “apprehension” are indivisible, and perhaps they are completely identical, but regardless we can at least say they profoundly overlap.

Mary Harrington

New essay: Mystifying the Appearances

Late last year I was commissioned by Røyst, a Norwegian literary publication, to write something on the theme of “Dissidents”. I proposed an essay on “the politics of occlusion”, a theme I’ve been turning over in my mind recently. I’m sharing it here as I think a few of you might enjoy the argument…

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2 years ago · 73 likes · 24 comments · Mary Harrington

Mourning Talk Show (YouTube)

Also, though the Modern Counter-Enlightenment and Postmodernity are topics better saved for (Re)constructing “A Is A” and The Absolute Choice, here it would be valuable to at least note the essay “Mystifying the Appearances” by Mary Harrington (brought to my attention by Mourning Talk), which compares and contrasts Derrida (PM) and Owen Barfield (MCE). Harrington basically makes the claim that we should have responded to Modernity with Barfield and his “relational metaphysics,” which enable an “evolution of consciousness” which could address the valid concerns of Derrida without contributing to “a deconstruction of givens” that lead to an anxiety which has overwhelmed us and contributed to our social predicament. Please read the whole article (and note I think highly of Derrida), but Harrington writes that ‘[…] both Barfield and Derrida engage[d] with the return of participation to the conceptual field [(as does, in its own way, the Nordic Bildung)], as a downstream consequence of advances in physics, because both were keen minds sharply attuned to cutting-edge thought and this was the 20th century’s most decisive intellectual shift.’¹⁰⁰

Harrington writes further:

‘Both Derrida and Barfield grapple, in the former case implicitly and the latter explicitly, with scientists’ rediscovery of human entanglement with whatever we attempt to objectify–and thence, of a surplus of meaning or possibility that by definition cannot be rendered transparent. In the physicists’ terms, we must now account not just for the particle but also the probability wave. As Barfield puts it, these developments point to an ‘unrepresented’ that lies behind ‘reality,’ that is real on its own terms, and that serves as origin and source for whatever sense we are able to make of it, individually and collectively. Similarly, Derrida foregrounds an excess of meaning which he calls the ‘supplement.’ ’¹⁰¹

We can associate the “unrepresented” with Lack, Beauty, Mystery, and/or “the River-Hole,” as we’ve discussed — but maybe not so much under Postmodernity. For Harrington, Derrida suggests the necessary relation of all meaning to “the unrepresentable” means all meaning is ever-deferred, while Barfield suggests our real relation to “the unrepresentable” is precisely the question and work of being human. We are to “elevate consciousness” to better relate to “the unrepresentable,” though this is very serious and dangerous work, given “The Real” we might suffer (Love(craft)). However, ‘the ‘supplement’ is [not] […] only dangerous. It is dangerous; but chiefly to the frozen ideology […]’¹⁰²

Saving the Appearances (Audio Book)

For Harrington, in Derrida, there is only ever a “trace” of something ever-beyond us, while for Barfield there is always a “horizon” that we can really ever-approach. For Derrida, there is arguably no advancement — wherever we go, the “presence” is kicked/“deferred” away like a tin can — while for Barfield there is progress, because our relation to the “horizon” changes, and relations are real: the impossibility of “(w)hole things” being “present” doesn’t mean relations can’t really be “present” or developed. For Barfield, we cannot “develop” things, first because “things” don’t exist unto themselves, and second because we cannot make things “more present” beyond how they appear: “the appearance” is all of “the presence” we ever get, and they are never identical. But for Barfield that is not a problem; in fact, it is the condition necessary for relationality. If things were entirely “present,” we wouldn’t “care” to relate with them: there’d be nothing to ever-learn, ever-cultivate love, and ever-kindle interest against boredom and indifference (the SCM would mean nothing to us). Without mystery there can be no faith, courage, freedom, choice to commit to an unknown — as necessary for love and meaning. Mystery is only set to be a horror if “things” are real and not relations, but it is on this point that Derrida (PM) and Barfield (MCE) take different paths.

Live Theory by James K.A. Smith

For Derrida, “relations” are not real, only “things,” and “things” always “point” beyond themselves to something we can never make “present.” For Barfield, again, there are no “things,” only relations to things that are not us, and that is the condition of being human. How we relate to this condition is reality, because there are no “things” only “relations,” whereas for Derrida there are only “things” that never fully arrive. Both are pointing to a problem of “thinghood,” but where Barfield believes this is an “idolatry” that keeps us from “icon,” Derrida in a sense believes there is only “idolatry.” Identifying this for Derrida is to help us escape idolatry and so increase justice (as James K.A. Smith stresses in Jacques Derrida: Live Theory), but if there is only idolatry—what then? We need “icon,” or so Barfield suggests, but Derrida arguably did not have the metaphysics for the possibility of “icon,” only the hope and waiting for “the event” (which we only retrospectively recognize, for it cannot be “present”). Derrida is like the Evangelical awaiting “the impossible,” the Second Coming, while Barfield offers a way to believe in sanctification, regardless “the event.”

Can Deleuze and Guattari’s Multiplicity be thought with Barfield? I think so, though perhaps not so much with any philosophy that assumes “a metaphysics of thinghood.” Multiplicity and “relational metaphysics” can fit together, but arguably Multiplicity without Zwicky’s “insight” that overlaps with Barfield’s “icons” (A/B) and “evolution of consciousness” will end up “practically identical” with the world Postmodernity generates. It strikes me as wrong to say D&G are Postmodern, and yet at the same time they seem supremely Postmodern. How can that be? Perhaps it is because D&G are “practically Postmodern” even if they are metaphysically unique, because D&G need “apprehension” and an infrastructure to train it so that we avoid the loss of social intelligibility and all that follows from this problem (Rieff). More needs to be said on that, but the concern D&G might have of Barfield is that saying, “relations are real,” could threaten the Multiplicity in collapsing it into relations, as D&G might be concerned about a collapse of Multiplicity into “gestalts.” Fair enough, but there are clearly gestalts in reality, “flows that move together,” and also I don’t think “apprehension” collapses anything: it simply “realizes” a (transversal) “form(ation)” afforded by the Multiplicity.

Let us look again at Dali’s painting, “Old Couple or Musician” (or Wittgenstein’s “duck-bunny,” if you prefer): is the painting “collapsed” when we see both the elder couple and the musicians at the same time, or switch our focus between them?

Not at all: the “both-ness” is maintained, regardless our focus. So I think it goes with reality: when we realize “gestalts,” the Multiplicity doesn’t collapse, nor does it collapse when we gain a relation with the whole painting, or a relation with both the vision of it as an elder couple and vision of it as a musical performance (“gestalt(s) curving into gestalt(s)”). There are at least three different relations — the relation with the whole work, the relation with the elder couple, and the relation with the musician — and nothing about the painting “collapses”: the tension is held and the painting “stays the same.” There is hence movement with consistency, relation without collapse, a realization of gestalt that doesn’t violate Multiplicity. And I believe, in essence, all of reality is basically thus.

Anyway, to return to Harrington’s essay, under the different conceptions of reality between Derrida (PM) and Barfield (MCE), we find that “the unrepresented” functions differently. For Derrida, “the unrepresented” is the minority and oppressed; for Barfield, “the unrepresented” is ultimately the Logos. As Harrington writes:

‘We might also expect the unrepresented to operate differently [between Derrida and Barfield]. This unrepresented [of Barfield] must be distinguished from the ‘silent majority,’ which does not exist, and ‘the underrepresented,’ which is a managerial bait-and-switch that tends only toward deepening the tyranny of transparency. But in figuring the ‘unrepresented’ not as tragic but creative, Barfield opens the door for an occlusion that is not defeatist, but life-giving […]

‘For post-atomic politics, the unrepresented figures not as that which threatens the prevailing epistemology, or even that which is failed or brutalised by it, but rather that which, in remaining hidden, nourishes and saves it from nihilism […]’¹⁰³

In Postmodernity, “the unrepresented” is mostly the minority (“Other”), while in the MCE, “the unrepresented” is mostly the Mystery (“Other”).¹⁰⁴ Derrida’s project can be seen as an effort to increase justice by “deconstructing presence” precisely to help “the unrepresented.” How? He wants what is “present” to be unstable, because the more fixed we experience reality, the more likely we forget about “the unrepresented” and contribute to their oppression without realizing it. Derrida wants to destabilize “givens” precisely so that we don’t keep out Otherness — minorities, the oppressed, the different, etc. — with those “givens” that we never question (if “full presence” or “certainty” is impossible, then “givens” cannot be metaphysically justified, and so they are destabilized). This increases justice, but problematically it also can erase “belonging,” as we discussed in Part I. Does Derrida “deconstruct presence” to make “the unrepresented present”? No, because that would require reestablishing the metaphysics which Derrida has deconstructed: he instead makes “presence” impossible, putting everyone on equal footing. Unfortunately, though an equality might be gained, we lose “belonging,” which some sense of we require (even if “belonging in non-belonging”); Derrida increased justice, but through erasing “givens” that we need to replace with something that Derrida could not provide. But now we have the SCM.

We as humans must relate to “the unrepresented” somehow, and where a society doesn’t know how to create the conditions for “belonging based on Mystery” (Lack. Beauty.), it will generally require “givens,” but “givens” can create oppression for those who do not ascribe to the “givens” (as we discussed with “The Value Circle” and “The Conflict of Society” in Part I). We could say “givens” make a circle inside which people feel “belonging,” but that circle necessarily cannot include everyone, and those outside the circle are genuinely right that they suffer an injustice in being outside the circle. But the very act of letting them enter the circle can destroy it, and then no one has “belonging”—that is the great conundrum of our moment, which Derrida helped unveil in opening the circle to Others (only a moral monster wouldn’t, yes?). On this point, we can see why Harrington says that Derrida was right about the problem but wrong about the address, and for Harrington we can only help “the Other” of the minority with “the Otherness” of Mystery, a move which requires Barfield. I agree, but I also want to stress the great value of Derrida (who was perhaps just early), for he helps us understand that the choice is either figuring out how to “belong in Mystery,” or else all other forms of “belonging” will be regression and based on injustice. Indeed, we must relate to “the unrepresented” somehow, and if we can’t relate with Mystery, we will likely relate to “the unrepresented” through repression, denial, indifference, “true ignorance,” etc., as “given” can “innocently”) provide.

There is always an “excess,” always that which is “beyond presence,” and we cannot be human or form societies without some form of relation to that “excess” which is “unrepresented.” “Givens” made the relation primarily one of repression, “true ignorance,” and/or denial, and in that way it was right to “deconstruct givens”—but now we find ourselves facing Otherness we cannot mediate, risking “Lovecraft.” What now? Are we doomed? No, Hegel is right that history advances through errors we have to make (“the fear of error is the fear of truth”) (Derrida had to be early, as did Barfield, in his own way—those lights): the very tension and anxiety of our moment was necessary for us at a critical mass to negate/sublate the internet into a Social Coordination Mechanism. History is and even must be a story of us getting ourselves into something before we know what we are getting into: progress is not the story of using rationality to avoid problems because we are enlightened, but the story of overcoming challenges we didn’t know we would face and that our good ideas lead to us facing. Or at least, that is, until we don’t have a future, which we shouldn’t assume is guaranteed.

We cannot avoid relating to “the unrepresented,” and Derrida helps remove all “plausible deniability” that this is the case — but that’s where he leaves us, hoping for “the event.” Owen Barfield agrees, but then he also provides the metaphysics so that this relation to “the unrepresented” is precisely the condition and “horizon” of being human by making the relation itself real. ‘[B]ehind [the] pessimistic twentieth-century arc lies a hidden counter-history, of occlusion as life-giving mystery.’¹⁰⁵ What Barfield offers is not a “return to givens” or something problematically conservative; as Harrington writes:

‘But for Barfield, this history of perceptual entanglement does not imply a need to return to ‘original participation,’ or even that this might be possible. Rather, he argues that the way forward lies via a further development in consciousness, such that we retain the capacity to view the world empirically but add the participatory mode of perception back in, resulting in ‘final participation.’ ’¹⁰⁶

‘Rather than connoting a pagan, sinful fall from lucidity as in Derrida,’ Harrington writes, ‘Barfield’s ‘unrepresented’ is a generative thing: the mystery that enables lucidity’s return in a higher key.’¹⁰⁷ And for Barfield, the Mystery ‘works by, through, and within human consciousness, tracing a long path toward incarnation of the divine creative principle in the world.’¹⁰⁸

I do not believe this “final participation” is possible at a critical mass without the SCM, which requires “(non)rationality” and a strengthened relationship between “the master and his emissary” (McGilchrist). Why? Because we cannot just will in a vacuum or just any environment to engage in “final participation”: it will require new spaces and new infrastructure to incubate within us new habits, as the SCM can. “Final participation” is impossible without “metajudgment,” which is impossible without “insight” and “apprehension,” but that requires us both to develop the courage to face “The Real” and risk “Love(craft),” and second to restrengthen our “gestalt-orientated Right Brains” against a culture of “autonomous Left Brain thinking,” and we can’t just do that because we want to do so or by flipping some switch. I’m gesturing toward Iain McGilchrist, whose work overlaps with what we have discussed, and the point is that I doubt anyone intends to lose the Right Brain, as nobody can intend to just bring it back. Training and new habits are needed, and I believe how we use language is strongly tied to forming those with new subjectivity, hence the importance of the SCM in spreading Voicecraft versus Kafkalikeness. Overall, my claim is that if the relationship between “the master and his emissary” is to be fixed, where the Left more so serves the Right versus vice-versa, then we must change how we use language, because language forms our subjectivity. That is only possible with Global Pluralism through the SCM, and that is the only way “final participation” in Global Pluralism might be possible (which could also “create demand” versus only “stimulate” it, help us have “freed speech,” etc.). This is how “belonging in Global Pluralism” could be realized, or else our only option for “belonging” will be repression and contribute to oppression, exactly as Derrida warned. And we will get our “belonging,” one way or another. Choose.

Analogy is how we can meaningfully relate to something not present and “unrepresented”: at the heart of the metajudgment, analogy considers a thing here and not here at the same time (A/B) (“lack is a present absence”). In a move that I think align with McGilchrist and the whole MCE, to “evolve consciousness” at this moment in history is to advance the average person’s capacity for “analogical reasoning” (in “apprehension” and “insight”), and to experience reality primarily in terms of “both-ness” (A/B). Everything is to be like that “duck-bunny,” that painting of Dali, and if we could reach a critical mass of people who could experience reality that way, then, to echo a point Andrea Hiott also voiced with , we might prove able to rise to the occasion of Global Pluralism.¹⁰⁹ A kind of “personal development” is needed, a point which can help us transition back to Sam Green’s work by us asking again, “Why is ‘the unrepresented’ so importance?” It’s because “personal development’ is impossible without it, and so in a world without Mystery, it is not by chance most people see character development as a matter of fighting for minorities and ending injustice (for “the unrepresented”). Even if this ultimately fails or causes unintentional consequences, in a world that has no sense of the Mystery, what else can people do who seek to develop? Meaninglessness that makes us question Development and lose Trust? Before the SCM and training us in metajudgment to “spread Childhood,” yes.

V

In the review of “The Mermaid” by Sam Green in Third Thoughts, we focus on “the void”; here, based on “The Net (139),” we will describe the point through “doing something that we can’t explain” (nonrational) (which can involve gestalts we “are (in)”). The key point: personal development requires an apprehension of a “gathering,” not a “representation.”¹¹⁰ We cannot develop as persons without Green’s “feminine logic.” We might gain economic security. We might gain status. But we cannot gain personal development. And this must take place “in a void,” per se, which we can think of as “a space we cannot (rationally) justify” or “fully represent” (Harrington), which also aligns with “the no-thingness” of the Kyoto School. In other words, to start, we must do something that we ourselves don’t entirely know why we are doing it, or else we will never develop ourselves, for nothing can transpire or change in us that we must know are a result of personal sources versus external, “bestowing” motivations like the economy, status, etc. (to allude to Nietzsche in II.1, and to also point ahead to Paul Krafel). If we don’t know why we are doing something, we can trust in what happens as genuine and there. Personal development occurs where we don’t know why we are doing x, and the SCM makes this kind of experience more easily accessible to everyone.

Not necessarily, but a risk of “The Meaning Crisis”-language is that it suggests that we shouldn’t do something unless it has meaning, and though that’s not false, it can suggest that we must see a meaning in something before we do it (not that John Vervaeke thinks this way). The reason why this can be a problem is because if we do x because it is meaningful, then we can justify why we do x (risking “personal development,” reducing courage in “bestowing”…), and furthermore we might be using “meaning” and “reason” as similes, which can be a problem. Based on Sam’s work, personal development seems to require us to do something that we can’t explain or justify, either in terms of logic, pragmaticism, and/or meaning. If we only do things because we can give them meaning, then there is less fear we have to face in doing them, which is to say we don’t have to worry so much that we are wasting our time or doing something that nothing will come from doing. A key to addressing “The Meaning Crisis” is precisely the willingness to act when we cannot justify the action in terms of reason or meaning. Nevertheless, we do it, and so the action can be life-giving.

It is not false that we should do that which we find meaningful, but if we only do that which we decide is meaningful or choose, versus more so be “surprised by meaning” (in Beauty) (a subtle but important distinction), meaning will feel week (“created” versus “discovered,” as we discussed with Timothy Keller in Part I). Moment of beauty require leaping into the unknown, and something is not fully unknown if we know the meaning for why we are doing it. Also, we can always deconstruct reasons, so if we only act when we have reason to act, everything we do can be deconstructed. Oddly, it is acting without reason that protects us from deconstruction, because we have no reason that can be deconstructed, and action cannot be deconstructed. Once we do something without justification, that becomes part of our history, and that can never be taken from us. And because whatever meaning that arises from this action is not done for a reason but from a “pure action” without reason, the meaning we gain will be protected. The meaning will be based on our action versus our action be based on meaning, and action cannot be deconstructed. Our meaning is ours. It cannot be taken. It is history, and history is final.

We easily cannot “personally develop” if we only act where there is reason to act, for all development that might occur then can be deconstructed. “The Meaning Crisis” is more addressed by doing what we can’t explain and what we can’t give reason for doing (“the unrepresentable”), and yet after doing there can be reason and meaning to apprehend. This is key: meaning cannot be calculated and seen as a conclusion we reach (masculine); it has to come after a process and “gathering” which we can then look over and “apprehend” meaning (feminine) (an “insight” of Zwicky, aligning with an “evolution of consciousness”). The B-20 affords us opportunity for the later, and hence real “feminine meaning” (faith and courage requiring) versus ironic “masculine meaning” that has us do that which is meaningful and so it fails to develop us. Problematically though, humanity has lacked a technology and infrastructure that would help us coordinate “gatherings” and activities throughout Global Pluralism that increase the probability of “encounters” and “surprises” which we cannot explain or justify ahead of time (against “Bestow Centrism”). When there were more vibrant social spaces before our age of Putnam’s “bowling alone” and/or loss of Jouvenel’s “Middle” (small community gatherings, churches, etc.), it was easier to “happen upon” relationships, spaces, and events we didn’t predict ahead of time; now, much more has to be done intentionally, which begs the question of why we are coordinating this or that, etc. (a question itself which can increase energy expenditure thinking about). With the loss of the “Middle”, life moves more toward “planning” from “preparing” (Illich), having reasons for doing things versus just being in spaces where thing can happen, and all of that profoundly contributes to “the loss of meaning,” for we cannot so easily feel like we discover meaning (via “apprehension”) versus create it.¹¹¹

We spoke with on the relationship between Development, Meaning, and Trust, and how Development tends to erode Meaning which then erodes Trust, causing profound problems. Development can erase the “Middle” and Social and cause “an age of bowling alone,” and we have not historically figured out how to keep Development from eroding Trust (across Global Pluralism, and/or to avoid cycles of history and Fourth Turnings). What we are suggesting here is that it profoundly matters how we gain Meaning, and for Meaning to really maintain itself and not destroy Trust, that Meaning must feel more discovered than created (“apprehended” more than “calculated,” which assumes we have the capacity for “insight,” hence the importance of “The Nordic Bildung”). Meaning must be something we “apprehend” versus choose for ourselves, but for the majority to gain that, we will need robust spaces that facilitate “surprising encounters” which cannot be “planned” only “prepared for,” and that is what the SCM makes possible across Global Pluralism. Such a “Global Middle” (Bauwen’s “Cosmo-Local”) has never before been possible, but now it is: the movement of Karatani’s “Spirit” can be as fast and far reaching as Capital with Hayek’s Pricing Mechanism.

To put this another way, especially beyond our immediacy, we have basically not had a way to effectively coordinate without reason, and so the majority of social coordination has been intentional with reasons and so deconstructible. The moment we make reasons, we are fragile and at risk, and over enough people over enough time, that fragility will break (especially across Difference, beyond shared tasks, and Global Pluralism), potentially ruining the Social in favor of Capital before our AI-Causer. Though it seems impossible, we need coordination across the globe that is based on “pure action” without expectation or reason, generating connection on “shared action/history” which is concrete and so robust and even antifragile against deconstruction, unlike “shared reasons.” All this basically means we need to be able to “bump into” people around the world, but isn’t that impossible? Before the internet, yes, and only to the degree the internet is used as an SCM. Without the SCM, we can only “bump into” (and then speak with) people in our immediacy, which greatly limits the potential of our Encounters, and often those people will be “more like us than not” and so not help with the problem of Global Pluralism (in fact, “happenstance encounters” could make it worse, suggesting a grace in Hikikomorism).

Meaning based on choice, preference, and reason will be fragile in feeling created (“calculated”), while meaning based on action, encounter, and history will be robust and/or antifragile in feeling discovered (“apprehended”) (and please note this logic applies just as much to desire: a desire must feel “discovered” to become a drive).For most of history, “discovered meaning” was mostly bound to our immediacy: it could not arise in a social environment consisting of people being present from all around the world (who share Voicecraft and courage). Hence, “discovered meaning” likely served “belonging” in a traditional sense, which we have argued is now a regression that denies Global Pluralism. And when we did establish relationships beyond our immediacy, they were based on reason more than action, shared purpose more than history, and hence those relationships were fragile and vulnerable to “the philosophical melancholia” and deconstruction we have discussed with Hume. We need to put action and “surprise” before reason and meaning, and if “we put first things first we can get second things also” (Lewis), but for most of history that was not possible regarding Global Pluralism, for a “Global Middle” and “living ecosystem” where Encounterology could enable Social “unfolding” across Difference was impossible.¹¹² But now we have the SCM, and in fact the anxiety and suffering caused by “our age of bowling alone” can precisely become the force that motivates the average person into the SCM, a use of the internet which otherwise might have never been employed by a critical mass of people (not to say it will be so used: that’s up to us, not guaranteed). Our crisis could be a removal of “plausible deniability” that something innovative and creative that we otherwise wouldn’t do must be done (the movement of Hegel’s Geist). But time will tell.

Oddly, looking back to Sam Green, in “masculine meaning” without “the void” and “no-thingness,” it is not clear if it is Rationality using humans for its own ends versus humans using rationality for extending humanity, for if we only do that which there is reason and meaning to do, then are we acting on behalf of Reason (“Dream-Equality”) or on behalf of humanity? (Land waits.) It’s unclear, which suggests something very important: if by “the meaning of life” we mean a reason and principle by which all things can be justified, then we have sought that which, if achieved, would mean “personal development” (“the extension of the human” convivially) would no longer be possible. Such a “meaning of life” would be the final victory of Rationality over and beyond the human: Artificial Intelligence as its own end would be complete. It is only because there are possibilities in life that can’t be justified ahead of time — only done, then looked back over, and then a possible apprehension (of Beauty) — it is only because there are possibilities “that are nothing to us,” that it is possible for us to develop and extend humanity.

The point of thinking is to not arrive at a “meaning of life” or principle by which all reality is known, which would kill personal development, but to remove plausible deniability that in the end we must choose to act. We must act on faith. Faith is doing what we don’t understand and can’t justify, and it requires faith for “the feminine” to “gather” things into a whole believing in the possibility of an “apprehension,” and it also requires courage, because “the feminine” can be seen as foolish if nothing is “apprehended.” Critically, the moment in our life when we don’t have something that we are doing we don’t understand, our development has stunted (which means defining maturity as “having a plan” and being able to justify everyone we do is a great mistake: “maturity” then means “no more development”). If we ever wonder if we are living a life that we will be satisfied with and won’t regret, it can be good to ask, “Am I doing anything that I can’t fully justify even to myself?” If not, we are in danger of missing out on a full life; of course, we are also not at risk of living a life of great failure. But perhaps a mediocre life is actually in an odd way a greater failure than a life that fails greatly? Maybe: if we could say for sure, there wouldn’t be risk, and there would be intelligibility that limited the potential for development.

Jurij Jukic made the valuable point that things that took faith once in our lives to do eventually prove worth it, and so it becomes easy to do them in the future. I think this is true, which suggests a progression: when we are a kid, it takes faith to believe that hard work will pay off, but this become easier to believe as we get older; it takes faith to believe that being part of a hard working sports team is good for us, but then this becomes clear. More examples can be made, but what I would say is though there is a natural “learning to have faith in faith” that comes with the process of gaining experience, there is eventually a limit that is hit to this kind of faith easily being provided by life. We grow up. We get to our midyears. And at this point there seems to be little we need to have faith in, for we know what leads to what if we just act as if it will. And this section of II.2 has suggested that this state is a problem and when personal development will be limited. What are we to do? Well, we need a new faith in that which is beyond experience, mainly Lack, “The Apophatic River-Hole,” Dialogos, Beauty…The only way to assure that there is always the possibility of a faith by which personal development is possible is to eventually have faith in that which is beyond experience (“the unrepresented” with Barfield) (as perhaps many religions understood, but then there are new problems we can face if this “religious move” is cataphatic versus apophatic). But if we come to have faith in that which is beyond experience and yet can be “glimpsed” in experience, we now have a condition of possibility in which lifelong personal development is possible. And this possibility is provided in terms of infrastructure and as an open “medium condition” (democratic) by the SCM for Global Pluralism. And this is to belong again.

VI

Personal development occurs thanks to faith (not necessarily theological), and greater personal development requires greater faith, and the greatest faith is in that which is ultimately outside of experience (“a (feminine) void,” “unrepresentable”). Please note “faith” is a word that we can associate with “faithful,” and that is a word of courage (and Dream-Equality is when courage isn’t needed because we are god—to our devolution). Where everything we can do can be justified, then we are intelligible to the system and don’t have our own “line of flight” (Deleuze), but then should we just do that which doesn’t make sense? Isn’t that madness and could lead to “Cheap Deleuzianism”? By what standard do we decide which thing to do that we cannot justify to ourselves? (We have to “bump into it,” I think, or else we’ve decided what we cannot justify, and so it might not be so unintelligible after all.) Also, isn’t what caused “The Meaning Crisis” people doing a job “without reason”? (Sure, but “meaningless” and “nonrational” are not similes.) All fair points, suggesting a need to describe “how” we arrive at our focus on the SCM as central to “the address,” and how we decide on which way to be “nonrational” in particular.

As discussed in “History Is Actually Possible” by O.G. Rose, history is important, and I’ve always found it interesting how many of my favorite philosophers have also been deep students of history. History is evidence of what relative to us now is “actually possible,” which is to say that it concretely happened even though it’s not happening now, and so it can offer a horizon of what we could now do and yet not be a self-consistent abstraction, moral program that could prove dangerous, or the like. As written in the paper found in Third Thoughts:

‘We are often told to study history to avoid its mistakes, but what if instead it would be better for us to read history to understand what is possible? What if the mistakes of history repeat because we don’t read history open to creative possibilities we might implement? What I mean by this is that if the Nordic Bildung managed to educate children without a curriculum (as Lene Andersen argues, discussed in II.2), then it is possible for schooling to work without a curriculum. If it is possible for a change in ideas to lead to great wealth, then we cannot say that philosophy cannot be good for the economy (considering McCloskey). And so on: if x happened, then x is possible. This in mind, we can’t really say what is ‘practical’ without knowing what is historic.

‘What people determine is ‘practical’ or ‘a good idea’ is often from a standpoint of the economy; it is not from a standpoint of history. Though economically it might not seem like a good idea to try a school system without a curriculum, if it has happened in history, in what sense can we say, ‘It is not practical’? […]

‘Historic data is unique data. What we learn in history can be the basis of new possibilities that are grounded in what happened, meaning there is a concreteness to these possibilities which can be a basis for ‘practicality’ and ‘social imagination’ that are not indirectly “captured” by economics and our immediacy […] History is actually possible, for it is actually possible for us to make history. History might repeat because we don’t learn history to create.’

History provides possibility that isn’t an abstraction, and in this possibility, we can discern patterns and tendencies that can help decide which “unjustifiable act” would be best for us now. History gives us evidence of what has happened and thus is possible, but it also can’t repeat today exactly the same way: it can provide a structure, but this must be “an open structure” that makes possible divergence and difference. It provides a means and heuristic of decision making, but it doesn’t force a direction, which means history can provide guidance for “an unjustified action” without at the same time slipping into a justification. History can be evidence of personal development that avoids randomness in nonrational activity. It can show examples of Heideggerian “clearings” that actually do generate new qualities of being, as I would claim the Nordic Bildung did — and perhaps nothing but history can be evidence of quality-focused initiatives versus quantity-focused, such as “personal development in a void” (history can also make it plausible to us that we should stay in the metaxies of William Desmond, or “toward” Beauty, or “waiting” perhaps like Anselm — history is a gift).

History is not given to us like logic and reason, which are more universal and contingent, and so history can provide direction without being “a reason that justifies” which inhibits our ability to engage in unjustified action that nevertheless isn’t random or a threat to social intelligibility (as is a risk with “Cheap Deleuze”). We speak often of “nonrationality” being necessary to avoid Game Theory problems in O.G. Rose, and we can associate “acting without justification” as “acting nonrationality,” which here we are suggesting that history can help guide without infringing upon its nonrational quality. If nonrationality is needed for new creativity possibilities, perhaps this is another reason why many great thinkers study history: it can guide creativity without making creativity a rigid plan.

Alright, history matters, but what about the guy working a job that’s meaningless to him? Isn’t he engaged in “unjustifiable activity”? Not completely, for the outcome is relatively known; in fact, many people do a job they don’t like because it “pays the bills” (the future is more predictable and secure). If we do the unjustified but can generally predict what will happen, then this action isn’t really something we can say about, “I can’t explain it.” We might not be able to justify playing videogames all day, not leaving our bad job, not changing our attitude, being lazy, etc., but we do have a strong idea what will happen in the future if we keep doing these activities: either nothing will change (stable) or the outcome will be bad (a life of entropic pleasure). But don’t we from history learn what the Nordic Bildung can do? Yes and no, because we don’t know what each person will do trained in the Bildung, and furthermore how the Bildung “meets” and trains a given person is unknown. If we have absolutely no idea what x will do, we will have no reason to do x, meaning it’s random: we need “a justifiable openness” (which is based primarily on “preparation” versus “planning”), a fine line which is hard to walk, but that history as a study can help us realize.

To put this another way, we want to study history to determine if x, y, or z is that which doing is more likely to increase “unknown possibility” for the future (“opens up” more), If we keep doing our current job, we have a strong sense of what the future will be like (and in fact can think it’s bad if we don’t, under a “planning”-mindset), but if we went through and spread a “Nordic Bildung,” it’s hard to say what will happen, though we could reasonable say that we’d be more prepared for whatever might happen (in a way that doesn’t get us “captured” by a single logic, A/A). Now, if the future is too unknown, we might put at risk our ability to sustain ourselves so that we can do things we can’t explain, so the fact alone we “do a joy to pay the bills” does not in itself mean we are cut off from (the void of) personal development. Again, (masculine) calculation and “planning” have a role; the problem is that they work so well they tend to “overfit” and eclipse (the feminine) apprehension we need for development, without which no “meaning” we have will prove sustainable, supported by history versus only (deconstructible) reason. So it goes with the society at large: we tend to “overfit” the Pricing Mechanism to do what the Social Coordination Mechanism does best.¹¹³

We can better discern what “unjustifiable action” we could engage in based on what has happened in the past and based on what we can’t entirely predict in the future (honoring Encounterology), and if we don’t have the possibility of “personal development” in our lives to some degree (thanks to there being some degree of action “we can’t explain”), then we are positioned for our humanity to be replaced versus extended (Land waits). How can we make sure that we are always doing something that is historically-based but also unpredictable? By having relationships, in my view. By having friends. By having conversations where we have no idea where things could go. By being part of the SCM and having those qualities spread through habituation into our off-line lives, which changes the kinds of subjects we are when we return to the on-line space — on and on in a feedback loop. On this point, we should note the concern that the SCM could be taking people out of their “real lives” into an online space where “real relationships” cannot form, only “simulations of relationships.” That is a risk (that I think the specific technologies of the SCM mitigate), but please note that Sociology teaches us that the line between “real” and “fake” is very thin. Is money real? Yes/no. Is “America”? Yes/no. The world is a place where the real and fake blur, and so it goes with the digital and offline: they cannot be easily separated. In fact, the SCM is arguably returning the sociological “power of the real/fake” back to the people, as opposed to it just being the elites and institutions that crate and decide the “fetishes” which will guide and condition our lives. The SCM can create an aesthetic/environment in which we create our own “between spaces” that bring together the physical and the created, versus let the larger powers ((un)intentionally) have a monopoly on those sociological forces.

“History-based” and “unpredictable outcome” must be qualities of our “unjustifiable action” if it is to be a basis for a “Costly Deleuzianism” or Childhood versus a “Cheap Deleuzianism” in which a “new address” is not possible. We must “belong again” primarily in gathering/apprehension versus calculating/conclusion, which we can ironically do in the name of “concluding” what we need to do to regain belonging. Life has value in being alive and being open for our participation: it doesn’t just have meaning because we see meaning in it and then act. Life is not our servant. Instead, we act when we don’t know why we are acting. and then there is life. As we discussed in “The Net (139),” there is no meta-language because “there is no language” (“there is no intercourse,” Lacan) as a pure exchange of meaning: language is about coordinating us more than it is just exchanging information (we err to judge language against a stable meaning versus asses language’s flow, alluding to “Self-Delusion, the Toward-ness of Evidence, and the Paradox of Judgment”). A meta-language is a language that can discuss language without being bound to its consistency, and basically to say “there is no meta-language” is to say we cannot “get outside of immediacy” or discuss what is beyond from a standpoint of the beyond. This is true, but language as “being about something beyond it,” as suggested by the “signifier/signified divide” that concerned Derrida, is something that language entails but it should not be the primary meaning of language to us (if we come into language with an idea of what language is, that very reason makes it susceptible to deconstruction, like action we do for a reason). If we are going to take seriously that we must act without reason for (feminine, apophatic-based) meaning, so we must also speak without (calculated) meaning to (apprehended) meaning, opportunity for which the SCM affords. Not all the time, for that leads to “Cheap Deleuzianism,” as does the feminine without the masculine as Sam Green depicts them, but if we forget the act of apprehension that makes the word possible, we will miss the use of language as a “social coordination” for “rationally unjustifiable action,” as needed for us to develop and “extend humanity.”

These points are elaborated on in “On Typography” by O.G. Rose, featured in (Re)constructing “A Is A,” and indeed we have made a mistake to think that deconstructing “the signifier/signified gap” is to deconstruct all metaphysics: “the metaphysics of apprehension” is very much alive and needed for us to have the categories by which we can understand movement into the (feminine) meaning on the other side of unjustified action (for me, the SCM is a digital-architecture in which “the metaphysics of reading” (apprehension) versus “the metaphysics of the book” (gap-crossing, concluding) are trained). Because we tend to primarily think of language as exchanging meaning and information, I think that contributes to us emphasizing meaning as what we get before action via calculation/rationality (masculine), versus think of language as coordinating action via “gathering” (history, experiences, ideas, relations…) that we cannot justify and that by nevertheless doing we have the possibility of “apprehending” meaning (feminine) — Beauty. Meaning must be on the other side of the (meaningless) void, not before it, or meaning will likely be deconstructible and not sustain us (unless perhaps it’s an “internally consistent system,” which hinders our “address”). If we think of language as mostly about just exchanging meaning, we are likely to make this mistake, but if we instead we emphasis language as coordinating and “conditioning” ourselves, as the SCM does — which is a move we can align with “the halo” described with Hofstadter and Sander and “the orbiting” of D.C. Schindler — then we might find ourselves part of life.

There is no “meta-language” for Lacan— no language outside of everyday language which could explain and justify language objectively — and I would say that there is no language that isn’t ultimately a coordination of action that is indivisible from situational, environment, etc. A conditional and contextual language is possible, but not “a meta-language.” However, a “meta-practice” seems possible, which is to say a doing of practice (not explanation) that is the aim of all practice and the manifestation of its fullness (a “meta-practice” must itself be a practice or it would be a language).¹¹⁴ What is that? “Flow.” “Self-forgetfulness.” The only way to get outside of language is to not have it (which ruins development), but it is possible for me to not be practicing and yet my body (with a negated/sublated “I”) still practice, as occurs in a state of “flow” (hence “a meta-practice” or “meta-action”). Language is at its best when it coordinates “the conditions of possibility” for this “flow,” after which we will then have the history of this occurrence to inform what “unjustifiable action” we engage in (say we go on the SCM, experience “flow,” and then in remembering this, can choose to reenter the SCM, and do so without any guarantee of anything happening again (“a void”)). Through this memory and history, language-as-coordination is negated/sublated into “unjustified action” in directing its possibility without limiting it (with a rational justification that would set it up for deconstruction).

“Meta-practice” is self-forgetfulness (Keller), flow, Dialogos, and other practices we see on the B-20. We cannot use language in a way that gets get outside of language, as we cannot use meaning to get outside of meaning that can be deconstructed, but we can practice and act in a way that gets outside of rational justification and rigid semantics, precisely because we can “forget ourselves.” Language can of course be used in this state/flow, but the language is negated/sublated into the action and practice (a higher dimensionality, Geometric). When practice is beyond practice for us and yet still itself (A/B), language gains a new quality, but this by definition cannot be explained only done; however, thanks to the SCM, it is now possible to see this modeled and participated in (making it “spreadable”). Our communication technology has given us a “condition of possibility” to overcome this dilemma that has arguably held back a social understanding and spread of “the fullness of language (as coordinating unjustifiable action in self-forgetfulness),” which is possible in a condition and life where encounter and surprise can occur, for which we can be “prepared” but not readily “plan.”¹¹⁵

The SCM can only be maintained in the quality we need if it is “a void,” which is to say that which we cannot fully justify or predict—which is hard. Otherwise, as we’ve said, instead of a personal development, the development could just be Rationality through us, which is say that we might just be “used by Rationality” for its own development and end, where Rationality-to-Capital-to-AI could be threatening to leave us behind as we now face our AI-Causer (Land waits). If for example we develop in our ideology (say Christianity), then we might only be developing our Rationality and logic within the axioms of that “map,” a point that applies to all “maps” and suggests all efforts to develop according to and within an “internal consistency” can be in service of a Rationality that might leave us behind (for more, see The Map Is Indestructible). Any “map” will do, but Rationality can let us move between “maps” precisely so that we think this action can make an ultimate difference favoring humanity, when this is a trick (unless it brings us to a “Gödel Point” we “dwell in,” as we discuss elsewhere). To avoid such mistakes, we need to develop within “a void” (like “the Gödel Point” in (and yet not in) a “map”), but that is hard and odd. If we are to “extend humanity,” we will require “personal development” that is clearly distinct from “Rationality’s development,” and that requires a “void” that we might avoid precisely for the sake of saving humanity (irony is our art).

The weird and key move is that the SCM affords language as meta-practice, due to how it functions simultaneously as a social connector, modeler, and habit-forming aesthetic. The SCM does not provide a meta-language but “a meta-practice of language,” which is possible even if a meta-language is not.¹¹⁷ We practice not “getting out of language” but instead “saturating language” (Ebert) and “unfolding” with it more than just determining and calculating its semantic meaning, which is to say we create a new quality of language versus try to be objective about it, and paradoxically I think this makes us more ourselves and “toward” (the) Absolute (History). We are learning how to really use and enjoy language versus “solve” it, which oddly helps us better understand language (if you put “first things first”…), and since language uniquely structures subjectivity, this is a major and consequential change (from Kafkalikeness to Voicecraft), and one that is theoretically spreadable, because everyone already uses language, and the resource demands can be minimal. Language provides semantic meaning, yes, but it can also provide meaning in “movement” (take how great literature and art “moves” us). Perhaps the poet has always known the power of language to “move” and the importance of semantics serving that “movement” (A/B) versus “the movement” more so serving semantics (A/A) (“first things…”), but now we have a “medium condition” which helps us all be more like poets. But “poets” at the expense of “linguists”? That might be our choice between the SCM and 6-7.

Language can help not just with semantic meaning but also a feeling of belonging, but critically a kind of “belonging” that isn’t static and based on “givens” but more so in a movement itself (more Deleuzian). In this is hope for our “new address” and suggests why language is so critical for our inquiry, but there is also risk and simulacra. In “The Net (180),” thanks to , of whom I am indebted to for even thinking about 6–7, we discussed the TikTok phenomenon, and Ebert made a strong case that in 6–7 we see a new revelation of how language can be used, what it could be, and even how we might long to use it. For more please see his excellent article, “Attack Of The Sacred”:

Alex Ebert

Attack Of The Sacred

“The way out is through”. All our best and brightest will tell you. Even if you had another choice, you can’t take it. Lefts and rights flit by as you float straight past lefts and rights. The back door (which was, upon an earlier time, the front door into which you flew) recedes like Middle Aged temples. All back doors are now too small (and fit only …

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4 months ago · 15 likes · 8 comments · Alexander Ebert

In my view, 6–7 expresses language as a practice of “(meaning as) movement” with semantics (or “linguistic meaning,” like the definitions of words) being secondary, which is opposite of normal use. In fact, telling people what 6–7 meant semantically could destroy it, yet aren’t words things that aren’t even words unless they can be defined and given semantic meaning? Well — 6–7 is just something you have to “get.” Just do it. Come and see. And in this way 6–7 has qualities of the apophatic and “enchantment” of Charles Taylor, and yet in another way 6-7 seems like postmodern nihilism.. What’s going on? (Laugh.)

We can find “a belonging in movement” in “the free play of the signifier” (fitting for Children), which for Derrida was afforded through ever-differing semantics, but in 6-7 we “free play” unburdened by semantics: the signifier can be more “playful” than even Derrida might have realized. But without a “container” for this “play,” we can lose the Social, indicating the importance of the SCM, a technological infrastructure that arguably for the first time allows a realization and even enjoyment of “the free play of the signifier” without threatening social intelligibility (in fact, it could enable it). Perhaps words are not themselves unless they are so freed into “play,” and perhaps we as subjects are not “fully human” until we are formed by language in “free play” (Voicecraft)? I think so: it is the use of language necessary for “conviviality” versus “manipulation” as Illich discussed, for the “mentidivergence” we associated with Simone Weil so we could avoid Game Theory Problems—for “the spread of Childhood.”

6-7 seems like “the pure movement of the signifier,” a “pure flow” which cannot be “captured” because it lacks semantics by which it could be so. 6–7 cannot be deconstructed, because there is no semantic meaning or reason to deconstruct: it is more like “pure action” or a stimulant of action, which we have noted is necessary to avoid deconstruction and maintain Trust. 67 also creates a feeling of “just getting it,” which for Zwicky is a key characteristic of “insight’ or Green’s “apprehension,” and furthermore can create a feeling of being “in the in-crowd,” which is a feeling of belonging (hinting at why “apprehension” is central to “address”). So what’s the problem? Sounds like 6–7 is exactly what we need. It gives us reason to hope, yes, but it’s also dangerous: we shouldn’t forget that for Zwicky there are “false gestalts” and that “apprehension” is not inherently good; also, “un-deconstructible action” could be tyrannical and unstoppable. Both are necessary pieces of the puzzle, but both in the wrong way can cause trouble. Overall, my claim is that the end of the internet is 6–7, while the negation/sublation of the internet is the SCM. And we must choose.

The SCM is not identical to 6–7, but it is tapping into a way language can be used like 6–7, while maintaining a dialectical tension and/or art between “putting into words” what ultimately must be apophatic (as does theology when at its best). The “pure movement” of 6–7 perhaps works too good, suggesting a need to intentionally introduce negativity, or else things will be “too smooth.”¹¹⁸ 6–7 is more like “autonomous nonrationality,” which is just as problematic as “autonomous rationality”: it gives us the experience of “belonging again” without having suffered the negativity needed for it to address Global Pluralism. It put this another way, 6–7 is an enjoyment of the apophatic without suffering the failure of the work to bring the apophatic into (incomplete) intelligibility, a failure needed for development of the subject. 6–7 can be like an apophatic theology that denies any connection at all between the word “good” and the “Good” which God Is in Himself (for example) (Karl Barth’s denial of “the analogy of being” comes to mind).¹¹⁹ We need something like 6–7 to “belong again,” but what we need is “an apprehension” (of the transversal, across Multiplicity) — or else it will be chaos, anxiety, and a return to totalitarianism for existential stability.

6–7 can be a temptation to experience the effect of an “insight” (and “false gestalt”) without the effort of “gathering” to make a “void” like Sam Green discusses (climax and orgasm without the work of relationship, a feeling of connection without “subjective destitution”) (a risk also of hard apophatic theology). 6–7 works more by cause and effect, while Sam’s process is mysterious: we basically know what will happen if we say “6–7” and we are “in on it,” while we don’t know what will happen if we “gather” our daily experiences together. Also, if there is an “apprehension” in 6–7 somehow, it cannot readily move beyond the experience of 6–7.¹²⁰ When I am struck by Rilke’s poem, I can be “sent out” and change my experience of taking care of my family, while 6–7 only “sends me out” to find more experiences of 6–7 — the coordination potential is far less (6–7 is like a mysticism outside society (orgasmic), while the SCM tries to bring mysticism in and even as the Social (procreative)). Here, we can see what we mean to say 6–7 “threatens the Social” even though 6–7 is shared between people: it is because we cannot with 6–7 coordinate building, taking care of children, growing food…and in fact it can just be a distraction from these tasks. It is “(meaning in) movement” without “coordination,” or at least the coordination is too minimal and narrow for wide application, not reaching beyond the enjoyment and hearing of 6–7. We need to feel “moved” in building, taking care of children, growing food…not just in getting excited when we hear 6–7, even if 6–7 is important as a revelation of what language can do (as Ebert is right to argue), for if 6–7 is a linguistic possibility, what else might be possible with language? (Is History just a story of language?)

The meaning of 6-7 is not semantic, so what is the character and quality of this meaning? Again, it is “meaning as movement,” that’s closest parallel—which I associate with D&G (rightly or wrongly)—might have been “The Dancing Epidemic” (perhaps more myth than history), which might be a supreme example of “an apophatic community” (the “empty signifier that moves us” could be an apophatic ideal); the difference is that 6-7 involves language. This seems impossible before the internet, for a video of language-use couldn’t be spread around the world that other people could emulate, film themselves doing, share, and so on. 6–7 needed a world where it was easy to record and share videos to anyone on the planet, and so 6–7 could probably not happen until high-speed internet, Zoom, cellphones with recording capabilities, etc. — the same conditions that make possible the SCM. “Apophatic theology” is I think fairly framed as an effort to primarily relate to God through “movement” versus semantics, and I think this can help us understand the great debate between “apophatic theology” and “cataphatic theology.” Apophatic thought (“movement”) would emphasize worship, ritual, etc., while the cataphatic (“semantics”) would be more comfortable with theology, sermons, etc. “Cataphatic semantics” risk idolatry, yes, but “apophatic movement” can risk what we see in 6–7 — both are needed for our “new address” and “belonging again.” (a sublation I associate with Dante’s “Love,” “intelligible movement,” and/or Harmony). Dance as Word. Friendship. (Javier’s “communal sinthome.”) But as we see in 6–7, the conditions of possibility for “unbinding the signifier” (Promethean) and our vital SCM might also make possible “A Global Dancing Plague” — every chance brings risk.

Culture dies with the loss of the apophatic and nonrational, but so it dies with the loss of the cataphatic and rational. 6–7 seems like an apophatic theology that allows nothing to be said about God: all semantic meaning is denied.¹²¹ I agree with an emphasis on the apophatic, but our challenge is precisely a semantic meaning that doesn’t violate the apophatic: if we outright believe that there is no possibility at all of any kind of semantic meaning regarding the apophatic, that absolutely nothing can be cataphatic, I think we are doomed in Global Pluralism (a point I associate with Austin Farrer). How this speech and thinking is done is tricky — we must learn to speak of “lack,” a “present absence,” poetic — but if it is not possible, then something like 6–7 might be the best we can hope for regarding the apophatic. And why won’t this work? Well, I think it’s “practically equivalent” to Robert Nozick’s “experience machine” when used for (perpetual) organism, just through language versus Virtual Reality, and why not just do VR at that point (6–7 is on the same continuum)?¹²² ¹²³ And so we’d make our choice before our AI-Causer. (Land waits.)

6–7 without the Social is a “pure movement” that is like Voicecraft but ultimately serves Kafkalikeness and Dream-Equality (and perhaps is one of our greatest threats because it is so much “like” our address — less dangerous can be what is obviously unfitting). The problem is that 6–7 is identical to how AI relates to language. Language is semantically meaningless to AI, but it knows which meaningless words have the highest probability of being the right meaningless words relative to a given prompt of meaningless words. AI is incredibly fast at responding to our prompts (as possible because it doesn’t have to worry about semantics), but there is only a semblance of semantic meaning in its outputs: to the outcome of a probability assessment, we then give the semantic meaning in reading the output. But for AI and all its use, there are no semantics: it has only been trained to increase the probability for the best response. And so it goes with 6–7: we are trained by the prompt to give the best response (versus interpret, judge, etc.). And based on the response of others, like AI begin given approval, we assess if we have acted well and adjust our response accordingly for next time. And so the process continues and repeats, gaining efficiency, and in this we can feel like we have a “work” and even like “we did what we are supposed to do,” which can feel like “belonging” even — until a situation which requires response, action, and coordination beyond what 6–7 could provide. But VR wouldn’t have that problem. VR is like 6–7. Why not keep 6–7 going? Dance. Dance.

6–7 is the movement of Voicecraft but without the semantics, the nonrational without the rational, and so it is the loss of the Social and inadequate even if like our “address.” 6–7 entails “meaning as movement” but is deeply lacking in its capacity for coordination (“Cheap Deleuzianism”).125 The SCM entails “meaning as movement,” but it’s harder to achieve and spread; however, it entails semantics and far better potential for coordination, as the Social requires. 6–7 is connection through climax and moments, while SCM is connection through intimacy and process; the SCM can entail 6–7, but 6–7 cannot entail the SCM. 6–7 can feel better quicker among more people, while SCM can feel deeper but such slower among others. 6–7 is orgasm, while SCM is marriage. For our “new address,” the key is sublating semantics, not leaving semantics behind. 6–7 unveils that this is possible now and how we are hungry to use language by a new quality. Both 6–7 and the SCM offer that new possibility, and both relate to the apophatic (“Lack”) and are structurally similar, but they are not the same: 6–7 erases semantic meaning and the Social for “pure movement” (a “pure eros,” perhaps, climatic), while the SCM negates/sublates semantics for a Social in “movement” and “(be)coming.” Perhaps 6–7 is better than where Derrida left us according to Harrington, but it is not Barfield. And we must Absolutely Choose before our AI-Causer…

I am critical of 6–7, but I want to take a moment to say that we should find hope in it. There is a longstanding idea that most people won’t be interested in philosophy, won’t come to pursue something of interest that drives them, won’t avoid consumption or instantaneous gratification, won’t engage in longform conversation, won’t entertain lifelong learning, won’t seek to be elite and dynamic — in other words, that there’s no hope for “spreading Childhood.” Perhaps this is true, but I would argue we’ve never had the social or global infrastructure to run this experiment: at best, we’ve had localized and limited areas where the experiment could be run — say in the spaces described by Randal Collins — but we’ve never had the means to widen the range and scope of the experiment. The SCM provides this opportunity: if it is possible or impossible to “spread Childhood,” we are now in a position to better find out. Furthermore, the spread of 6–7 is evidence that the average person is hungry for a new quality of language and that anyone can “get it” even if it’s impossible to explain, like the SCM. And I’m also encouraged in this effort by what Lene Andersen writes: ‘The Nordic Secret was not written to brag about the Nordics, but because there is a lesson to be learned: People hold immense potential; it just needs a way to unfold and flourish.’¹²⁶

It is coordination all the way down: changing coordination changes everything. And I am of the belief that as once people experience wealth, they tend to choose it (despite the tradeoffs), so once people experience Voicecraft, “intrinsic motivation,” Childhood, and/or “Spirit,” they also choose it. I don’t believe the majority of people has ever experienced Voicecraft or Childhood — or that the social infrastructure say in education has been such that they could even be “opened” to it via “the medium condition” — and a reason is because “the conditions of possibility” for this were themselves not possible. Now, they are, and so now it is possible to run the experiment, for “Spirit” can now move as quickly and widely as Capital. Will the average person choose it and keep choosing “Spirit” (A/B) once they’ve experienced it Though there is always the risk of “The Real” and “Love(craft),” in “The Net (195),” said that human relationship is more magical than people realize, and we are in an age of infrastructure where this realization can be more enjoyed by all thanks to and in service of Global Pluralism versus despite it. That is my hope. That is how I believe we can make history. That is why I believe the SCM is how history is actually possible.

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Notes

⁶³See “Preface” by Michael Foucault, as featured in Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2009: xii-xiii.

⁶⁴See “Preface” by Michael Foucault, as featured in Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2009: xiii.

⁶⁵See “Preface” by Michael Foucault, as featured in Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2009: xiii-xiv.

⁶⁶See “Preface” by Michael Foucault, as featured in Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2009: xiv.

⁶⁷Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Translation by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000: 335.

⁶⁸To “(de)terrorize” something is to (de)situate it within its network of relations, and to say something is “rhizomatic” is to say it is connected and relating to things that we might not acknowledge (because they are below the surface). When something is “transversal,” it is not overly-determined or overly-territorized by a given “vector” or process: it is able to successfully move between “territories” in a way that enables new possibilities, manifestations, etc. (something cannot be “transversal” without any “deterritorization” at all, and it will also be “rhizomatic” in the sense that it “pops up” across processes and vectors: a “chair” will be in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc.). However, what is transversal today could be “re-territorized” tomorrow (deterritorization eventually re-territorizes), meaning that the poetry today that escapes a system of linguistic relations could tomorrow be “captured” in a new system of poetic relations, which would require a new use of language that “transverses” this new system of relations — on and on — and to the degree the SCM is established and spread is to the degree we might be habituated to keep this “transversing” going without top-down planning that ruins it.

⁶⁹For more, see “Transversality” by Helen Palmer and Stanimir Panayotov, as can be found here:
https://newmaterialism.eu/almanac/t/transversality.html

⁷⁰Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Translation by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000: 336.

⁷¹Deleuze, Giles. Poust and Signs. Translated by Richard Howard. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press, 2000: 168–169.

⁷²“Form(ulation)s as artwork(ing)s”? Perhaps.

⁷³Deleuze, Giles. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990: 37.

⁷⁴Deleuze, Giles. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990: 36.

⁷⁵Deleuze, Giles. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990: 37.

⁷⁶Deleuze, Giles. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990: 37.

⁷⁷Deleuze, Giles. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990: 38.

⁷⁸Deleuze, Giles. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990: 39.

⁷⁹What exactly this “transversal necessity” might be or mean perhaps is indeterminable, but that there is “necessary reason to consider it” is what D&G might stress.

⁸⁰And perhaps what is transversal is at a certain point that which we can handle to keep together, meaning there could be a contingency at the vector of Mind on what is transversal versus tangential, that Mind in this way is deeply and ontologically Creative.

⁸¹Deleuze, Giles. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994: 28.

⁸²Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2009: 381–382.

⁸³Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2009: 381–382.

⁸⁴Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: vii.

⁸⁵Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: viii.

⁸⁶Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: 6.

⁸⁷Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: 8.

⁸⁸Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: 3.

⁸⁹Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: 4.

⁹⁰Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: 4.

⁹¹Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: 5.

⁹²Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: 6.

⁹³Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: 8.

⁹⁴Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: 9.

⁹⁵Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: 9.

⁹⁶Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: 10.

⁹⁷Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020: 10.

⁹⁸Please note “is (in)” as a phrase that uniquely points to gestalts: everything that “is,” “is (in).”

⁹⁹Also, it is interesting how it seems impossible to be wrong about a “sudden and all at once apprehension” when we go that is “Moonlight Sonata,” where it is easy to imagine that we might be wrong in our calculation of “9 x 12 = x.” Still, sure, “apprehension” is something that might be wrong, but we cannot deny it happened, alluding to Greg Dember’s work on Metamodernity. It seems a lot easier to feel like we “have nothing to show for it” if we have a failed calculation, whereas even if an “apprehension” is wrong, it feels like we nevertheless had a real experience. I’m not sure, and there are “false gestalts,” and yet even the experience of a “false gestalt” feels like it really changes us internally. But perhaps it makes us mad?

¹⁰⁰For more, please see “Mystifying the Appearances” by Mary Harrington (Jam 23rth, 2025), as can be found here:
https://www.royst.no/post/mystifying-the-appearances

¹⁰¹For more, please see “Mystifying the Appearances” by Mary Harrington (Jam 23rth, 2025), as can be found here:
https://www.royst.no/post/mystifying-the-appearances

¹⁰²For more, please see “Mystifying the Appearances” by Mary Harrington (Jam 23rth, 2025), as can be found here:
https://www.royst.no/post/mystifying-the-appearances

¹⁰³For more, please see “Mystifying the Appearances” by Mary Harrington (Jam 23rth, 2025), as can be found here:
https://www.royst.no/post/mystifying-the-appearances

¹⁰⁴Can these “Other(s)” overlap best in PM or MCE?

¹⁰⁵For more, please see “Mystifying the Appearances” by Mary Harrington (Jam 23rth, 2025), as can be found here:
https://www.royst.no/post/mystifying-the-appearances

¹⁰⁶For more, please see “Mystifying the Appearances” by Mary Harrington (Jam 23rth, 2025), as can be found here:
https://www.royst.no/post/mystifying-the-appearances

¹⁰⁷For more, please see “Mystifying the Appearances” by Mary Harrington (Jam 23rth, 2025), as can be found here:
https://www.royst.no/post/mystifying-the-appearances

¹⁰⁸For more, please see “Mystifying the Appearances” by Mary Harrington (Jam 23rth, 2025), as can be found here:
https://www.royst.no/post/mystifying-the-appearances

¹⁰⁹For more, please see “The Marvels of Computationalism, Radical Embodiment and Holding Paradox” with , as can be found here:

¹¹⁰I can “apprehend” what is “unrepresented,” but not bring it into representation/presence, and that “apprehension” leads to personal transformation, which is something Gurdjieff stressed.

¹¹¹We cannot experience a Determination in which we realize freedom, pointing to Hegel. The loss of the Middle and loss of “freedom in” correspond; now there is only “freedom from” and “freedom to” (Berlin), and this “captures” everything from politics to our daily lives.

¹¹²Religions seem to historically have been uniquely effective at maintaining the Social, partly because they have not just been based on “shared reasons/beliefs” but (also) on “shared action/history,” and furthermore they have created real places and facilities around the world. Religions have been the closest we’ve gotten to social coordination that deals with Global Pluralism, but these too have failed, nevertheless stuck before “the problem who don’t share the beliefs.” Hegel’s “Religion” has not moved to “Absolute Knowing,” as we discussed with Cadell Last in The Map Is Indestructible, and the move they have now made (with other worldviews) is the creation of “reasons that cannot be deconstructed” in “internally consistent systems” (“maps”). These secure religions from deconstruction by rationality, but “maps” do not address Global Pluralism; in fact, they can make the problem far worse. Unless we use “maps” to realize “Gödel Points,” but that will require a specially formed subject, a Child.

¹¹³Might this suggest civilizations, movements, religions…based on history last longer than ones based on ideology? Which might favor conservatism, unless history is used to create…

¹¹⁴For me, a “meta-practice” must also be able to refer to itself without changing itself, which I think can happen in “flow,” even if hard. And also it could be argued that in “self-forgetfulness” we aren’t “there” to be referred to, and so this problem is overcome: if we “refer” to “ourselves,” we refer to an “unfolding” versus “stable self,” per se, and so not changes as we ever-(be)come.

¹¹⁵“Preparation” aligns with “meaning across the void,” while “planning” aligns with “meaning against the void.”

¹¹⁶The SCM provides an architecture in which “higher dimensional engagement” becomes possible (engagement that is more like literature and the humanities). Much of our engagement today is more like technology — ones and zeroes, if/then statements, problems and solutions — for most of our engagement has been through technologies that could not bring with them a fuller dimension approaching the human in experiencing them. The book left behind the body and the voice; the phone left behind the body; but Zoom brings the body. “The in-person presence” is still missing, but though training and habituation with the SCM can never full make up for that loss, it dramatically improves it, especially if we enter into a “flow” and state of “self-forgetfulness” (for I would argue these are paradoxically the states of “highest presence”). Also, the SCM can train us to better handle in-person encounters, as it can inspire to meet people in-person who we otherwise would not. For what it lacks, it provides address.

¹¹⁷“A meta-practice of language” is “language as practice,” and so A/B, while “a meta-language” would be “language as/to language,” and so A/A. In this way, the SCM affords an experience of language that is a “contradiction” that is “fitting” for us as “contradictions.”

¹¹⁸This can be like “psychedelic experience” versus “mystical experience” on the other side of “subjective destitution.” 6–7 could be valuable insomuch as it points as to the SCM, as psychedelics could have value to the degree it points us to the mystical, but both could also be dangerous in that they seem to remove the need to go on that journey.

¹¹⁹Perhaps in 6–7 is a theory of religious formation where “pure movement” holds the Church together, and perhaps denial of all cataphatic understandings of God were efforts to create something like “6–7” in Church as a means of social formation? It can indeed seem as if theology and efforts to give religion “semantic meaning” can hurt its efforts to form community, but then community without theology can easily be manipulated. We need “a semantic 6–7,” which seems impossible, but that’s actually what I think the SCM affords. “Cheap Deleuzianism” could be 6–7, while “Costly Deleuzianism” could be the SCM.

(6–7 could be like a God to whom we cannot relate, which keeps God “God,” but who cares?)

¹²⁰If 6–7 is “apprehended” across Multiplicity, it is arguably “transversal,” and yet at the same time it seems radically tangential and irrelevant. How? It seems tangential because it lacks semantic definition, but it also seems impossible that so many people would “get it” if 6–7 meant absolutely nothing in every sense. It has to “mean” somehow, but we cannot say how. And that’s the meaning. Spin. (A dancing epidemic?)

¹²¹To use language from elsewhere in O.G. Rose, 6–7 might be “Third Impact” (NGE), while the SCM is Harmony.

¹²²And that means the best Global Pluralism can hope for is something like “Third Impact” — a global erotic movement over Difference — versus a Harmony in Difference.

¹²³Is 6–7 an “object of desire” that cannot be deconstructed but also can’t ever fulfill (“an indestructible signifier” like “an indestructible map”?) Is 6–7 “endless desire” but never drive? Is that a damnation like salvation, or am I biased? I might be, hence why it is damnation. But am I biased…?

¹²⁴As Javier Rivera pointed out, 6–7 might point to the possibility of a “Communal Sinthome,” but will that Sinthome be a “Third Impact” or a “Harmony”? That is our “Absolute Choice” before our AI-Causer.

¹²⁵Secularization seems like a trajectory of eventually reliving all theology on this side of finite.

¹²⁶Andersen, Lene Rachel. The Nordic Secret. Nordic Bildung Publishing, 2024: 7 (Kindle Edition; Desktop View).

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I

Here is a review of Part 1 and Prologue, but neither of these must be read before reading Part 2.

As discusses, if we can’t have “content in common” because everyone can pick their own, what we need is a subjectivity which can enter into “joint attention” with diverse people reliably and regularly, which would also mean we share a similar history in going through what was needed for being so capable of “joint attention.” If content is no longer shared, then what we need to share is Attention, or else we will not be able to find/realize “theme” (Luber) and/or “likeness” (Leibniz’s “form of similarity/difference”) across our differences, and that means we will struggle to realize social intelligibility. We will find each other too hard to speak with and understand; it will require too much energy. Then, though we might not directly ever declare that we’re not going to try to socialize or be around people so much, we will likely “drift” and just not show up so often. Then a little less. Then a little less…“Drifting” can be more dangerous than hatred.

marbl

Textures of intimacy, interior forms, structures of symbolic life.

By Cordelia

Language is hard and energy-intensive, but we learn from psychoanalysis that the Social requires it (which is not just verbal, but fundamentally an “exchange” not directly afforded by immediacy, suggesting Karatani). If we cannot learn to communicate, we cannot commune, unless others are enough like us that we can just have our “similarity being together” do much of our “figuring each other out” for us (and where people don’t try to “figure each other out,” there will be a lack of intimacy, but then this very effort is dangerous and hard).

We spoke in II.1 about how “systems are programed” while communities that don’t rely on a program must be held together by constant negotiation and “speech actions,” and what we are suggesting here is that a reason negotiation can be hard is because we lack “backgrounds” according to which our speaking and negotiations can be supported. If we’re all Christian, we might not agree on everything, but we’ll have a similar range of values and habits that make “shared intelligibility” easier. However, the greater the diversity, the more likely this is not the case, but at least in the past where everyone more so watched the same shows and attended the same events, as McKerracher discusses, content could help with “the background problem” (which “the introduction problem” works to correct, though not without its own problems). But no longer, which means increasingly all we have in common across numbers and diversity is “pleasurably flattening Capital” before our AI-Causer, spreading Kafkalikeness. Our problems are deep.

Neither “givens” nor “shared content” can help us now with our “background problem” (nor our need for “shared be-holding”), without an address for which the Social will likely fragment due to the energy-demands, and yet any address we might attempt must necessarily risk problematic totalization and oppression. If we forgo an attempt, we will likely end up in Cheap Deleuzianism, Duginism, atomization, replacement by AI, or the like. Considering these tensions has brought me to emphasizing skill and capacity by which a “joint attention” might be achieved across diverse people in “the surprise encounter,” which requires Illich’s “enablement” (II.1) and “preparation” if we are not to be overwhelmed by the inevitable negativity we will face (like Dante before Beatrice, Love(craft)). We might say “a shared mode” is now needed more than “shared content,” even if a canon and cultural foundation can prove important, but the question is how we might spread that mode. Well, I think the SCM can help.

has discussed Federalism and the problem of “legitimating abstractions,” without which a people lack motivation or reason for political unification. But this leads us to a tension, as Studebaker put it in his article, “Why Federalism: On Citizenship”:

‘The difficulty is that ontological claims are every bit as controversial as other kinds of claims. It is no easier to generate an ontological consensus than it is to generate a consensus on theology or metaphysics. And, what’s more, if we were to adopt the position that a theory of individual sovereignty is the theory that one ought to affirm, we might, in making this claim, be drawing on a conceptualization of the good that individual sovereignty would itself circumscribe or thwart.’

Why Federalism: On Citizenship

Do we have “the shared mode” necessary for doing this work? Many in modernity have tried to avoid “ontological claims,” for good and for bad, but now find we must make them, hence a need for an infrastructure habituating us to handle the work. A great scholar of Heidegger, Daniel Zaruba in a reflection on “Science and Reality” noted how it was classically thought that nature “gave us” laws, which means we were in a posture of preparation and receiving. It is not that before science nobody believed in patterns or regularities of nature; rather, it was believed the patterns had to be “revealed to us” (suggesting nature more in a position of authority). Zaruba discussed though how after people like Galileo, it was believed that “laws of nature” could be found and discovered; we didn’t have to wait for nature to hand them over. Experiments started to be made which could not be found in nature, and thanks to these we came to have an active role in learning about nature versus a role that was more passive. This was not bad and necessary for our advancement—we learn in Hegel that we should accept “the unfolding of the State of Now,” as I like to put it—but it has led to unintentional consequences, say in that we struggle not to deconstruct everything into nothing through our investigations. Also, if there is nothing of authority that is not reducible to human effort, opinion, etc. we run into the problem of having no basis for “legitimating abstractions” that can stand to critique (as Studebaker discusses), without which we are politically and socially in jeopardy.

As John Vervaeke teaches on, the whole problem of us needing to find “the optimal grip” might have arisen or been intensified precisely because we don’t let nature disclose to us “the right dimensionality” or level by which to engage with reality. We can now look deeper into nature (toward atoms, quarks…) beyond just the way nature “appears” to us by nature’s self, which means we must decide the right coordination, “scope,” and/or “level” of engagement for ourselves. How do we make these decisions? By what standard? Indeed, we must decide, and our metajudgment has been habituated by Capital. “The optimal grip” is not given, and everyone might choose different “grips,” unless we might be “bound” by a profound sense of “no-thingness,” which Zaruba discuses in light of the Kyoto School. An Apophatic River-Hole might be an address, “orbited” via the SCM: even if nature can’t, Beauty might still “give itself” and “strike us” with authority, providing a needed standard for optimal coordination (as teaches on).

Anyway, to resume our thread on the SCM: over the years, I have often spoken about “The Liminal Web” and mainly used that language, however imperfect the terminology might be and heavy with associations. At the very least, the Liminal Web provides a template for a Social Coordination Mechanism—but why should we even discuss the LW or SCM as part of our address? Some points we’ll elaborate on toward the reason:

1. We can coordinate social capital that isn’t profoundly geographically bound.

2. We can gain the benefits of the city without living in a city.

3. It is cheaper and so more available to average people.

4. The previous main mechanism of social coordination was arguably universities, which have perhaps declined and become too elite.

5. There can be more efficient ways to test, challenge, experiment with, etc. social capital and social organization that aren’t as easily captured by power, institutional incentives, etc.

6. We can regularly train ourselves to discuss topics that are hard to discuss, in which words often fail, where words emerge that surprise us, where we find ourselves saying things we never thought before…all of which better habituates us to (“(un)veiling”)“The River-Hole,” encountering Otherness, and “Apophatic Lack,” as needed for Childhood.

7. We can regularly habituate ourselves to do something we don’t want to do but that we gain no “desirable object” for doing: there are no grades, no payments, no status…We train ourselves to work by “intrinsic motivation” and drive. We work on our habits for drive, as we also see models of people doing the same, and so can feel socially supported in our drive.

8. We greatly accelerate the efficiently of overcoming “The Introduction Problem.”

9. We can discuss the humanities, philosophy, literature, etc. with people easily even if we don’t work at or live around a university, which for most of history was very unlikely. Humanities can give people something in common to discuss beyond their job, obligations, etc. — the range of topics is very unpredictable and not just about “sharing and/or verifying information” — which is to say people can “commune” over something outside Capital and/or “the trivia(l)” (they can orbit A/B vs A/A).

10. People can function as “research assistants” for everyone else without a power dynamic, for it is self-driven, which means we can all be “sharing/shine assistants.”

11. We can online create our own and new “plausibility structures” (Berger), that are created and yet still authoritative (based on say the River-Hole), versus just absorb what we find ourselves “always already in” with birth (which could keep “free speech” from being so sociologically confided, please note).

12. When there is inevitable hurt, the logistical demands for leaving, taking time, and coming back is much less, making it more likely that “bad occurrences” don’t prove final (where people just “drift” away).

13. We are accelerating the testing and natural selection of models.

14. People can stop having “the magical moments of life” they talk about for decades with friends after college and/or they enter “the real world” around say twenty-five — I think the LW can greatly extend the coordination of deep relations and memories (not just in “hyperreal college” or when we are young). We can live in the midyears too, and if we do, we will be better positioned for eldership and cross-generational communities in the later years.

15. We can be exposed to more indirectly, overhear more, etc., which allows us to experience something without having to respond to it, which can make people more willing to try things they otherwise might not be so willing…There is more space and time for “warming up.”

And so on — a longer list is offered later. “The Liminal Web” for me is not that which works to make the digital replace the real world, but that which can help us effectively coordinate ourselves in the real, while also helping us stay in touch with people around the world through the “between spaces” when we can’t be with them in person, when we have to go to work, etc. This is why I like to emphasize “coordination” versus “community,” because there are risks of overly-identifying what happens online as “community” (it can be almost “too good,” as has noted), though there are also dangers of underappreciating the SCM and its communal elements. The on-line is one side of a dialectic with the off-line, and the human quality of both depends on a relation being maintained by the right “means” — which requires risk and metajudgment to determine and try again to determine, on and on.

Personally, I think of “The Liminal Web” as meaning “on the edge of the web and real life”: it is work where we try to be online while forgetting we are online. It is not just about “being online,” but using the online to better coordinate our real relationships, while at the same time improving our qualities as subjects so that our relations thrive. It is to help a recovery of friendship with the skills necessary for us to do so while also enhancing them, but that recovery is only possible in a space of “betweenness,” which the Liminal Web is positioned between the digital and the offline to afford. With time, I’ve moved away from mostly using the LW language, but nevertheless it’s terminology that plays a role: just keep in mind that when I discuss the SCM as of 2026, I am speaking of what before 2026 I often spoke about with the language of LW.

Thanks to the SCM, I can now have a ten-minute conversation with someone who is interested in philosophy across the world between fixing dinner and putting the cars up in the garage—an incredible achievement for humanity. The SCM is a practical tool of coordination and maintaining social connections and relationships despite geographical, occupational, and life-phase divides: for most of history, our social connections would inevitably come to be mostly shaped by our geographies and jobs. This greatly increased the likelihood that our “metajudgments” and modes of understanding reflected something “immediate” to us, say the logic of Capital, making it likely that we unconsciously and habitually sacrificed the Social according to Capital. But times have changed: we now have the SCM which makes possible a habitus, digital architecture, model, etc. which can train us into Childhood like a mall can train us into shopping (an example from James K.A. Smith). There is an Absolute Choice.

We mentioned in the Introduction of II.2 with Andrew Bustamante that anxiety could be a superpower, but, considering Philip Rieff, anxiety is likely to just lead us to totalitarianism under Capital, especially without the SCM. Totalization is an opposite of anxiety, for anxiety is what we can feel when “things aren’t together,” but negating/sublating anxiety into Childhood without advanced social coordination is likely to only be afforded to a minority who can attend college, travel, and build social networks more generally. But now we have the SCM, and with that it also becomes easier to “be interesting” and live a life that is interested, as Lorraine Besser discussed with Jim Rutt (Ep 271), which is central to addressing the ancient philosophical question, “What is the good life?” Interested people make interesting people and live life in a “pursuit mode” that keeps them motivated, avoiding materialist traps, and all while “open to otherness” (and who knows what democracy could be like if the majority were “interested” versus say just “employed”?). Without interest, we lose “high dimensionality,” as Besser describes, which we might associate with Illich’s Disablement and a loss of capacity for metajudgment, and ultimately the life which entails both “belonging” and “meaning” (Childhood) will entail a psychological richness that is impossible without interest and engagement. “The spread of Childhood” might be marked by “the spread of psychological richness” according to Besser, which is marked by a training of the muscle for interestedness (which entails the capacity of Attention, for say “the unfolding,” needed in Global Pluralism)? That seems right, but how do we cultivate such richness against “low openness”? I think it requires an environment and architecture in which we can form new habits, a space of “tilling the soil” anew, as Ross Byrd describes.

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2 years ago · 19 likes · 13 comments · Ross Byrd

How do we find and realize our passions and interests even if we have a capacity for such? Just because we are “psychologically rich” doesn’t mean we’ll automatically be driven, does it? I think that’s a tricky step, but exposure, encounters, models, surprises, and relationality that is not geographically bound could profoundly help, as afforded by the SCM (“Social Accelerationism” to parallel “Technological Accelerationism” of Land). And if “psychological richness” correlates with say a love of learning (about ideas, people, unknowns, ourselves…as the Nordic Bildung works to generate), and if the love of learning is unique in cultivating drive and “intrinsic motivation” over mere desire, seeing as drive is a definitive quality of a new subjectivity, then to speak of “psychological richness” is to speak of a quality that well-positions us to oppose being controlled by Capital at the expense of our humanity.

Curt Thompson in The Soul of Shame tells us that ‘neurons that fire together wire together. In essence, the more we practice activating particular neural networks, the more easily they are to activate, and the more permanent they become in the brain.’⁴ The SCM makes it possible for nearly anyone to regularly practice activating particular neural networks in ways that before wasn’t so possible (say for Dialogos or Childhood), and if the practices were available, they were much more limited and restricted to say universities, for limited periods of a person’s life, limiting how much people could practice activating these networks. ‘[T]he more we practice firing neurons in a particular way […] the more entrenched those patterns become, desirable or undesirable though they may be.’⁵ The habits we needed entrenched for Childhood have been for most of history difficult to cultivate, given how rare and temporary the environments were in which those habits were aesthetically, architecturally, and/or environmentally incubated (often, these opportunities were afforded for the elites and perhaps those who managed to get job at universities, which universities might have figured out and used as license for price gauging and the exploitation of adjuncts…). ‘Th[e] healing and renewed potential for creativity can only be accomplished in deeply connected community’ (helping us work through loneliness, shame, etc.), but community is hard to find where social capital has eroded (Robert Putnam), once our work-life starts, once we start a family, and the like, and even if we do manage community, as for most of history, it likely reflects “givens” that are eroding, making that community fragile, anxious, and difficult to maintain.⁶

II

As we will elaborate on when we discuss Josephine Quinn and Peter Frankopan, John Vervaeke has spoken a lot on the “Philosophical Silk Roads,” and what he means by this, at least online, I think overlaps with what is meant by “The Liminal Web,” offering another terminological option with which some might resonate. Is it a benefit or negative to have all these different terms? “The Liminal Web.” “The Social Coordination Mechanism.” “The B-20.” “The Para-Academic Network.” “The Philosophical Silk Roads.” Isn’t this just going to cause confusion? It can, but I also think there is an advantage to having no single or stable signifier: whatever the SCM is, it less likely to get solidified and “frozen” into a single understanding (as concerned thinkers like Derrida, and as I’ve also discussed with Mathew Allison, Ep #208). As with Jesus there are many metaphors to understand God, which keeps our understanding of God from falling into idolatry, so many terms for a thing like the SCM can help keep the thing primarily about its spirit versus slip into a stable definition that could prove “totalizing” (and so “totalitarian”). The environment must be kept dynamic and avoid being institutionalized or “captured” (Deleuze) out of its “medium condition,” which points ahead to Michael Levin, though not yet.

Anyway, on his website, under the title “Walking the Philosophical Silk Road,” Vervaeke describes a process of discovery and learning that I think the SCM facilitates. Dr. Vervaeke’s initiative is more specialized and focused on Zen and Neoplatonism, but its spirit is broad. From the top of the page:

‘This pilgrimage seeks to rediscover the sacred, exploring the dialogos between Zen and Neoplatonism as a response to our modern Meaning Crisis. Through this expedition, I aim to uncover a lingua philosophica — a common language of profound insight — that can bridge diverse spiritual traditions and offer a new way of engaging with the ineffable. As I traverse this philosophical terrain, I invite you to join me in uncovering the hidden connections that might just re-enchant our disenchanted world.’⁷

The Philosophical Silk Road

The hope of a “common language” that help us deal with Global Pluralism is an effort with which I agree. My emphasis is on a “common experience” that focuses on architecture, “the medium condition,” surprise, encounter, and other topics discussed at O.G. Rose. Vervaeke writes further:

‘Just as the ancient Silk Road wove together diverse cultures through trade, the Philosophical Silk Road seeks to intertwine the wisdom of East and West. We’re embarking on a journey to explore the hidden pathways between Neoplatonism and Zen, two profound traditions that have shaped the spiritual landscape of humanity. This pilgrimage isn’t just a geographical adventure — it’s an expedition into the depths of human understanding, a quest to rediscover this lingua philosophica as a response to our crisis of meaning, to afford an advent of the sacred in a world that has lost its enchantment.’⁸

This kind of “philosophical weaving” is a widespread quality of the SCM, and it is pivotal in training us into new metajudgments that help us move beyond an “autonomous rationality” that proves self-effacing. Vervaeke’s project orbits and emphasizes “Dialogos,” which is another key activity we see on the SCM, or at least practices like it. Again, from the website:

‘At the heart of our journey lies the concept of dialogos, a dynamic process of mutual transformation. It’s more than just a conversation; it’s a living, breathing exchange that has the power to reshape participants. As we traverse the Philosophical Silk Road, we’re not merely comparing ideas — we’re allowing them to dance together, to challenge and enrich one another. Through this dialogos, we hope to glimpse truths that neither tradition could fully reveal on its own, standing shoulder to shoulder to share perspectives of the ineffable.’⁹

This is a beautiful description of how many discussions on the SCM go, focused explicitly on philosophy or not. There are additional resources online through which Vervaeke elaborates on the concept — there is the discussion with Andrew Sweeny and Christopher Mastropietro on Parallax, as well as a great exchange with D.C. Schindler, to name a couple — but the point is that we see another useful model in “The Philosophical Silk Road” that “points” to what we mean when we talk about the SCM.

is another individual envisioning and designing spaces for meeting and conversation, and though “The Philosophical Silk Road” and Estuary initiatives are not identical, they are nevertheless both profound examples of social coordination enabled by the internet (which favor Voicecraft over Kafkalikeness, which is so critical to everything: please see Tim Adalin’s work, which has been dear to me). To help explain the concept, from the Estuary website:

Estuary Hub (Website)

‘Geographically speaking, an estuary is the area where fresh water from a river meets up with the salt water of the ocean. It is a place of constant change, as when inland storms sometimes create torrents of water rushing towards the ocean, or when strong winds drive the waves to come crashing ashore. Estuary is where waves and currents meet, where the landscape changes constantly, where unique vegetation, and strange creatures, capable of adapting to different salt content, find their home. Estuary is a place of chaos, of change, of adaptation to different forces. Estuary is exciting, unpredictable, a place of adventure!

‘But we use ‘Estuary’ metaphorically. Estuary is a place where people come for conversation. Honest conversation. Not ideological warfare, memes, and trolling, but mutually respectful attempts to understand one another, and to learn to appreciate different perspectives and viewpoints. Estuary is a place where different ideas and ideologies meet. Where participants allow themselves to be exposed to new ways of thinking, where listening may be as important as talking, where being open to feedback will force you to ‘hear yourself think.’

‘We also believe that in doing so we form new friendships. We build a unique new community. We may learn to love one another in ways we didn’t realize were possible. Some people have found a new life partner in an estuary meeting!’¹⁰

It’s a beautiful initiative, and no doubt “Philosophical Silk Roads” of some kind are “walked” in these meetings. I would highly suggest the video titled “The Estuary Protocol Explained” (Sep 1, 2021) for a better sense of how Estuary operates:

In that discussion, John Van Donk noted that there is a hunger for discussion out there, and how efforts to organize conversation spaces matters (indeed, without them we are destined for Kafkalikeness). He noted how meetings often originally started by gathering people interested in discussing Jordan Peterson and his ideas, but with time the meetings grew into more. YouTube channels, Discord servers, and the like orbit the movement, and Estuaries allow for personal exchanges and updates, helping friendships flower and blossom. Based on their Google Doc found in the description of the video, Estuaries tend to gather people who attend church but have questions that average churches aren’t ready for, the Nones who still seek community, followers of Peterson, and the like. Events often invite guests to gather in a circle and then introduce themselves, followed by inquiries into what brought people to Estuary in the first place. Attendants are then invited to share what they have been thinking about, which can be intellectual (what they’ve read, seen on YT, etc.), but participants are also invited to discuss what contextually (in their settings), personally (in their relationships), and “estuarily” (regarding Estuary itself) has been on their minds. There is a stress on listening, and after everyone shares with the group what they are thinking about, there is a decision on what topic will be discussed (there isn’t time to discuss everything). There’s much more to making Estuary spaces work, and I would strongly encourage you to watch John Van Donk and Paul VanderKlay discuss the protocol. Here, my hope is only to provide another information to help readers see it as part of a movement of culture making to which the SCM relates.

Evidence that there is indeed a hunger out there for discussion, “The Estuary Protocol” reads:

‘Ever since PVK began modelling the estuary experience on his YT channel, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people have, in one way or another, joined the conversation. Whether it be by signing up for individual rando conversations with PVK himself, or by participating in local meetups, or by showing up on the Bridges of Meaning section of the Discord server, or chiming in on Friday morning’s online Q&A sessions, many people appear eager to engage with others in what is sometimes referred to as ‘meaning making.’¹¹

The document goes on to discuss how it is ‘by no means clear’ that the meaning arises primarily from just the discussions: it could also be the ‘gathering,’ the ‘being known by name,’ ‘being heard,’ the finding that others are moved by the same questions that move us, being appreciated, and/or a combination of all of these and more.¹² I agree there is an ambiguity on why people find these kinds of engagement valuable, but I believe whatever it is that so moves people, the SCM increase the probability people have these kinds of experiences. Such work is important, but at the same time it is hard to maintain because they are so easy to ruin. In the conversation with PVK, John Van Donk notes that Estuaries are very fragile, that one bad conversation or upset person in the group can ruin the whole dynamic, if not the regular meetings. From the Protocol:

‘[…] it is important we regularly remind ourselves that the estuary is a fragile ecosystem. It doesn’t take much for strong currents or crashing waves to completely alter the lay of the land. If new life-forms have begun to take root amidst shifting tides, it doesn’t take much to thoroughly uproot them and flush them out to sea.’¹³

In my experience, spaces which formulate subjectivity anew and according to different value-forms are very fragile, and if they break, they can cause people a trauma that can make them feel like they would have been better off not to have been involved at all. For this reason, it can be “rational” not to build such spaces (perhaps notably until this moment in history), but then we cannot habituate our subjectivities alternative to Capital (A/A), which is a major problem before our AI-Causer. This hints at another reason why the SCM is so significant: it allows spaces like Estuary, which in the past couldn’t support or spread themselves with the internet, to develop overall “antifragility.” If one Estuary group fails, there are other groups which members can shift into, and if an Estuary fails in Virginia, there are still others going on around the world, and just knowing that can help generate the motivation to build another group in Virginia again. Likewise, if one online organization fails, there are others to receive people, and in other groups still existing, that can help motivate people to try again. If one group fails, it doesn’t have to feel like all is lost: the movement continues.

In the past, if a community I was part of collapsed, I easily found myself without any options or ways to continue my communal life and personal development. Religions could provide the best options and fail-safes as organizations, and though they filled various needs, not all churches enabled the kind of conversations found at Estuary, and religious spaces that did were often hard to find and the only one like them for miles upon miles. Now, I can use the SCM to find new offline spaces to gather, and when I can’t attend anything in real life, I can fill the gaps with online interactions like we see at the TLC. All this suggests that “spaces of Childhood (A/B) development” are more “rhizomatic” (biology with technology) thanks to the SCM (to allude to Deleuze and Guattari), which is to say they are connected by “an underground root-system” that lets the spaces seem/be independent but also connected. The SCM in general allows “rhizomatic possibilities” that in the past were not possible, and basically without technology that enables them to be “rhizomatic,” fragile spaces like Estuary, which cultivated Voicecraft and Childhood, were “practically doomed” not to last (certainly not long enough for significant social change or culture-making). But now we have the SCM: the fragility of Estuary spaces can be “addressed rhizomatically.”

There are risks though with “the rhizomatic SCM,’ which EmJay2022 articulated very well regarding the TLC but which apply widely. In the comments of the video “Is Pluralism Actually Possible?” Emjay2022 wrote:

‘How many times has TLC circled this same question? At some point it starts to look like the endless processing is the point. The irony is that revisiting and gestating the same questions isn’t some neutral exercise. It is the mechanism of pluralism doing exactly what it is designed to do. And for that mechanism to work, no fact or truth can ever be allowed to resolve. Infinite oscillation, unsuspectingly waiting for authority to arrive. Athens did it first. The cohesion pluralism (as an ethos) produces is always thin and unstable. It can’t hold without eventually sliding into control. That’s the irony. Pluralism promises peace and safety, but by refusing judgment it guarantees that someone or something will eventually have to manage the chaos. The tyranny [we online] claim to be trying to prevent through pluralism is actually what invites it in. To prevent that, there needs to be an effort to channel all that [existential]l angst upward in faith rather than [outward] in group processing.’¹⁴

This is extremely well said, and I would associate this concern with Rieff’s admonishments regarding “pure release.” Emjay2022 penned a longer comment explaining his position, which I found particularly eloquent and straight to the heart of the problem. ‘True pluralism requires vertical authority to be absent, leaving only horizontal processing between perspectives,’ Emjay2022 writes, and Emjay2022 is right that this is not sustainable (as isn’t “the loss of givens”). How do we avoid “endless processing” that leads to oscillation that invites existential anxiety and all the trouble that this brings (Rieff)? Encounterology. Beauty. More must be said, but “the absence of sufficient processing” is also a major problem: a “mean” must be struck for at least a critical mass between “processing” and “arriving” — which I don’t think was possible until the SCM. All the same, Emjay2022’s concerns are extremely valid.

Paul VanderKlay

An Estuary Helps the Church offer Sense-Making in an Alarmed World

Listening in Estuary…

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5 months ago · 19 likes · 2 comments · Paul Vanderklay

Paul VanderKlay published an excellent article titled “An Estuary Helps the Church offer Sense-Making in an Alarmed World,” where he wrote:

‘Estuary conversations tend to be sense-making conversations. While we regularly get visitors in the Living Stones Estuary there is a core who have gotten to know, love and respect one another. Some are long terms members of the church; others don’t necessarily have a relationship with the church of Christianity. They come because they find the group to be a source of comfort and sanity. There is a lot going on in their lives and they simply need to do some sense-making in the hopes of wisdom.’¹⁵

Under Global Pluralism and “the loss of gives,” more and more people are hungry for sense-making (“demand” is being created, alluding to Keynes). It is true this could get stuck in “endless processing,” but without processing at all people will in their anxiety likely turn to “a strong man” or other problematic political and social options. To point to Gurdjieff, “processing” is needed to that energy doesn’t get stuck and bottled-up, which will eventually lead to an explosion — which brings us to Luke Behncke’s work on “The Rise of the Electric Ecclesia” and its relation to the SCM.

"Networks Within Networks" by Luke

Luke Behncke is an expert on Gurdjieff, and I had a chance to speak with him on what Gurdjieff might say on our current moment (Ep #238). Here, I wanted to draw attention to Luke’s article “Networks within Networks: The Rise of the Electric Ecclesia and the Future of the Fourth Way,” and suggest that what he is describing is another angle and articulation of what we are seeing emerge online with the SCM. Luke brings Deleuze to mind when he tells us how structures must increasingly move to be like flows, and how “The Work” can be seen as moving to higher dimensionality. From the article:

‘In former times, the true seekers wandered. Not with aimlessness, but with inner guidance. The desert monks, the anchorites, the itinerant mystics — they moved as if by magnetic force, drawn where the need was ripest and the Spirit most alive. They did not belong to a place, but to a current. Their spiritual authority was not institutional, but existential. Their church had no walls — only presence.

‘We are now witnessing a return of this impulse. But this time, it emerges through distributed digital networks — a kind of Web 3.0 Ecclesia. A decentralized, non-hierarchical, radically participatory body of awakened souls. Not a system of control, but a living latticework of relational intelligence. This is not a retreat from the world. It is the reconstitution of the Work in a new dimensional frame.’¹⁶

“The Work” is a phrase we can associate with Gurjideff, and for our purposes we can think of it as “the work to extend Childhood” (A/B). Luke writes further on how “The Word” is moving ‘into a dynamic, plural, and responsive field — what might be called networks within networks — mirroring the very structure of reality itself, and aligning with emerging patterns in distributed computing, decentralized governance, and quantum connectivity.’¹⁷ It is not just information that flows through the SCM; it is more like spirits.

For the nonreligious, that could be a loaded term, but consider “spirits” like Karatani does, which arises from “modes of exchange” as subjective experiences of social structure which compel people into action. Consider:

For Mode A (Reciprocity), people can believe that they will be blessed or punished based on their participating in say gift-giving.

For Mode B (Ruling and Protection), people can believe the king or leader is blessed by the gods and represents divinity.

For Mode C (Commodity), people can come to believe that the market almost works like a spiritual force, through an “invisible hand” that guides itself.

What Luke suggests with Gurdjieff is that a new “spirit movement” is arising with the SCM, and if the SCM is perhaps affording the possibility of Karatani’s “Mode D,” the “spirit” to which Luke is pointing might be the “spirit” which accompanies and motivates Mode D. Might this be the Holy Spirit? Of Žižek? Of Beauty? Perhaps. Does the new “mode of exchange” comes first or “the new spirit,”? Likely both at the same time.

Bringing the SCM to mind, Luke writes further:

‘We no longer live in a two-dimensional epistemology, where wisdom trickles down from a central authority to passive recipients. We live in a distributed age — spiritually, informationally, technologically. As in the architecture of blockchain systems or decentralized autonomous organizations, value structures now arise through network consensus, not top-down command. Knowledge is organic and reciprocal, not inherited and constrained. Authority is earned in affinity and presence, not bestowed by credentials or clerical rank. / So too with the esoteric body of Christ. The ecclesia is becoming multipolar, multi-nodal, and holographic. Each part reflects the whole. Each node — each community, each individual — may act as a relay point for the Work.¹⁸

Luke describes this as “an evolution of topology for Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way, continuing:

‘In the logic of distributed systems, resilience is achieved not by centralization but by redundancy, replication, and interconnection. So too must the Work migrate from a model of fixed “groups” to one of responsive, intelligent networks, where teachers and students shift roles fluidly, and spiritual presence becomes interoperable across platforms, traditions, and geographies. / We are entering an era in which teaching flows not linearly, but rhizomatically [(think Deleuze)], through conversations, prayer rooms, podcasts, Substack threads, encrypted messages, shared ritual prototypes — wherever presence coheres.

‘In this new topology, you do not have to leave your local body to engage the global Work. Rather, your node amplifies as it connects. Like quantum entanglement, soul-practitioners begin to vibrate together at distance, forming something like a noetic blockchain — a record of shared transformation written not in code, but in conscience.’¹⁹

I completely agree. What we are witness today is a “breaking open of containers” like institutions, which is necessary after years of ‘mistak[ing] the form for the flame.’²⁰

‘But the Spirit will not remain trapped. It moves to where it is most needed — into the spaces of greatest lack, tension, and creative potential. The ecclesia, rightly understood, is the spiritual field of reciprocal nourishment. It may now flow digitally, virally, in encoded symbols and unspoken recognitions. It appears wherever presence, necessity, and sincerity intersect. / And it demands a new kind of practitioner — one who is technically literate, spiritually grounded, and no longer bound to inherited forms.’²¹

I will stop myself before I quote Luke’s entire article — please go read the rest. The SCM makes possible ‘unity without uniformity, multiplicity without chaos, relation without subordination,’ a development we can associate with Deleuze and Guattari, as we will later discuss.²² We are seeing:

‘[an] emerging network-church. Each node, each soul, each community is wholly itself, yet reveals more of the whole as it relates rightly to others. This is not spiritual libertarianism — it is relational ontology / […] a living field / […] a polyphonic ecosystem of resonance, need, and grace. / […] The ecclesia is no longer in the temple. It is the temple. It is in the call, in the communion of those who burn.’²³

For more on the topic of “temples vs tents”

We’ll speak more on Gurdjieff and Luke’s work later on in II.3, and there is a lot more on this topic at Luke’s website, “Soul Creation: Faith Made Flesh.” For now, I just wanted to draw attention to the relevance of Luke and Gurdjieff for considering the SCM.

Alright, but why again is a Social Coordination Mechanism so important? It’s a great technology that enables “spiritual development,” sure, but is it really so essential for our address? Yes, and that is because it helps a dialectic be formed with the Pricing Mechanism (PM) championed by Fredrich Hayek, without which we will be “autonomously” habituated into “the logic of Capital” that is A/A and self-effacing. The PM enables Capitalism to move quickly and efficiently, so much so that it dominates over and eclipses all possible social spread, movements of “modes of subjectivity,” or the like. This isn’t a problem because Capital or the PM are innately bad or something like that, but because everything “autonomous” becomes problematic, and the great success of the PM has helped Capital “pass over into otherness” and so become self-effacing. No, the movement of Capital can’t be explained just by the PM, but the equity market, banking, etc. are all built atop of it, and for me to discuss the PM is to discuss with it everything that it enables (or at least that is my intention).

The SCM is indeed a mechanism, for it is fundamentally technological even if it enables more personal and organic growth, and I stress that because I think it is important we don’t overly-demonize technology, as is tempting given the threat of our AI-Causer. The real problem has been technology that doesn’t afford the cultivation of Childhood and/or social coordination, which up to this point in history has arguably been rare, so it’s understandable why “technology” and “bad” are often conflated; nevertheless, that is a mistake: the SCM is technology which can help “extend our humanity,” suggesting technology can be a blessing. Thanks to the SCM, we can finally help dialectically balance the PM, meaning “The Logic of Personhood” and “The Logic of Capital” can finally develop together. As we argued with “The Four Arrows” (II.1), we cannot erase the Pricing Mechanism without great, negative consequence, but there are also great dangers if we keep it (Land waits). What is to be done? A new social mechanism is needed, not to replace offline community but to extend, maintain, and strengthen it while also increasing its diversity, antifragility, creativity, and dynamism.

To list our options:

1. Keep the Pricing Mechanism (PM) without the Social Coordination Mechanism (SCM): Not Work (“Old Address”).

This is our current state, where precisely because of its success, we are being habituated and coordinated by the PM into A/A and Dream-Equality, and so self-effacement. (Land waits).

2. Erase the PM without SCM: Not Work.

This has been tried in history, often in rebellion to how Capital can “overdetermine” and/or exploit us, but without the PM, there is no way to coordinate resources, services, etc. adequately to maintain a technological society (as people under Illich’s “Disablement” require to survive). Quality of life plummets, and the social, political, and economic situation deteriorate, leading to trouble.

3. Erase the PM with a SCM: Not Work.

The problems of 2 would manifest, meaning it would likely be impossible to maintain the technology like the internet needed for the SCM. Even if that was possible somehow, we would need to revert society back to earlier “modes of exchange” (Karatani) before commodification. 3 is an option I most associate with the Amish, because a nontechnological SCM seems necessarily local, and so a return to earlier forms of social formation.

4. Keep the PM with a SCM: “The New Address.”

We do not want to erase Capitalism but create “the conditions of possibility” for its negation/sublation into a new socioeconomic condition (“Mode D” of Karatani). What exactly this look like must be left “open” (or else we fall into “planning” and so “the technological essence,” A/A), but that doesn’t mean we cannot meaningfully work to increase the probability of that “openness unfolding” via the work of the SCM and that which aids in its blossoming.

The PM radically accelerates the movement of Capital, as Benjamin Studebaker teaches, but the SCM could increase the speed of “social capital” and complexify the political economy and social forms manifest under Capital: the SCM could change the quality of the whole Capital-Nation-State, via a change in the quality of “created demand” in the economy, manifest of different values, thanks to new metajudgments, which could change the directionality and flow of Capital (which means we wouldn’t necessarily have to slow down or stop Capital, as can be unwise to try). We might say “the unfolding and development of the human” has never been able to move and spread as quickly as Capital, but now the advantages afforded Capital by the PM can spread to the human via the SCM.

Though there’s more to it, “The PM/SCM Dialectic” is central to our “new address.” There’s something accelerationist about the SCM, in the sense described by Alex Ebert, but favoring “human acceleration” versus the more purely technological: the SCM can quickly take an idea, process, project, etc. to its end quickly to “saturate” it, cause it to fail, bring it to negation/sublation, and so on. The SCM can train us to be quicker and more accurate and dynamic in discernment and thinking—might metajudgment come to move as fast as Capital? Not without a new infrastructure that can help us see what was “always already” while processing doubts and questions into an “unfolding” in and by which Pluralism can harmonize, Childlike—but fortunately that infrastructure is the SCM. Without it, a (mentidivergent) “collective intelligence” which favored “extending the human” was impossible, which meant that Development would likely lead to a loss of Trust, and that we the people would lose the conflict of the 21^st century—but what this means must be expanded on and brings us to Michel Bauwens and Jordan Hall’s “Situational Assessment.”

III

Michel Bauwens in China

Michel’s Substack: Fourth Generation Civilization

What I told the Chinese grassroots communities: The EASTERN TRAIL VIDEO SERIES — Michel Bauwens on P2P Discovery in China.

The readers of this Fourth Civilization substack will have seen various articles that I have published on China, on the occasion of my five week trip to grassroots communities in November 2025. Before you watch the short videos below, here is some background introduction for those who may have missed the previous context…

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6 months ago · 5 likes · 9 comments · Michel Bauwens

is a major influence on my thinking, and his work at the P2P Foundation is invaluable for our moment. We have discussed him often at O.G. Rose, but here I wanted to note his trip to China and experience with Chinese Grassroots Communities (November 2025), and how it points to the development of a new social, economic, and even political infrastructure that compliments and manifests the spirit of the SCM in the broader civilizational context. Bauwens has spoken with Web3 groups on cosmo-local principles (keep in mind what Luke wrote), which the SCM certainly enacts (for community, culture making, etc.): what is developing in China and other places “on the ground” might be the manifestation of Karatani’s “Mode D” into the world. Time will tell, but Bauwens encourages us not to absorb strawmen of China that are being spread around. He makes a convincing case that China isn’t perfect, but things have changed powerfully over the last decade.

I spoke with Bauwens in March 2026, and he shared his experience in China, which I found magnificent. I visited China over a decade ago, which is around the first time Bauwens visited the country. How he described China a decade ago tracked with my experience, but Bauwens made the claim that China today has a sense of “the common good,” and that it somehow regained this, which for me is a remarkable accomplishment. Bauwens also noted a number of paradoxes that I found surprising: China consolidates power centrally, so organizations end up being very peer-to-peer (P2P) because a clear leader or leadership team could get organizations in trouble. This “loss of freedom” in China as a result helps there be less formations of “vertical organizations and power hierarchies,” helping average people involved in efforts for the commons feel more empowered. This makes people want to engage in P2P activities, which leads to innovation and advancement in the space. Bauwens also made the example where in the Chinese government outlawing speculation in crypto, it ends up being the case that crypto is used in productive and innovative ways that help average people with their daily lives. In outlawing the “Finance Capital” dimension of Web3 and crypto, the new fields end up favoring “Industrial Capitalism” and productivity, alluding to Michael Hudson’s work. Bauwens also described technological and architectural marvels he saw, and though the limits on free speech are troubling, the accomplishments of China are hard to ignore. Nevertheless, problems of “historic cycles” with the youth could lurk.

More can be said, and how exactly China has become what it has needs to be explored. Part of the puzzle, Bauwens emphasized that China believes in “a common good” (as necessary for a Commons that keeps the Capital-Nation-State from overreaching), and this is something the people can experience versus just abstractly know (take how Americans can “know freedom matters” but struggle to experience it). How is “common good” experienced and felt? As Bauwens discussed, there are vibrant social ecosystems in China where people can step outside their apartments at night and find dance squares, vendors, and people congregating. Not always, of course, but I made the point that if on average when people visit their local downtowns, they don’t see and experience a vibrant social ecosystem (think aesthetics and Pierre Bourdieu), people will gradually cease to believe in the Social—not suddenly and directly, but gradually and with Drifting (as I fear has happened in America). Nikos Salingaros spoke with Jim Rutt (Ep 261) on the importance of “living architecture,” and it would seem China has employed such methods (intentionally or unintentionally) to create social ecosystems in which people can experience “a common good” they can believe in because they feel it (which brings Greg Dember’s work to mind, as we will discuss). “Living architecture” hence plays a critical role in helping people believe in the Social over just Capital, and I believe the SCM functions like “living architecture,” knitting together the online and the offline. If belief in the Social is lost, there might only be Capital (“autonomous rationality/quantification”), and if that causes us to repress and “keep energy from flowing” (Gurdjieff), there will eventually be an “explosion” or other pathologies.

Bauwens noted that a way China has maintained “a common good” is by keeping “the merchant class” from dominating. If the merchant class is too powerful, “quantification” (A/A, fungibility) comes to primarily define our thinking, but unfortunately there are psychoanalytical reasons why we might even want “quantification” take over (discussed in II.1): it makes reality more intelligible, helps us avoid anxiety, and also shields us from “otherness” that would overwhelm us. And indeed, “quantification” and Capital play a crucial role in helping make diversity something we can handle, but then we can get trained into “autonomous quantification” we can’t get out of, which also can happen because we enjoy the feeling of understanding quantification/compression gives us (II.1 on Pierce). How do we stop this from happening? Without an infrastructure like the SCM, I think only temporary reliefs are possible.

Anyway, it is not all good in China: Bauwens noted how the youth in China are starting to question the social contract, wondering why they should work nine hours a day and make sacrifices for the civilization. In other words, I would say the youth is becoming philosophical, which means they are at risk of the “philosophical melancholia” and “philosophical resentment” that Hume warned about with the Counter-Enlightenment. To capitalize terms to mean them in a specific sense, history is a story where great Development often leads to Doubt, and eventually that Doubt leaves to a loss of Trust, and then there is a loss of the Social (say in favor of Capital and/or destruction). It’s a large claim, but I would say that history shows a cycle where Development leads to Doubt, and then there is rarely if ever adequate infrastructure and (Bildung) education to address that Doubt before it leads to a loss of Trust. Between Development and Doubt is where A/B and Voicecraft is either maintained or lost, time and time again  (the Fourth Turning comes back around). I would argue that until our current historic moment with the SCM, it was not possible for the average person to be habituated into Voicecraft, especially across (Global) Pluralism, to keep that Development as Meaningful and so Trustable. “Meaning” and “Trust” share a closer relationship than often realized: the loss of meaning leads to a loss of trust that doing x, y, or z is worth doing and/or should be done.

As we learn in Hume and the Counter-Enlightenment, when people being to ask “why questions,” there is a great danger, but there is also great danger in ignoring the questions or suppressing them: the challenged must be faced—though arguably until the SCM it couldn’t be sufficiently at scale, suggesting that it wasn’t all wrong for people to try to stop these questions (history is tragic). When people either can’t ask “why questions” or feel there is no adequate answer to their “why questions,” they can begin to cease trusting their social order (especially when there are no “givens”). The society begins to feel repressive, like something that doesn’t want them to know the truth, and this can lead to “exit” or resentment. People can then refuse to work and participate in the society, as if an act of rebellion (take “tang ping” or “lying flat”), perhaps suddenly or via a gradual Drift, and this can lead to tensions in the workplace, community, family, etc. This can move people to focusing more internally than outwardly (toward a “closed circle” versus an “open circle,” alluding to Tomberg), and this can begin the process of devolving the Social. When social spaces of any scale cannot “meaningfully help” people, then people will likely withdraw further toward the individual. And so the Social (A/B) will decline and Capital (A/A) likely fill the void.

It can often seem as if philosophy is a prime cause of Doubt, and so philosophy can be avoided precisely to maintain the Social. Though there can be truth to this, in my view philosophy is actually how we face Doubt, and the reason Doubt arises is not so much due to questions but Desire (after all, there has to be a desire to ask a question for it to be asked). For example, we were told if we did x, y, and z we would be satisfied and happy, and with time we come to question if this is true, either because we don’t see our friends happy or because we don’t feel satisfied. Alternatively, perhaps we wanted to know what God had in mind with Genesis, how the stars moved in the skies above, how we might travel the seas, etc., and so from Desire develops Thought which leads to Doubt, and that Doubt seems destined to end in either creation, abandonment, or destruction (without the SCM, across Global Pluralism, “creation” seems unlikely). Nothing seems to get rid of Desire — it is unstoppable and invincible, as Lacan warns — and yet our civilization seems so advanced and Developed. Is it all a lie? What is the point of advanced technology if it doesn’t make us happy? Happiness isn’t the only matter that leads to us questioning life with Desire, but also relationships: we can’t seem to make them work. We don’t understand our spouses. Friends fade. People keep constantly hurting one another. How “Developed” are we, actually, if all people do is hurt one another, as if they can’t stop it? Maybe we’d be better off poor and less technologically advanced…And so Desire/Doubt spread…

THE LOVE(CRAFT)...

Now, here we need to note Peter Sloterdijk and his book Rage and Time, where Sloterdijk defends “Thymos” against psychoanalysis, which he believes has overlooked and even suppressed Thymos. “Thymos” and “anger” are not similes even if often overlapping, where “anger” is just an expression of Thymos as a deeper psychic energy, and perhaps we could say that “anger” as an expression of Thymos is a problem where Thymos is ignored. Anger that follows from a lack of taking Thymos seriously (perhaps ironically in the name of “taking anger seriously” by avoiding it) is something we ignore at our own peril, and Sloterdijk warns that we are making this mistake (which brings to mind our series “on anger” with Aspasia), making history like a ticking bomb.

We cannot remove “anger” from the human condition without removing from us our very humanity, because “anger” is an expression of a necessary human energy that is Thymos. We can only “address” and mange Thymos, but until the SCM (which enables recognition, competition, etc., as we’ll explain), we did not have the infrastructure to do this in our age of Neoliberalism (Capital was early, as it had to be), and so we instead tried to ignore, demonize, and/or nullify it. We discussed Thymos in our Introduction of Book 3 (II.2) (and do see the work of on the topic), noting that the Disablement which Illich discussed has been used to control Thymos in a world of Neoliberalism which doesn’t know how to handle it (which we also discussed with Fukuyama).

As we put it in the Introduction:

‘the question we face today is if we might somehow keep together Thymos with the Great Enrichment and not lose either, and this question might ultimately be the inquiry on if we might negate/sublate True History into Absolute History.’

This is the question of if we might keep Development from destroying Trust through Doubt, and as philosophical inquiry can deconstruct Trust through a feeling of being unable to complete Desire, so such deconstruction can also be motivated by a feeling that we lack recognition and Thymos. We will discuss Rage and Time in the future, but here I wanted to note that I don’t think we need to see “The Problem of Desire” as a psychoanalytical alternative to “The Problem of Thymos”: though Sloterdijk might disagree, I think they strongly overlap. Under Neoliberalism, “failures of Desire” align with “disregarding Thymos,” for Development arguably occurs precisely by repressing Thymos, and eventually Doubt sets in that this trade was worth it. Ironically, I think Neoliberalism unleashes Desire through means that also represses Thymos, and yet Thymos is needed for Desire not to lead to autocannibalism. But what else can we do? Give up “The Great Enrichment” and unleash “the strong gods” which cause religious wars? Before the SCM, perhaps so.

Desire ultimately cannot be addressed unless we negate/sublate it into Drive (“intrinsic motivation”), which means we need a social environment and infrastructure that can incubate, sustain, and recognize Drive. That will entail addressing “The Triplex of Belonging” (Book 3, In.3A)—sustainability, care, and (be)coming—and my argument is that this will prove Thymotic, as enabled by the SCM: where Belonging and Meaning are tensely held together (Part I), Thymotic address is also an address of Desire. Doubt brought on by “why questions” that follow from a lack of philosophical justification and/or Thymotic deficiency can be taken on through the same infrastructure, and ultimately I think the SCM can help us hold together (perhaps in/as sinthome) psychoanalysis, schizoanalysis, and Thymos (though that case must be made later on). The SCM can enable philosophical justification with competition and recognition, enabling a negation/sublation from Desire to Drive amongst Multiplicity we can experience as a (River-Hole) Lack—Lacan, D&G, and Sloterdijk can be “built in design” together.

Anyway, when a society is Developed, it has less in its immediacy to meditate relationships (like needing to get clean water, fight a foreign army, etc.), and so relationships have to be managed and mediated more directly (I’ve described this as a move from “Task Societies” to “Voice Societies”)—and people rarely have any idea on how to do that well. As a result, people get hurt, and when our relationships suffer, all of life suffers, and yet if we voice our discontent, we can end up labeled “the problem.” After all, look how Developed the society is: if we feel there is something wrong, something must be wrong with us. And so we can feel oppressed, and eventually we can start to wonder if we’re just being scapegoated. And how Developed and good can a civilization be that has to scapegoat people like us? And so the Development is Doubted, or we return to our relationships and for some reason accept our suffering and inadequately in them (perhaps as “suffering servants,” adding a moral legitimization). But how Developed is a society that can’t help us deal with people? And so the Development is Doubted…on and on.

Development that doesn’t train us to manage Desire, which overlaps with the training to manage our motivations and relations, means that eventually this Development will feel empty and we will not Trust it, and once Trust is gone, so goes the Social (consider Francis Fukuyama and his book on the subject). But how do we train people to handle Desire? Well, I believe it’s through philosophy and the kinds of interactions which the SCM affords. Until now, we lacked this, but for most of history Desire could still be managed mainly through “givens” and religions, at least on a local level. But Global Pluralism has “removed givens,” and so we have no way to handle Desire except say through the “compression” of Capital, which can be fine for a historic period until it “overfits” (like now). Philosophy is a means for dealing with “the problem of Desire” a problem tied to instincts, subjectivity, etc.: without philosophy, psychoanalytical concerns (which arise in First World Nations for Freud, please note) tend to cause Development to destroy Trust, which destroys the Social (likely in favor of Capital). This suggests why philosophy and psychoanalysis can share a relationship (as Žižek has influentially argued), and I would argue that mental health is likely doomed without philosophy, because we cannot figure out how to integrate with or accept Lack with our Determinations (the world into which we have been “thrown”). As a result, Desire overwhelms us and Trust is eventually lost. This leads to Drifting, withdrawal, and the deconstruction of the Social, worsening the decline of mental health.

When things are good, prosperous, and Developed, there is space for people to ask what is the point of that Development, and I believe this is basically inevitable for a critical mass due to the problem of Desire and inability to ultimately stop Desire (and this is the case regardless if Deleuze or Žižek is ultimately right about the metaphysical nature of reality — though that is a big topic). This leads to nihilism and/or a religious revival, because metaphysics can deal with Desire, but if that happens, people might gain answers to their “why questions,” but these could conflict with the Development (take how a Christian can be skeptical of wealth), meaning Trust can be hurt all the same. It really matters how people gain answers to their “why questions” brought on by Development, and the precise way the SCM provides these answers is unique in human history and could actually maintain the Development when faced with Doubt and its deconstruction. The SCM as an infrastructure makes it possible for us to be mentally healthy in Global Pluralism, which means it can address Desire and Doubt through a philosophical education we can associate with “Bildung” (as we’ll discuss). Modern Education has usually been in service of training for the economy, pragmaticism, and “getting a job,” but what we need for Desire/Doubt is lifelong education that enables philosophical skillfulness and enablement to find meaning in our lives to trust that our lives are worth living. Bildung helps us in Development deal with Desire and Doubt, which saves Trust and enables the Social. Without it, the Capital-Nation-State prevails before our AI-Causer and fulfilment of Dream-Equality.

To map our overall point:

Development
leads to
“The Problem of Desire”
which causes
Doubt;
there is then,
a loss of Meaning,
which leads to
a loss of Trust,
and with that there is
a loss of the Social
and so arises “autonomous A/A” which is self-effacement.

To elaborate:

1. Developments leads to a facing of the inability to complete Desire.

2. We then begin to Doubt the Development because it doesn’t overcome Desire, which leads to philosophical questions.

3. If we don’t have Philosophy/Bildung to address our Doubt, we lose a sense of Meaning.

4. We don’t Trust what we don’t find Meaningful. Meaning enables Trust, and without it we lose Trust in the Development, and people cease being willing to do the work needed to maintain and expand the Development.

5. The Development begins to decline, and so Power and/or Force (say in debt, “nudging,” etc.) can be unleashed on people to keep the Development going despite the lack of Trust in it. Once the people realize this is being done to them, then they really lose faith and Trust in the Development.

5. The Development is disowned and the Social is lost in nihilism and depression. Individuals might keep the civilizations afloat, but then there is inequality, social tension, violence, and likely Collapse.

We have not in history had infrastructure to keep Doubt from destroying Trust for the majority, which hints at why Freedom “passes over into” Unfreedom like Chris Cutrone discusses, and certainly what we say here about “Development passing over into the loss of Trust” can be aligned with Cutrone’s analysis (we will Cutrone later on in more detail, but I wanted to note the overlap here). A key problem has been that Development eventually generates the conditions which destroy Trust, and without Trust the citizens will not readily experience “common good” in their daily lives (say in being able to leave a laptop on a coffee table and coming back hours later to find it still there), and without that aesthetic and emotional experience (not just abstract notion), the people will “drift out of” believing in “a common good.” There will basically only be the individual, which without philosophy ends up in A/A, and then we are self-effaced. Once “a common good/purpose” is lost, the Social is lost for say Capital, and then the civilization seems destined for Kafkalikeness. Which can be fine for a time or in some periods of history, but now we face our AI-Causer. Fortunately, we now have the (rhizomatic) SCM.

Bauwens on History and Coordination

The SCM could enable the Social to survive the arising of Doubt/Desire in Development, and the SCM often entails philosophy precisely because Doubt/Desire requires philosophy to be meditated or Meaning/Trust will be lost. Bauwens invites us to see history as the story of a continuous rivalry between coordination and coordination elites, and this conflict notably intensifies when there is Doubt and potential for paradigmatic shift. That time is now, in our age when we might see the emergence of “an archipelago of regenerative projects,” as Bauwens discusses, but that work will require a new “Nordic Bildung.” A Bildung education can keep Development from destroying Trust by addressing the problem of Desire via negation/sublating (with philosophy) into Drive. Without Bildung, the Social seems doomed. But critically if this “philosophical education” is primarily based on “calculation versus apprehension,” it will fail, which will lead us to discuss Sam Green and Jan Zwicky later on. For now, we will note that the SCM is the work of a new “collective consciousness” that might address concerns of Jordan Hall.

Situational Assessment by Jordan Hall

In his article titled “Situational Assessment 2017,” wrote:

‘In this environment, for the first time ever in history, the ability to innovate is decisively superior to the ability to deploy power. Prior to today, the rule of “the battle goes to whoever gets there the first with the most” was a decent rule of thumb. Of course, this has never been strictly the case. Most of the great stories of history are built around moments of innovation where the smarter but less powerful group was able to outwit and undermine their opponent with superior technique, technology and strategy. Over time the balance has slowly but consistently moved in the direction of innovation. Ask Turing and Oppenheimer about the accelerating pace of innovation as it relates to war.’²⁴

I consider the SCM an example of innovation that is superior to power, and it is available to us to ‘outwit and undermine’ the vertical structures and scale of the Capital-Nation-State before our AI-Causer, and/or to best the principalities, orientations, and “spirits” that continue to lead Development into being eclipsed by Doubt into decline and despair.²⁵ Hall continues:

‘The conflict of the 21st Century is about forming a Collective Intelligence that can outwit and out innovate all of its competitors. The central challenge is to innovate a way of collaborating and cohering individuals that maximally deploys their individual perspectives, capabilities, understandings and insights with each-other. Right now, the Insurgency has the edge. It has discovered some key ways to tap into the power of decentralized collective intelligence and this is its principal advantage. While it is definitely not a mature version of a decentralized collective intelligence, it is substantially more so than any collective intelligence with which it is competing and unless and until a more effective decentralized collective intelligence enters the field, this advantage is enough.’²⁶

I do think the technology of the SCM and Web3 like Bauwens describes is indeed sufficient for our challenges, but ultimately the future will not come down to if we have the right technology: it will come down to if we can as human being can handle one another in our Difference — that is the open question. There is the risk that ‘the Deep State uses its power advantage as a way to stall until it can innovate a collective intelligence advantage […] (Of course, becoming a decentralized collective intelligence is going to be really hard for the actual individuals who make up the Deep State to understand and accept.)’²⁷ But I doubt this is our greatest threat: what is more likely is that we simply can’t stand one another to function in a decentralized way together that faces Global Pluralism versus avoid it. To help us overcome that challenge is a key role of the SCM, which Hall understands is central (he rightly encourages us to ‘[f]ind ways to improve []our individual sensemak[ing] and collaborate on collective sensemaking systems’; also, ‘[g]et much better at making friends’).²⁸ Matthew Segall notes that ‘[a] large portion of our cultural polarization […] is downstream of metaphysical miscommunication,’ and if that is true we have to become better communicators and “holders” of our deepest held beliefs with others who don’t share in them and might even despise them. If we cannot do this, the Deep State which Hall describes has nothing to fear.²⁹

☿Footnotes²Plato☀☾

Transcending the Culture War by Recovering Participatory Theism

Nathan Hawkins and I just finished a podcast recording that I hope will contribute to amplifying the deeper notes that are still just barely audible beneath the surface noise of the culture war. We b…

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5 months ago · 21 likes · 35 comments · Matthew David Segall

And for Jordan Hall the time is upon us for great decision: as of March 3, 2026, with the release of the article “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0,” he is ‘officially calling it: The Great Transition is upon us.’³⁰

From the article:

‘in less than ten days of partial-day work with this clunky open-source platform, I built a collaborative swarm of AI agents. I wrote meaningful software (including a fully functional iOS app that I have running on my phone). I created remarkably high quality video. I accelerated to a pace that is . . . uncomfortable.’³¹

Hall goes on to make the case that we are familiar with as of 2026: AI is going to radically reshape all of civilization, and Hall wants us to understand the beginning of that reshaping is now; ‘[i]n fact, we’re accelerating through the gateway.’³² He stresses: ‘[t]he rumors of the demise of the post-industrial digital economy have not been exaggerated. As far as I can tell, this is for real. That world is done.’³³ ‘The AI disruption wave has already begun to break and it is going to crash through the entire economy soon. Very soon — like this year, certainly in five. / And this is going to shatter our social fabric.’³⁴ (Land waits.)

For Hall, we have to think and live alternatives, and though we might argue that “Pharaoh won’t let us out of Egypt,” Hall argues ‘there isn’t actually a lot that Pharaoh can do about our leaving if and when we want to go’ (a point that brings Paul Krafel to mind and that we will discuss in II.3).³⁵ There’s hope, so why don’t we go? Well, it’s because we habituated and trained into A/A, and also because we cannot handle one another: “Global Pluralism” is too much for us, Lovecraftian. Does it have to be? No, but that is where the SCM is so important.

Bringing Ivan Illich to mind (II.1), Hall proceeds to make the argument that we must move from a scarcity mindset (A/A) (often caused by fear) to a generative mindset (A/B), or else we will prove metaphysically misaligned for the new world. Hall writes:

‘Remember the generative. Ideas don’t deplete when shared. They compound. A plan shared between two people becomes more powerful than either could execute alone. A protocol adopted by a thousand nodes becomes infrastructure. The more you share, the more you have. The more people use it, the stronger it gets.’³⁶

This means ideas can spread versus scale (as I discussed with ), which means it is possible that ideas afford a “Non-Zero-Sum Game” versus a “Zero-Sum Game” (as they did with “The Great Enrichment” of McCloskey). Yes, the realization of ideas into materiality can run into resource limitations and so problems, but if our main problem is primarily one of modes and corresponding inner work (philosophies, orientations, nervous system regulation, etc.), then resource limitations are not really a problem, just coordination issues.³⁷ Our argument in Belonging Again is that our essential problem is between A/A and A/B (Discourse and Rhetoric: Kafkalikeness and Voicecraft), which is primarily an orientation and way of thinking — and that’s our hope. We are dealing with “a generative realm” not “a scarcity realm”: Non-Zero-Sumness is possible.

If our challenge fundamentally involved resources and materiality, Global Pluralism might be doomed, especially seeing as nothing can “scale” without changing its qualities toward self-destruction (as we’ve discussed with Hayek and Kohr); fortunately, we are dealing with metaphysical entities that can potentially spread without changing their qualities. Our main challenge is “the space between people,” which is generative, but it is also the realm of “Love(craft)” and great risk. We must be trained to handle it; we require the SCM. Our challenge is creating “the conditions of possibility” (“a living architecture” between the online and the offline) which increase the probability that the average person is attracted to and able to handle ideas which “open them up to otherness” (A/B). Will that take material resources? Highspeed internet infrastructure and companies like Zoom and YouTube/Google and/or Web3 alternatives are likely the biggest hurdles materially, but these are already mostly in place and arguably a lower resource-barrier than paradigm shifts have often historically required. And beyond that, the material requirements are less: we need to shift as “mediums” how classrooms are used that are already there; we need to remove the practical “college monopoly on credentials”’ break down the regulation regime that hinders innovation, etc.—what needs to be done materially is more on the side of removal and negation than additive, as discussed later in Belonging Again (see also the O.G. Rose talks with Jurij Jukic, #172 and #186).

“Childhood,” A/B-ness, and dialectical sensemaking have seemed scarce in history, but fortunately these are not things that can only pass between people via scaling; these can spread. And this scarcity of “a mode of subjectivity” (A/B) has been one caused by a lack of coordination that the SCM could overcome, especially if it is true that encounter a Child can inspire people (via “shine”) to become Childlike, on and on. There has been “social permission” to engage in philosophy unless we’re paid for it, as their has not been any “plausibility structures” that Childhood was a noble way to live — and so there has been no “spread of Childhood.” But the SCM can change the social calculus, and so make us the kind of persons who can benefit from Development without slipping into a Doubt that destroys Meaning/Trust versus enhance and deepen it. Might AI keep Development from slipping into Doubt because the youth don’t have to work endless hours to maintain the Development, which leads to questioning the point of it all? Absolutely AI could help, but Doubt could slip in another way, where we question the Development not because it overworks us but because it leaves us with nothing to do that feels meaningful (and avoiding that might require a VR world we can never leave…a crown jewel of Dream-Equality?). What should we do in a world where AI can do so much? Jordan Hall touches on this in his article, a question we must answer if Doubt isn’t to creep in again, and a question we cannot address without the SCM.

Hall’s article can feel like a somber wakeup, and yet he tells ‘I think it will end up quite well.’³⁸ What? He writes:

‘But here I am optimistic. More optimistic than I’ve been in a decade. In fact, I’ll put a stake in the ground: centralized AI also loses to distributed personal (intimate) AI.’³⁹

He gives a number of reasons why “centralized AI” will fail compared to “decentralized AI” — 1) ‘The S-Curve’; 2) ‘Fast followers erode the moat’; 3) ‘Distributed inference’; 4)‘The data advantage of intimacy’; 5) ‘Plurality is our strength’ — but I will encourage you to read the article to grasp his full argument.⁴⁰ Hall continues:

‘The future of AI is not a palace. It’s a network. Widely distributed, largely symmetric, local, intimate. Everybody running their own AI, on their own hardware, in their own house. And the network of those AIs producing a meta-structure that no centralized system can match.’⁴¹

The future of AI is ‘using peer-to-peer networks of aligned human-AI nodes.’⁴² He stresses that the reasons for this aren’t ‘ideological [but] structural,’ and the case he makes for why is strong — again, please read the article.⁴³ Ultimately, Hall makes a critical point that what we need is ‘a network built on trust,’ but what we pointed out earlier is that Development tends to destroy Trust.⁴⁴ Is AI destined to replace us, then? If we can’t train the capacity to maintain Trust, yes, but how do we maintain Trust? We require ‘pistis’ for Hall, which ‘is usually translated as ‘faith’ — but that that translation has been […] badly abused […] Pistis is not ‘belief without evidence.’ It is not wishful thinking. It is not credulity.’⁴⁵ Rather:

‘Pistis is *embodied, reality-indexed trust*. It is the capacity to enter into a relationship of calibrated mutual reliance — a relationship grounded neither in naive hope nor pragmatic contract but in demonstrated reliability, transparent action, and progressive deepening.’⁴⁶

Hall then makes a strong claim:

‘Pistis is the only mechanism that enables scalable coordination without centralized control.’⁴⁷

Children have a chance of maintaining pistis in Global Pluralism and against the tendency of Development to destroy Trust. But without the SCM we will fail, because we won’t (re)train our modes of subjectivity to handle pistis, especially across diversity (“The Real” will break through and break us, alluding to Lacan). Please note that our moment is not one that must be defined by the SCM against AI; instead, the SCM can help negate/sublate AI into something that “extends humanity” convivially. Hall goes into detail how, and here I’ll note:

‘In a human-human network, trust is expensive to build and easy to counterfeit. In a network of human/AI nodes, trust is cheap to verify and hard to fake. Not impossible — counterfeit pistis remains the central danger — but structurally harder, because the AI layer makes actions legible in a way that human social performance never has been.

‘And this unlocks something that human networks alone could never achieve: trust that scales past Dunbar without degrading into formalism.’⁴⁸

Hall explains this in his essay, but I do agree with him, and I believe unlocking this potential is tied to using AI with the SCM. ‘Dunbar’s number isn’t arbitrary — it’s the point at which your primate hardware runs out of bandwidth for tracking who’s trustworthy.’⁴⁹ AI can make up the difference, but without training from the SCM, we won’t be able to “check and balance” (with metajudgment) what the AI tracks.

‘The human is still the sovereign. The AI doesn’t decide who to trust — you do. But the AI gives you something that no human has ever had before: discernment that doesn’t degrade with scale. The primate bandwidth limit is gone. Not because the AI replaced your judgment, but because it extended your capacity to see.’⁵⁰ ⁵¹

AI can be part of “the address”: like the cross, what signals doom could lead to ascension. ‘[All] [t]his produces something that has never existed before: networks that are simultaneously high-trust and high-discernment, at scale. Not naive. Not cynical. Not formal. Calibrated — and calibrated across hundreds or thousands or millions of nodes.’⁵²

In a conversation with Paul Anleitner, Hall put it this way:

‘a properly constructed network of individuals who have their own AI […] not a cloud thing, your own your own personal AI running on your computer. network together and collaborating with each other produces a substantially more generative power than the fundamental approach that is being taken by the primary frontier […] the net result is you actually produce something that is stronger and I mean this in the level of like strategic conflict power has more power than Google [and the like] […] and again this is beautiful.’⁵³

I agree, again making me think again of Paul Krafel, and this is all Non-Zero Sum vs Zero-Sum. Hall in his article then gets practical in the section “What This Looks Like on the Ground,” which I suggest reading.

‘Oil runs out. Even labor runs out. Collaboration doesn’t.’⁵⁴ Hall is correct, but the question is if we can handle collaboration? If history is a guide, especially across diversity, the answer is no (consider Tony of 1Dime on Maoism). But history is not destiny, though perhaps it is for those who think it is not—a contradiction with which we must tarry.

‘Pistis is what enables generative compounding at the network level. Without it, nodes hoard. With it, they share.’⁵⁵ But historically do people develop pistis? Within “givens,” yes; outside them, not so much, I don’t think. That is the challenge of our “new address”: we need pistis and/or what enables it across and throughout Global Pluralism — which seems completely impossible. But if it is, we’re likely doomed: this is the challenge our AI-Causer — either part of “the address” or an instigator of our self-effacement — which demands we rise to a great challenge against our A/A-habituation (Land waits). Basically, the decentralized network Hall is describing requires pistis, and I am arguing the SCM is what trains it, meaning the network Hall is describing must entail and/or “be” the SCM. Like church, the network requires what it trains in and teaches.

Hall titles a section of his essay “The Central Danger,” and he wisely warns about:

‘*counterfeit pistis*. Miscalibrated trust. Binding to something that looks reliable but isn’t. Trusting a charismatic fraud. Trusting a system that performs transparency while hiding its actual operations. Trusting an AI that gives you what you want to hear instead of what’s true.’⁵⁵

Putting our faith in the wrong things will be our demise, as will be our inability to discern what we should put our faith in. ‘Discernment is not optional in this architecture,’ which has been a theme of II.2, and that requires defending and training our Attention, as Zak Stein stresses.⁵⁶

I don’t disagree, but I would also want to place heavy stress on what I find to be an incredible challenge: “the shock of similarity.” What I mean by this is expanded on in “On Analysis Communitas,” as featured in Logic for the Global Brain, published by Philosophy Portal Books with Cadell Last, an essay which considers Hegel and Leibniz together (indebted to Anthony Morley). Here, I will simply say that 1) no two things are identical or else they would be the same thing; and 2) things are similar that cannot be identified apart unless together (we would confuse them as one another in different places). What this means is that how “similar things” are different (not the same) cannot be known except in relation, a shared situation, and/or community, which means the difference must surprise and even shock us.

Anthony Morely (Amazon)

What does this mean?

‘To start, communities are ‘situations’ where similarity is judged into existence with the difference we prove. This suggests something very important: we can only ‘disprove similarity’ and ‘prove difference’ when things are brought together into a ‘situation.’ We tend to think that we should bring similar things together precisely to escape difference, but what we learn in Leibniz is that things are similar when they are apart (for it is only when apart that something like an apple can be confused with another apple just like it). To unveil that ‘sameness’ is only ‘similarity’ and thus entails difference, we must bring the two things together — and that is ‘the shock of similarity.’ This has significant implications for community, precisely because we often think that ‘bringing similarity together’ will help us escape the ‘difference’ and ‘otherness’ that causes us so much anxiety — but the opposite is the case. Instead, a relation between similarities is the very conditions that ‘proves difference’ and brings it out: we accomplish in relation the exact opposite of what we might have thought we would accomplish. Worse yet, this is a difference we will particularly care about (and thus be hurt by), precisely because we can relate to it and make it intelligible thanks to our similarity.⁵⁷

All of that requires much more expansion, but the point is that there is an inevitable “shock” we must face in community. If we’re not ready for this or can’t “forgive” it (II.1), the community will break and pistis fail (and feel misplaced, even if it wasn’t).

Global Brain Conference

‘We are in community precisely to be ‘shocked,’ not to avoid ‘shock,’ as we can commonly ‘understand.’ Again, it is only for Leibniz when things that seem ‘similar’ come together that it can be unveiled that they are different, and so we can think of a community as where similar people come together because they cannot tell how they are different apart. They must come together so the difference can come out, not so that difference can be escaped. This is a fundamental shift in our thinking about community, and it means we must be able to handle ‘the shock of similarity’ (and ‘revelation of difference’). But what kind of subjects can do that? Children. Absolute Knowers. The ‘intrinsically motivated.”’ Those who we today must learn to be like and emulate.’⁵⁸

The lack of “preparation” (II.1) for this “shock” is a major threat to our “new address” and possibility of rising to the challenge of our AI-Causer. Hall titles another section in his essay, “Getting Egypt Out of Your Heart,” and pens something important: ‘The deeper problem isn’t the institutions. It’s us.’⁶⁰ Yes. (Our challenge is “a mode of subjectivity,” A/A to A/B.) ‘We will be governed by our ability to want properly,’ he writes, suggesting much comes down to the psychoanalytical questions of desire and drive.⁶¹ Yes. And then he presents us with a fork in the road:

‘Path One: Mouse Utopia
‘Path Two: Seek first the Kingdom’⁶²

Choose. A/A or A/B. Yes, but problematically I have never met anyone who doesn’t intend to “get Egypt out of their heart,” who doesn’t intend to avoid a “Mouse Utopia,” and who doesn’t intend to live by trust beyond transaction. I’m sure such people are out there, but I would wager most of them are at the top of the pyramid and benefit from the current system; for everyone else, I believe there’s more often than not a desire to “choose the kingdom” in some shape or form. So why don’t we? Because we don’t realize when it is we make the decision for the “Mouse Utopia (A/A)” or “Kingdom (A/B)”: we make that decision not in just any moment, but specifically in the “surprising encounters” and moments of “the shock of similarity” and “proof of difference.” We don’t realize when it is that we choose life or not. Attention is misaimed.

The choice for the “Kingdom” and/or Voicecraft is only made to the degree we make it and maintain it in “the shock of similarity” (Difference) and when suffering “The Real”—all commitments to our “new address” come down to this test, each time it happens. Faith is chosen when it takes courage to have faith. Global Pluralism is the revelation of Difference that was “always already” the case, even in similarity: it is the challenge and question of if we will finally realize the quality of the world we’ve been making history in for centuries. Without the right infrastructure, any “yes” we utter will just be words, not matter how sincerely we might utter it. The SCM is necessary, but thankfully the SCM is here—though that guarantees nothing.

As we discussed in the Introduction of II.2, we chose Capital versus the Social in the 1800s, and this was not necessarily the wrong decision: that depends on what we do now. In fact, we perhaps were not ready for the Social because we didn’t have the SCM: in that sense, the choice for Capital was correct (to fear error is to fear the way forward, to play on Hegel). Now, we might take the path we did not take before, one we had to leave behind until we might prove ready for it: now, we must prove ready Choose life.

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Notes

⁴Thompson, Curt. The Soul of Shame. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015: 47.

⁵Thompson, Curt. The Soul of Shame. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015: 47.

⁶Thompson, Curt. The Soul of Shame. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015: 187.

⁷For more, please see “Walking the Philosophical Silk Road” with John Vervaeke, as can be found here:
https://johnvervaeke.com/series/the-philosophical-silk-road/

⁸For more, please see “Walking the Philosophical Silk Road” with John Vervaeke, as can be found here:
https://johnvervaeke.com/series/the-philosophical-silk-road/

⁹For more, please see “Walking the Philosophical Silk Road” with John Vervaeke, as can be found here:
https://johnvervaeke.com/series/the-philosophical-silk-road/

¹⁰For more, please visit “Estuary Hub,” as can be found here:
https://www.estuaryhub.com/

¹¹From “The Estuary Protocol,” as can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B0LShb1sRxNUnzHDlYdnZWC2niYRw_s6Hg46mFagndc/edit?usp=sharing

¹²From “The Estuary Protocol,” as can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B0LShb1sRxNUnzHDlYdnZWC2niYRw_s6Hg46mFagndc/edit?usp=sharing

¹³From “The Estuary Protocol,” as can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B0LShb1sRxNUnzHDlYdnZWC2niYRw_s6Hg46mFagndc/edit?usp=sharing

¹⁴For more, please see “Is Pluralism Actually Possible?” (hosted by Luke Thompson), found here:

¹⁵For more, please see “An Estuary Helps the Church offer Sense-Making in an Alarmed World” by Paul VanderKlay, as can be found here:

Paul VanderKlay

An Estuary Helps the Church offer Sense-Making in an Alarmed World

Listening in Estuary…

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5 months ago · 25 likes · 3 comments · Paul Vanderklay

¹⁶For more, see “Networks within Networks: The Rise of the Electric Ecclesia and the Future of the Fourth Way,” as can be found here:
https://www.faithmadeflesh.com/post/networks-within-networks-the-rise-of-the-electric-ecclesia-and-the-future-of-the-fourth-way

¹⁷For more, see “Networks within Networks: The Rise of the Electric Ecclesia and the Future of the Fourth Way,” as can be found here:
https://www.faithmadeflesh.com/post/networks-within-networks-the-rise-of-the-electric-ecclesia-and-the-future-of-the-fourth-way

¹⁸For more, see “Networks within Networks: The Rise of the Electric Ecclesia and the Future of the Fourth Way,” as can be found here:
https://www.faithmadeflesh.com/post/networks-within-networks-the-rise-of-the-electric-ecclesia-and-the-future-of-the-fourth-way

¹⁹For more, see “Networks within Networks: The Rise of the Electric Ecclesia and the Future of the Fourth Way,” as can be found here:
https://www.faithmadeflesh.com/post/networks-within-networks-the-rise-of-the-electric-ecclesia-and-the-future-of-the-fourth-way

²⁰For more, see “Networks within Networks: The Rise of the Electric Ecclesia and the Future of the Fourth Way,” as can be found here:
https://www.faithmadeflesh.com/post/networks-within-networks-the-rise-of-the-electric-ecclesia-and-the-future-of-the-fourth-way

²¹For more, see “Networks within Networks: The Rise of the Electric Ecclesia and the Future of the Fourth Way,” as can be found here:
https://www.faithmadeflesh.com/post/networks-within-networks-the-rise-of-the-electric-ecclesia-and-the-future-of-the-fourth-way

²²For more, see “Networks within Networks: The Rise of the Electric Ecclesia and the Future of the Fourth Way,” as can be found here:
https://www.faithmadeflesh.com/post/networks-within-networks-the-rise-of-the-electric-ecclesia-and-the-future-of-the-fourth-way

²³For more, see “Networks within Networks: The Rise of the Electric Ecclesia and the Future of the Fourth Way,” as can be found here:
https://www.faithmadeflesh.com/post/networks-within-networks-the-rise-of-the-electric-ecclesia-and-the-future-of-the-fourth-way

²⁴For more, please see “Situational Assessment 2017: Trump Edition,” as can be found here:
https://medium.com/deep-code/situational-assessment-2017-trump-edition-d189d24fc046

²⁵For more, please see “Situational Assessment 2017: Trump Edition,” as can be found here:
https://medium.com/deep-code/situational-assessment-2017-trump-edition-d189d24fc046

²⁶For more, please see “Situational Assessment 2017: Trump Edition,” as can be found here:
https://medium.com/deep-code/situational-assessment-2017-trump-edition-d189d24fc046

²⁷For more, please see “Situational Assessment 2017: Trump Edition,” as can be found here:
https://medium.com/deep-code/situational-assessment-2017-trump-edition-d189d24fc046

²⁸For more, please see “Situational Assessment 2017: Trump Edition,” as can be found here:
https://medium.com/deep-code/situational-assessment-2017-trump-edition-d189d24fc046

²⁹For more, see “Transcending the Culture War by Recovering Participatory Theism” by Matthew Segall, as can be found here:

☿Footnotes²Plato☀☾

Transcending the Culture War by Recovering Participatory Theism

Nathan Hawkins and I just finished a podcast recording [UPDATE: It is live here] that I hope will contribute to amplifying the deeper notes that are still just barely audible beneath the surface nois…

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5 months ago · 21 likes · 35 comments · Matthew David Segall

³⁰For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here:

³¹For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

³²For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

³³For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

³⁴For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

³⁵For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

³⁶For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

³⁷Please not that “scarcity” can be a coordination problem, where there is limited availability of x not because there is no x, but because it is hard to get x to who need it. “The scarcity mindset” can also follow from an inability to effectively coordinate with people beyond A/A.

³⁸For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

³⁹For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁴⁰For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁴¹For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁴²For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁴³For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁴⁴For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁴⁵For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁴⁶For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁴⁷For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁴⁸For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁴⁹For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁵⁰For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁵¹Hall continues:

‘So: trust is distributed, earned, progressive, and revocable. You don’t trust everyone equally. You don’t trust anyone blindly. You build trust through small, verifiable commitments that deepen over time — observe, coordinate, depend, bind — ‘each step earned, each step reversible if the reality doesn’t hold.

‘But now each step is legible. Each step leaves a trace that both parties — and their AIs — can inspect. The ancient mechanism of earned trust, running on new infrastructure. Not replacing the human capacity for relationship, but liberating it from the bandwidth constraints that always forced us to substitute formalism for the real thing.’¹

But didn’t we argue in “On Trust” in Part I that trust mustn’t be something earned but something given or not? Yes, and ultimately that is the case, but AI can help us beyond the Dunbar Number determine to who we can extend our trust. Once a person enters into our lived immediacy, we must move away from the dynamic of “earning trust,” but that dynamic with AI could help us live and coordinate with people beyond our immediacy. Furthermore, there is a big difference between AI being used to monitor trustability and keeping a historic record for us, and we monitoring trustability and keeping a historic record (the second, especially since we are likely hurt, is not probably not going to function well).

Also, a person beyond our immediacy that we choose to coordinate with is likely someone we are to work with every now and then, and in a limited and narrow fashion.

To use AI to determine their “trustability” in this case is more like determining their “qualification” and “reliability,” and the situation with this person is very different from how I regularly relate to my spouse or neighbor. If my spouse has to constantly “earn my trust,” the shared environment becomes unworkable and defined by “a power dynamic,” but if a plumber has to prove his or her qualifications, that’s simply prudence. So it goes with when I am interacting with people beyond the Dunbar Number: we can refer to these relationships as “mediated by trust,” but I don’t think it is the same quality of trust as between close friends, spouses, or the like. Perhaps we can say that if there is a time when “earning trust” is valid, it’s rare and narrow? Perhaps.

¹For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here:

⁵²For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁵³For more, please see “Jordan Hall | The AI Apocalypse is Here: AI, Religion, & The Great Transition,” as can be found here (1:02 to about 1:04):

⁵⁴For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁵⁵For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁵⁶For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁵⁷For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁵⁸Rose, O.G. “On Analysis Communitas.” Logic for the Global Brain, edited by Cadell Last and O.G. Rose. Philosophy Portal Books, 2024: 168–169.

⁵⁹Rose, O.G. “On Analysis Communitas.” Logic for the Global Brain, edited by Cadell Last and O.G. Rose. Philosophy Portal Books, 2024: 172.

⁶⁰For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁶¹For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

⁶²For more, see “The Coming Great Transition v 2.0” by Jordan Hall, as can be found here.

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For more, please visit O.G. Rose.com. Also, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

O.G. Rose (YoluTube)

I

How do we read a book? Does a person really fully grasp the meaning of every sentence before moving on to the next? Or is it more like a kind of “flowing,” where a person just lets the words rush over him or her, grasping the words on what is a strange conscious-and-yet-subconscious level? If one is too focused on every sentence, the person fails to see the paragraph, and if a person focuses too much on a paragraph, the person can lose sight of the chapter, and so on. In reading, a person must both see the forest through the trees and the trees in the forest. But how is that possible? How can a person focus on two different things at the same time? Isn’t focus, by definition, a “making invisible” everything else but that which is focused upon? If I say, “I am focusing on you,” am I not saying that “I don’t see anything or anyone but you”? To read is to participate in a paradox that if we thought about too hard, we’d fail to read well. If we focused too hard on “Do I grasp that sentence?” we’d fail to grasp the context, but if we focused too much on “Do I understand the context?” we’d lose sight of the sentence in front of us.

Third Thoughts (Amazon)

Reading is strange: there is something incomprehensible about it, and yet reading is an act of comprehension. And so to ask the question, “What is it to read?” is somewhat a bad question, and yet an important question to ask. It seems to unveil that humans must “dual think,” per se, and yet the act of trying to comprehend this “dual thinking” is to transposition and reduce it into “singular thinking.” This is similar to the paradox explored in “Experiencing Thinking” on how the act of trying to grasp “high order complexity” is the very act which reduces it to “low order complexity” (and so not that which the person is trying to grasp). Ironically, the act of grasping can be the act which results in there being nothing to grasp (though do note that some failures are better than others).

To continue to draw from “Experiencing Thinking,” reading seems to highlight how humans can both think intentionally and unintentionally, even doing both at the same time. Unintentional thought about a paragraph in a book can be the context in which the intentional thought about a sentence occurs. Intentional and unintentional thought seem to be engaged in a “dance” when a person reads, and if the person thinks about “the dance,” the person will fail to read well (like the centipede that can move until he thinks about how he coordinates all his legs, to allude to the famous image). Reading is a balancing act, one that cannot be thought about and yet one that needs to be thought about so that we may “unintentionally think” well (paradoxical and odd).

I will speak from personal experience: I find that when I read a book, especially a complex and difficult one, if I try too hard to grasp what I am reading, I will fail to comprehend. As with Heidegger’s writing, for example, I do not try to get “the words into my head” so much as I try to “let the words flow over me” (and invite apprehension) (which I think is evidence that “words are analogous more than definitions,” as discussed notably in II.2). I try not to either “comprehend” or “not comprehend”—I try not to even let myself think in terms of that dichotomy. The same goes when I read the mystics or works of Hegel: I let the words “wash over me,” and then think about what I experienced afterwards. But even then, I don’t so much ask the question, “Do I understand?” so much as I ask, “What is true?” Asking that question, I inevitably find myself “stumbling upon” what I read, even if I didn’t plan on doing so. The sentences and words just “appear” in my mind, suddenly and all at once; how this happens, I couldn’t explain. Not because there is no logic to it, but because the act of explaining can be to reduce a matter of “high order causality” into “low order complexity,” as to explain a matter of perception is to explain it in terms of thinking (a paradox noted in “On Thinking and Perceiving” by O.G. Rose). “High order complexity” can be “pointed to,” but not grasped “all together”—it can only be grasped in fragments and glimmers that a person can “ascent to all going together.” A person cannot grasp every word on every page of a book simultaneously, but a person can, after reading them all, ascent to them all going together, even though the person may not be able to grasp them all together as one or how they go together. “Low order thinking” is necessary for “high order thinking” and vice-versa: there are only problems when one tries to replace or devalue one or the other.

To return to personal experience: reading to me is an act of “letting myself not understand.” It entails a trust that I will understand what can be understood and that I will be directed toward “what is true” if I simply keep working and “flowing.” If I tried to understand everything I read and to remember every idea that crossed my mind, I’m not sure if I would have made any progress in my journey to understand. I find that if I trust, I suddenly find myself just understanding what I read, suddenly and mysteriously later on. I won’t claim I understand everything fully and perfectly, but I will say that if I just keep reading Heidegger, Aristotle, etc., focused on determining “what is true,” I grasp much more of their thought than I do otherwise.

All this isn’t to say that “close reading” doesn’t work or should be avoided (“close reading” matters). Rather, it is to say that one shouldn’t let “reading closely” impede “reading.” This may sound strange, but I have personally found that what is more important than trying to “read closely” is trying to “read creatively,” which means that “I read open to the possibility of creating something from what I read” (“I am opening to letting what I read go within me, grow, perhaps change me, and become something”). I don’t read every book solely for the intent of creating something out of it, no, but I do always read willing to think something new from what I read. And if that demands something of me, I must be willing to respond.

Reading this way, which entails vulnerability, I find this opens up my mind and makes it more fluid and agile, versus rigid and over-focused. All reading is arguably creative, yes, for all reading combines our mind with the mind of the writer, forming “something new” (though only the reader can know what constitutes that “newness”). To “read creatively” then (which we can associate with “apprehending,” as discussed throughout O.G. Rose), is to read in a manner aware of what reading is: a creative act. Personally, I have found that if I read to create, I will absorb better, but if I read only to absorb, I don’t absorb nearly as well (a “First Things First”-problem, as Lewis discusses). I seem better at memorizing the ideas of people that I integrate and personalize into my own thought and pursuit of truth than the ideas I simply read, perhaps because I better “become” them…

To me, reading, as with understanding, is like love: as I just find myself “in love,” I likewise just find myself “in understanding.” This isn’t to say there isn’t any work involved when it comes to reading, for “workless reading” is poor reading, as love without work is empty affection. To love and to be lovable, a person must work at being discerning, empathetic, thoughtful, and so on. In a sense though, one cannot directly work at “being loving,” only work at being better at what makes up love, say through improving conversational skills, patience, etc., and in this way do the work of “being loving” (indirectly) (something similar can be said about “being human,” “being a good worker,” etc.—it’s all indirect, “high order”). As one cannot build a house without working at becoming good at laying bricks, electrical work, etc., so working at “being loving” entails gaining expertise on love’s various aspects and qualities.

Even if one doesn’t necessarily work directly at “being open to love,” in a person developing in the areas that constitute “being loving,” the person works at “being open to love’ indirectly. But as with “high order causality” being overlooked in favor of “low order causality,” since this work isn’t “direct,” the mind can have trouble grasping how working on seemly unrelated areas of personhood will result in the development of other areas of character. Similarly, we can struggle to grasp how Einstein upstairs looking out a window could lead to the development of the Theory of Relativity, as we can struggle to grasp how “letting a text wash over us” can lead to our comprehension of the text—yet that is what I have personally experienced. Reading can be like water: if we try to grasp it, it will run through our fingers, but if we let it flow over you (open to creation), it can clean, sooth, and carry.

II

“Reading-Awareness,” as namelessly described in the first section, is the state kept from comprehending a text due to one’s focus on comprehending a text. Similarly, there is “Understanding-Awareness,” which is the state of being fixed on understanding in a way that truncates understanding. As with reading, I find that letting information “wash over me” greatly increases my chances of retaining the information (and retaining the most important parts of the information, for that matter). I have found something similar when it comes to conversation: if I am “Conversation-Aware,” I try too hard to grasp everything that someone is saying, and as a result, I miss the point. As with reading, if I wonder the whole time “Is that what the person meant?” or “What did the speaker mean?” or the like, I lose track of the conversation. As by focusing too closely on a sentence, I lose track of the context, so if I focus too hard on what a person is saying, ironically, I can miss what the person is saying.

As with reading and people who overly-focuses on reading closely, people who believe they are trying to “intentionally grasp” information might think that they know more than people who just let the information “flow.” Like the “high order causality”-thinker to the “low order causality”-thinker (and like “the perceiver” to “the thinker”), people who “let the information flow” could seem to people who “grasp the information” as if they don’t understand, and that they don’t care to understand. “People who grasp” could believe they know more, when it is precisely this belief that can keep people from knowing. The effort to grasp Heidegger can be the effort that causes Heidegger to be elusive, as the effort to grasp information can be the effort that makes the information incomprehensible.

My point about “letting a text flow over you” isn’t a point about reading speed so much as it is about a certain disposition while reading. Rather than read in terms of “understanding versus not understanding,” people should let the words “flow over,” trusting that what should be grasped will be grasped and that what should be understood will be understood (“a mode of apprehension”). “Flow” isn’t so much about speed as it is about a relationship with the text itself: it is an “opening up” oneself to the text rather than a “shrinking the text” within the confines of a person’s (preset) ideas and thinking — it is for a reader to meet the text on its subjectivity versus the reader’s subjectivity — to meet the text on its own “horizon” (to use a Gadamer term), versus the reader making the text meet the reader on his or her “grounds.” And yet paradoxically this is achieved not by being overly-focused on “understanding the text,” an “over-focus” which could perhaps happen because a person wants to meet the text on its own “horizons”; rather, it’s achieved from trusting in one’s self and “letting down one’s thinking,” to a degree, and opening one’s self up to the experience of the text itself.

To help explain the “flow”-experience explored in this section, we shall revisit “the paradox of judgment” (introduced in “Self-Delusion, the Toward-ness of Evidence, and the Paradox of Judgment”). If I say or think “I don’t understand (insert),” I have created a “lens” through which I will turn phenomena (“toward” me) into evidence for the case that “I don’t understand.” Consequently, I could act in such a way that (seems to) confirm this case: for example, if I conclude “I don’t understand” a certain book, I may stop reading it, making such the case; if I conclude, “I don’t understand what this person is saying,” I may change the topic, robbing myself of the chance to understand (and so proving, to myself, “I don’t understand”). I might raise my hand during a lecture and tell a professor, “I don’t understand,” causing the professor to freeze up and fail to make sense; I may, during a conversation with a friend, tell the friend, “I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” causing the friend to stumble over his words, so proving to me that my friend wasn’t saying anything that could be understood or that my friend even understood. I may say, “I don’t understand,” from a genuine place of wanting to understand, and yet my action may still, very well, result in me being unable to understand (we must be aware of our actions beyond the intentions which motivate them).

The judgment “this doesn’t make sense” (or “I don’t agree”) can be the very thing that makes something nonsense, as the desire to understand that comes with a judgment, “I don’t understand,” can get in the way of understanding. The desire can result in us judging ourselves (and others, for that matter) as “not understanding,” so setting ourselves up to make evidence “toward” us that confirms this judgment and solidifies our belief that we don’t and can’t understand. Rather than think, speak, and judge in terms of “understanding versus not understanding,” I personally just try to let words “flow over me” and trust that I will grasp what should be grasped and that I will understand what I should understand. I find that I retain more when I don’t worry about retaining; I find that it is better to not think in terms of “hard to understand” or “easy to understand,” and instead just remain “open to the flow.”

Now, that all said, we shouldn’t pretend that we understand something that we don’t (and only an individual can know if he or she is pretending or not). My point is that we need to step out of the dichotomy of “understanding versus not understanding” and rather engage in the world in terms of “openness,” “pursuing truth,” and/or “grasping-what-is-yet-to-be-grasped”: we shouldn’t think of ourselves in terms of (stagnant) “points.” There is no one who is (completely and/or forever) at a point of “not understanding” or “understanding” — all of us are a mixture of understanding and not understanding (“(not) understanding”): to channel Hegel, we are best thought of as “unfolding,” a “both-ness.” Understanding never ends, as understanding never begins. It just “is,” something like a river we are “always already in.” And so we should just let it flow on.

III

As a person needs to “flow” when reading, so a person needs to “flow” when it comes to relationships. Again, I will speak from personal experience: I find that when I’m overly-aware of how I’m acting around people, I act unnaturally and think too much about what I’m saying and doing versus “flowing” and “taking in” what others are thinking and doing. I’m thinking too much about how they might have interpreted something I said, about how they might be enjoying their time, etc., and as a result, the quality of the experience drops. Most certainly, it is appropriate not to be careless when interacting with others, so by no means am I advocating carelessness. Rather, I’ve found that the less self-aware I am, the more enjoyable the time—the more open, fluid, and agile my mind and personality—and yet I can be self-aware out of good intent (suggesting limitations of intention).

When it comes to relationships, the manner by which “flow” is most impeded is often via “intention,” which brings us to the topic of “Intention-Awareness.” As with understanding, we need to transcend the dichotomy of “intentional versus unintentional” (as also considered in “Experiencing Thinking”). Intentionality is paradoxical, for intentionality can impede the obtainment of what a person is intentional about. If we intend to have a good conversation, that very intention could cause us to have a bad conversation (for we become overly self-aware, nervous, afraid we’ll say something stupid, etc.) (additionally, our expectations can be so far from reality that the conversation hence will not feel like it was a good conversation, not having lived up to an expectation); if we intend to do a good job, we may find ourselves messing up more than usual. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t be careful, but that “intentionality” and “care” aren’t (necessarily) similes. The culture can conflate these, and think that if we’re not intentional, we don’t care. With this conflation, a reason for the emphasis on intentionality, I believe, is due to our human bias against “high order complexity”: to be intentional can be to think and act in terms of “low order complexity,” which can be easier to understand, verify, and live by. If a person expresses love in terms of “high order causality,” it can seem as if the person doesn’t express love at all—it isn’t direct enough for us. As a result of failing to transcend the dichotomy of intentionality, we can read a lack of care where care is present and want the translation of “high order complexity” into terms that we more directly understand (namely “low order complexity,” though that isn’t to say “low complexity” love doesn’t have any role whatsoever). This can be to the detriment of much.

Intentionality can compartmentalize. If I think intentionally about going to the movies this evening, I cannot easily think holistically about what I could do tonight. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is important to note that intentionality “focuses out” information. Ultimately, whenever a decision is made, potentiality is limited and changed, and, again, this isn’t inherently bad: it’s just a fact of life. The problems begin when a person moralizes intentionality or believes that to be unintentional is to “not care.” If we believe scheduling is necessary because intentionality is loving, we will perceive those who don’t have schedules, those like “going with the flow” as unloving and uncaring; likewise, we may think of the person who don’t get a reservation at a restaurant as not caring about the dinner. Perhaps this is true, but to conclude this from what we judge as “a lack of intention” can be damaging.

Intentionality can be appealing because it creates evidence and a feeling of certainty. If I make a schedule, I have something I can point to and say, “I care about how I time-management”; if I call a friend at a certain time every week, I have evidence that I value the friendship. Hence, my intentionality gives me reason to believe that I indeed manage my time well and/or value a friendship. And yet, at the same time, intentionality can damage friendships and our ability to manage time: because I think I have evidence that I value these things, I might stop analyzing myself to make sure I really do, actually, value friendships and manage my time well. My friend may very well feel as if the relationship is empty and meaningless, and I may do nothing with my days, but because I think “I’m intentional about these things,” I may not realize the holistic picture. Intentionality and “the creation of evidence” can function as a way of deceiving myself into thinking there is care when the relationship is empty or productivity when there is un-productivity. Intentionality can deceive, and in such situations, “Intention-Awareness” can lead to an erosion of what a person is intentional about keeping alive. (We must be aware that awareness doesn’t always make us aware.)

“Not wanting to talk about a subject” (for example) isn’t necessarily the same as “not talking about a subject,” but because the brain naturally thinks in terms of intention, we cannot naturally grasp this distinction. Non-intentional human action can be inconceivable (and the fact thinking is intentional “veils” this reality), hence setting us up for Intention-Awareness that then can get social reinforced. Where there is an overemphasis on being intentional, people can value the presence and artifacts of intention over the things a person is intentional about. Having a meeting can become more important than what the meeting accomplishes, as going to church can become more important than what happens in worship. This isn’t to say intention is bad (it is necessary), but that “Intention-Awareness” can result in an unnoticed “switch” that results in an erosion of what intentionality is “toward.” In the act of being intentional about attending Church, we can hide ourselves from the question of how we act the rest of the week, thinking we have been intentional about that which proves we are indeed (always) Christian. Considering this, the presence of intention and thus creation of evidence can create grounds for excuses and “thoughtlessness.” (Ardent).

Intentionality can limit “high order complexity” with “low order complexity,” as it can impede perceiving with thinking. Furthermore, ironically, to ask someone to “be intentional” can be to make it so that a person can no longer be intentional; after issuing the command, it cannot be clear if the person acts in response to what was commanded or because he or she is intentional. In this way, Intention-Awareness, like Understanding-Awareness, can actually result in a hindering of intentionality and make a person (seem) unintentional: the act of trying to motivate intention about a friendship can result in the friendship crumbling without the person noticing, making it seem as if the intentional person doesn’t care, blinded by his or her intention into thinking all is well. Intentionality can efface intention, and yet intention can be a result of genuine care.

IV

I would now like to consider “Purpose-Awareness,” which was first alluded to in “On Materialism, Purpose, and Discernment” by O.G. Rose. People today are very focused on knowing their purpose, but I fear, as with people bent on understanding (whose focus keeps them from understanding), this focus on purpose can work against knowing purpose. As when we read a book we can’t be too focused on knowing what each and every sentence means lest we lose track of the text, so we mustn’t be too focused on knowing the purpose of “the story of our life” that we lose sight of our life, the context in which purpose is located. At the same time, without purpose, our life can feel empty (like a book without a vision), and nothing can unify it into a whole. We need purpose, yet we can’t be Purpose-Aware without cutting ourselves off from purpose. But if we’re not aware of our need for purpose, our lives will be meaningless. (To be human is to keep together what seems to cancel out.)

Purpose unifies. To start, it unifies materiality “toward” a goal, as it also unifies the person’s mental life: it gives a person a thing to think “toward” (hence unifying thought in that thing). Also, the human, in speaking and thinking in categories, creates universals, and in doing so exists in a state which “is(n’t) in the world’” In the world, there are particularities, but in the mind, generalities exist. Both are equally real to humans (though not equally tangible), and between these dimensions, the human can feel split. Generalities or universals don’t exist relative to material reality, but they do exist relative to people and are through which humans carve out a niche for themselves in the world. Generalities and universals are mental, while materiality is physical, and purpose is a means by which we can better align our mental life with our physical life. When these two dimensions don’t harmonize or even conflict, the quality of our life can plummet, and the facts of our materiality can alienate us. Purpose can help our mental life not feel like a prison.

How does one decide what is purposeful? If we don’t know our purpose, how can we figure it out? To start, it is important to avoid being “Purpose-Aware,” for this state can turn purpose from a blessing into a burden, a liberation into an obligation. When Steve Jobs, Jim Carrey, etc. were growing up, they were probably not bombarded with constant videos and messages about “pursuing passion”—they just “did it.” Purpose-Awareness was perhaps much easier to avoid, but at the same time the necessity of purpose was less recognized. Technology has put before our eyes today the idea of purpose constantly, and we can feel a pressure to live with purpose, causing anxiety. We are told to “make our environment, not be made by it,” which is important, and yet we sometimes need to be shaped, for we need to be taught: if we are always making our environment, we might never learn how to really make the most of our own. And yet because of the pressure of purpose and emphasis on “making your own way,” we can fail to learn what we need to learn and to be shaped when we need to be shaped. Furthermore, it can be dangerous to think in terms of “purposeful versus purposeless” rather than just deciding to “do what is purposeful.” If we think too hard about what we’re doing, we can make ourself constantly worry that we’re not contributing to our purpose: we can become OCD about purpose. We can likewise always worry that we’re not doing that which will enable us to figure out our purpose, and so act in such a way that keeps us from experiencing that which can help us discern what is purposeful (to us).

V

A work in the same family as “Sociological-Awareness” that also draws from “Experiencing Thinking” and “Self-Delusion, the Toward-ness of Evidence, and the Paradox of Judgment,” all by O.G. Rose, this paper has explored other kinds of paradoxes in which “awareness of” truncates “development of” (and/or “true awareness of”), using the experience of reading as a framework for exploring these topics. In particular, the paper focused on “Understanding-Awareness,” “Intention-Awareness,” and “Purpose-Awareness,” all of which share similarities with “Sociological-Awareness,” and all of which are intensified in our social media and information age. Failure to be “aware of these ironies of awareness” (a comical notion pointing to the fact that “irony is the fabric of reality,” as argued throughout Ironically by O.G. Rose—that old, discarded book) will result in errors of discernment, infringing upon human thriving. Admittedly, this paper entailed personal accounts and highlights of “what worked for me,” as I think it is unavoidable when dealing with matters of “high order complexity,” in which the particular cannot be (readily) translated into the general, but still feel free to take or leave my personal accounts as you see fit.

As a signifier can impede our understanding of the signified—as a word can confuse our understanding of what the word “points to” (Korzybski)—so our awareness of a thing can impede our understanding of that thing. This isn’t because awareness is inherently bad (it is necessary), but because we must be aware of how awareness can make us unaware, about how our awareness of a thing can conceal that thing from us. This is a paradoxical notion, for ironically if we are too “aware of how awareness can make us unaware,” we will fail to be as aware as we need to be (“Awareness-Awareness” is also a problem).

There are easily many more “awareness paradoxes” then those listed in this work, such as “Community-Awareness,” “Communication-Awareness,” “Education Awareness”—there are plenty more examples in which awareness of a thing can ironically impede the realization and/ or knowing of that thing (because “awareness” ends up in quantification for what must be qualitative?). Managing all of these ironies of awareness can be similar: live “openly” (A/B)—let life “flow” Learning purpose (for example) can be like reading a book: if we are “open” to the book, understanding can be added unto us, as being “open” to purpose can enables us, if we’re of the right character, to receive it. To learn how to read well—to learn how to “let flow”—can be to learn how to be “open.” Considering this, reading isn’t just about books but about living. To know how to read can be to know how to learn from the “flow”: reading can be familiarization with the methodology by which best to approach understanding, intentionality, and purpose. By learning to read, we can learn to overcome paradoxes of awareness. (Is our age literate, though?)

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O.G. Rose (Amazon)

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O.G. Rose (YouTube)

The Map Is Indestructible (Amazon)

The True Isn’t the Rational

1. We can make mistakes, which is to act in a way where our “being rational” doesn’t align with our “being true.” We can fail to be intellectually consistent, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t rational (overall). Making mistakes isn’t the same as “being irrational”: we can be wrong and rational, and in fact the very capacity to recognize that we were wrong suggests the presence of rationality. Acknowledging a mistake is evidence of rationality, though we interpret it as irrationality, which is a problem since we tend to associate “irrationality” with a different thought process.

2. The market functions not simply according to rationality, but according to what people believe constitutes rationality (relative to their “being true”). And that is rationality, for every rationality entails a belief of what we believe is true.

3. “Being right” and “being wrong” are always situated within spacetime, and hence relative to the information available at the time. Considering this, a person can “be right” now and yet ultimately “be wrong,” say if the data were to shift due to new developments. If this occurred, do note that this doesn’t mean the person was always wrong — an important distinction — only that the person “became wrong,” and only to the degree the person doesn’t change with the data (relative to which what constitutes “being right” and “being wrong” is determined). I believe that thinking a person is “always wrong” if the data shifts contributes to people not shifting with data, and us believing a person is smart who “is” right versus consistently thinking through premises (ergo, someone “who is ‘always becoming’ right”). Note that a person can be right and unintelligent, that a person can be wrong relative to the data “now,” and happen to be right when the data luckily shifts. This will make it seem as if the person was “always right,” when really the person was wrong before and was fortunate to have the situation change around him or her. Intelligence should be gagged relative to premises and data, not so much outcome. Outcomes matter, yes, but they might have more to do with “discernment” than “intelligence” — might discernment matter more? What do you discern?

4. As we conflate “true” and “rational,” so too we conflate “true” and “logical,” “true” and “best”…People often realize these aren’t the same when asked directly, but often in conversation we find ourselves using the word “rational” to mean “best” one moment and then “objectively the case” the next, contributing to great confusion.

5. It is hard to imagine a need to invent the field of “behavioral economics” in a world where “the true really was the rational.”

6. Is it really the case that people make decisions based on rationality? This is an important question and commonly asked in economics, where understanding how people make decisions proves essential for determining the right “incentive structure” to create. Economically speaking, what is “rational” is what maximizes utility, profit, and so on, but I believe this understanding of rationality, though holding some truth, gives us a very incomplete understanding of rationality. If I want to fire someone but doing so will decrease the profit of my company, I very well may still fire the person, because relative to what I want, it is rational to do so, even if it isn’t financially rational. If I have a preference for a fancy ice-cream brand but it is much more expensive than another brand, I very well may still choose the fancier brand, because relative to my preference, that is the rational course of action, (though relative to my bank account, I may act foolishly). I act rationally and irrationally at the same time relative to different premises: I am “(ir)rational” (as I am “(im)moral,” to use a term from “(Im)morality” by O.G. Rose).

Third Thoughts (Amazon)

Considering this, it is true that humans are “rational creatures,” but not “rational” in a manner that is a simile for “best” or “most profitable.” Certainly, people don’t always act rationally relative to what maximizes utility, but people do in fact mostly act rational relative to what they want, what they define as true, what they define as good, and so on. This may render the word “rational” almost useless for the economist, but I do think it’s important to understand that humans are in fact “rational creatures” — just not in the way we’ve mostly come to understand that notion.

7. To make humans “more true” (and “more rational” relative to truth), we must, one by one, go through each topic — worry, ignorance, perception, etc. — and work through each, increasing awareness and understanding. There is no easy road to “more true rationality,” though in humans being naturally rational, the road can seem much shorter to them than it is in actuality, for the “rationality” humans naturally “are” is not the same as the rationality humans need to practice.

8. What is rational is never rational relative to “rationality itself” (though is arguably no such thing), but relative to finances, family, love, objectives, individuals, particularities, circumstances, etc. In other words, there is no such thing as “rational” only “rational to,” and yet rationality seems to always strike us as non-relative, tricking us to overestimate how wide our rationality stretches. We consider rationality an umbrella, not a point.

9. If we conflate “true” and “rational,” it makes sense for us to believe the person who disagrees with us is incapable of reasoning and hence incapable of discussion.

10. If we want to jump off a cliff, is it rational for us to do so? Relative to our “will to do what we want,” yes, but perhaps not relative to our “will to live.” It seems there is an interesting relationship between “will,” “truth,” and “rationality.”

11. To use language from “Experiencing Thinking” by O.G. Rose, human thought is “low order” and “high order” to the degree it “dies to itself,” which it is never “thought-full” to do.

12. The phrase “perspective preservation” seems similar to what I mean by “ideology preservation.”

13. It can be unreasonable to expect those who don’t ascribe to our worldview to act morally/rationally according to us, and yet this doesn’t mean our morality/rationality is necessarily false, only that we are “caught” expecting people to be rational relative to what we consider rational in a world where we can do nothing else.

14. Perhaps imagination plays a significant role in a person’s selection of a “being true”? If so, it is tragic that imagination can be ignored in schools, and ironic seeing as imagination could have a large role in organizing rationality, for it contributes to the picking of the truth against which rationality is defined. The removal of creativity for the sake of increasing rationality may in fact retard rationality (a point that also suggests why the Liminal Web might be so important).

Perhaps there cannot even be rationality without imagination, nor vice-versa. Perhaps imagination leads us to truth, relative to which rationality is then organized. Rationality then helps justify the truth as reliable, giving us reason to trust our imagination and our “being true.” If this is all the case, then it could be said that imagination determines the “toward-ness” of reason. If this is so, then perhaps The Fate of Beauty should be considered part of The True Isn’t the Rational trilogy.

15. Music is both the notes that compose it and the story it portrays: perhaps it could be said that reason helps determine what a thing “is” (helps us determine which notes compose the song), while imagination helps us determine what a thing “means” (helps us determine the story of the music). Everything is like music.

16. A distinction could perhaps be made between “negative imagination” and “positive imagination”: imagination that takes us “out of the world” (to avoid seeing it) versus “deeper into the world” (to see it in a new way).

17. We cannot put experiences into words, and so we never actually talk about what we experience, only relay ideas inspired by experience (we only ever “point,” symbol-like). Hence, though perhaps we can make people more rational with language, it is questionable we can do much to make others “truer” (“the map is indestructible,” after all). At best, it seems we can rationally and philosophically explain why rationality and philosophy can only impact us rationally, and so “point” a person in a direction down which the person can have truth-imparting experiences — stuck being like theologians as philosophers. This might suggest the importance of “encounters” afforded by a Liminal Web infrastructure.

18. Misunderstanding is a “rational event,” for there could be no (mis)understanding without rationality, and it occurs between necessarily “rational individual,” both of whom could be wrong, and both of whom must necessarily think of the other as irrational (naturally, at least). Where rationality was totally absent, there would be no misunderstanding, and yet problematically we necessarily think of a misunderstanding as resulting from a lack of rationality versus a lack of similar premises.

19. To determine how rational a person is, we’d have to compare them relative to their truth, not ours, and yet it might be impossible for anyone to truly understand the truth of another.

20. There is no guarantee that “(the) truth” and “being rational” will necessarily align, seeing as “being true” and “being rational” aren’t necessarily identical.

21. If rationalities are relative to truths, and everyone potentially has different truths, how do groups that even think like one another talk and debate? First, everyone lives according to many truths (their ideas about God, about their work life, about their country, about the economy, about how to spend a nice afternoon), and just because two people don’t share every truth, it doesn’t follow that they cannot reason together over the topics relative to which they do share a truth. Arguably, two people who think exactly alike are extremely rare, but people who generally think very similar are not uncommon, and as long as people share general truths, it will be possible for them to reason together even if they disagree on the details. If a group of people are all Christian, even if they disagree about the role of baptism, they can understand each other, but not as well as perhaps people who are all Baptists but perhaps not all Southern Baptists, people who are all Southern Baptists but perhaps not all from Georgia, people who are all Southern Baptists from Georgia but not from the same town — and so on.

However, precisely because it is extremely rare for two people to share all truths exactly, the role of empathy and critical thinking is paramount for human flourishing, not just between different groups, but also for people within similar groups. Without empathy, we cannot readily move between various truths (we’re limited in what “general ranges” we can establish), hindering our capacity to reason like different people and to understand different rationalities we ourselves don’t’ share. Without this capacity, democratic debate seems destined to fail and for participants in democracy to become frustrated and turn to power to enact the change they want to see.

22. Seeing as the rational is relative to the true, and seeing as “the true” is influenced by a person’s background, location, preferences, and so on, it is likely that similar people will ascribe to similar rationalities, and hence come to “emergently” be like one another, without any direct coordination, brainwashing, etc. Who a person is and how a person thinks will probably reflect one another.

23. If people fail to understand that rationality is relative to truths and people hold different truths, people can fail to see “compromise” as a necessarily tragedy and instead view it as a lamentable evil that should always be avoided (as discussed in “The Conflict of Mind” by O.G. Rose). Political compromise is the necessarily reality that emerges in the space between internally consistent ideologies that sprout from different axioms, but often we think of compromise as resulting from someone not being rational enough or we failing to be convincing. We tend to think that “if only we were more convincing” or “if only the other side was more rational,” compromise wouldn’t be needed: everyone would reach the same conclusions. This is appealing on the surface, but it can fail to appreciate that when people live according to different axioms, it can be practically difficult for them to reach the same conclusions. Additionally, if we think x, we must think x is rational, and if we don’t make room for the possibility of different ideologies and internally consistent systems, people who don’t think x must thus be irrational to us and arguably shouldn’t be included in the democratic discussion. To compromise with such people would be, in a way, immoral and a disservice to our country.

Compromise is a necessary tragedy because of the nature of thought itself, and if this tragedy is not accepted, democracy will often seem like it only rewards the worst acting people. This will motivate people against democracy and likely in favor of totalitarian forces that will never have to compromise again.

Failure to understand “the problem of internally consistent systems” and that rationality is relative to truth sets us up to understand “compromise” as unnecessary and a result of shortcomings versus a necessary tragedy. Compromise cannot readily have a legitimate role in our political process unless we understand the nature of rationality and its relationship to truth. Where the indestructibility of maps isn’t accepted, democracy seems doomed.

24. If people are unable to correctly identify what they are feeling, is it possible for them to be rational? If I don’t know what I am feeling is fear, how can I know I should do the (arguably) rational course of action and face that fear? If I don’t know that I am feeling satisfaction with life as opposed to indifference, how can I know if I should change my life or keep it the same? The ability to correctly identify emotions seems to be a prerequisite to a dimension of rational life, and this ability seems to be emotional intelligence. Rationality cannot fully be itself in isolation.

25. It is unnatural for people to see quality in arguments with which they disagree, for it is rare to find someone who can move between “worldviews” and “truths,” relative to which rationality is orientated and organized, to determine quality. Furthermore, it is nearly impossible for a person to say a person is “rational” who holds a different worldview, for relative to the first person’s truth, the other is in fact “not rational.” This presents a grave challenge for Pluralism, for if we can only appreciate the quality of our worldviews, “appreciating others” will become impossible. And who wants to be around people who don’t appreciate them?

26. Reason can find that a system is “consistent” and convince those in and outside the system of such, but it’s very weak to “move” a person into its system and grounding truth. Reason seems helpless where beauty is needed.

27. In “How to Be Rational About Rationality” (as found in his book Skin in the Game), Nassim Taleb suggests that we cannot meaningful discuss “the rational” except by discussing “what increases survival.” He argues that rationality is the management of risk, and that the likelihood of rationality being indeed rational is dramatically impacted by the degree the person making decisions is exposed to risk: in other words, the more a person has “skin in the game,” the more likely a person will do that which history judges was indeed “rational.” Risk increases discernment, though correctness is never guaranteed.

Taleb is not impressed by beliefs, only action, bringing to mind the work of James K.A. Smith and others fighting “the Cartesian specter.” Taleb laments people thinking that science can provide all the answers (when science itself claims it cannot) and doesn’t believe we can claim the person who washes his hands for superstitious reasons is any less rational than the person who does it aware of germs (especially considering how much of our thinking is based on perceptive errors, cognitive limits, and so on). Taleb believes discussions about the rationality or irrationality of beliefs misses the point: what counts is actions and practical outcomes. If believing a superstition helps me survive, I have acted rationally.

I believe it is easier to understand Taleb’s argument once we have separated “the true” and “the rational” into different categories. Yes, the person who believes washing hands is important to frighten off ghosts acts rationally, but not truly (and considering this, I can act rationally thanks to a lie, as I can act irrationally thanks to the truth). However, I would point out that Taleb’s understanding of rationality may help us understand what acts in the past were rational based on who survived, but “survival” doesn’t necessarily help us determine how we can be rational moving into the future. Moving forward, I think we must define rationality according to what we believe is true (based on probability, risk management, and so on), even if ultimately history will show that we didn’t act rationally because we failed to “make it.” It is hard to know if x or y will help us survive — we have to guess based on what we think is true — and if we guess wrong, we still acted rationally relative to what we guessed was true.

I don’t think these points suggest Taleb is wrong so much as perhaps point out that though “survival” might be the ultimate standard by which we can judge if x or y is rational, it may not be enough to help us decide if we should do x or y now (even though I agree with him that “survival” might be the most rigorous and empirical definition possible for rationality). If I were to guess, I think Taleb would argue that though it might be the case we don’t know if x or y will increase survival, if x involves risk but y does not, then it is more likely that x is rational than y if the person chooses x over y — Taleb argues that rationality and risk are joined at the hip (a point with which I think Thomas Sowell would agree).

What is rational is not necessarily what can be explained, and what is rational can be what’s false and yet, if it increases survival, it can be still thought of as rational. Perhaps I would differ from Taleb in that I would want to say, “What increases survival was the right choice,” and reserve the word “rational” to refer to activity that follows from a given truth, but in no way whatsoever would I argue that this lexiconic preference discounts Taleb’s argument. Further, Taleb may rightly point out that when it comes to making decisions now, thinking of “rational activity” as a matter of survival versus truth will help us make better decisions.

The Most Rational and Suboptimal of All Possible Worlds

1. To take Maurice Merleau-Ponty seriously again: If I want to know what the back of my laptop looks like, I have to pick it up and turn it around: I can never think it “around.” And if it’s not turned, I can never be rational about the back. Thus, action and thought are linked.

2. It was said that “something must be created for us to be meaningfully free, which means creation makes freedom possible,” but doesn’t that mean there is “a first mover problem”? If we must be free to create, but creation makes freedom possible, how could that creation ever happen? Someone might posit a God to solve this problem, or claim “randomness” could start the process, only for creation to then take the process over, but in this paper we don’t actually encounter “a blank slate situation,” so we only have to concern ourselves with the existential situations “like the blank slate,” situations which avoid “a first mover” problem.

3. “Man Before History” by Benjamin Fondane starts with a reflection on Gide’s statement that ‘It’s no laughing matter to play in a world where everyone cheats — including me.’¹ This phrase reminded me of the “Liar’s Paradox,” which asks us to consider the following: “True or False: This statement is false.” Why? Well, if Gide is a liar, why should we trust his claim that “everyone cheats” — mustn’t we trust him to accept this premise? In bringing Gide’s statement to our attention, Fondane suggests a few points:

a. We cannot rationally accept Gide’s statement: if we accept it, the ascension is “nonrational.” This would suggest that we must grant “authority” to a person to believe the person, and that this very “granting” might be beyond a classic “irrational or rational”-dichotomy.

b. Gide strangely makes himself seem trustable in explicitly telling us that he cannot be trusted. It seems rational to trust Gide, and yet this is part of “the sleight of hand.” It’s not rational, and yet we easily might think it is and ascent.

c. In his explicitness, Gide is presenting himself as an exception to the statement, as somehow standing outside of it. This is precisely why he can paradoxically make the statement.

d. There is no rational reason to grant Gide the authority and/or trust he needs for us to take his statement seriously: it is an act of faith, perhaps equivalent to belief in God.

Though Gide’s statement explicitly suggests that Gide is an exception to his own statement (somehow “above it” and thus empowered), precisely because it is a “Liar’s Paradox,” Fondane makes the point that all philosophers, politicians, and the like who assert x, y, or z likewise “position themselves” as someone who does x, y, and z (over others). Fondane writes:

‘The very possibility of a truth acting on the world rests on the postulate that only I who am speaking deserved that truth by dint of disinterestedness and hard work, whereas others have necessarily missed it because they wanted to bend it to their interests, their ignorance, or their whim.’²

Utterance can be exemption, thus there is incentive to speak much. If a philosopher says, “It is wrong to steal,” there is something about this very statement that makes the philosopher seem to be someone “who doesn’t steal” (even if he just stole my time with a truism). The philosopher is thus positioned to be “outside the category of theft,” which by extension empowers the philosopher insomuch as he or she is seen as “more moral” than others. But more critically, all of us must make such statements in our own minds to organize and direct our own lives. There must be certain principles and ideas that we “state to ourselves” inside to figure out what we are going to do each and every day, and that means we all can “gift ourselves the power of exception.” Living is empowerment.

All this in mind, Fondane asks the following question: What do we do with this power? When we are positioned as an “exception,” do we use this power in service of “autonomous rationality” or something more dialectical and indebted to “nonrationality”? Do we use the self-granted exception to judge the world or to participate in helping it reach standards that we ourselves do not always meet? If we are capable of positioning ourselves mentally as “exceptions,” that means it is possible for us to “think” the enactment of that exception, as opposed to assuming “we’ve already achieved it” and doing nothing but growing our pride “over” others. So, what should we do?

¹Fondane, Benjamin. Existential Monday. Translated by Bruce Baugh. New York, NY: The New York Review of Books, 2016: 48.

²Fondane, Benjamin. Existential Monday. Translated by Bruce Baugh. New York, NY: The New York Review of Books, 2016: 49.

4. If rationality causes boredom, is “the most rational of all possible worlds” expressed in Squid Game?

5. If God Exists, “the possible” is always possible: the efforts of Quinton Meillassoux can be seen as making us all “like God.”

6. As noted in “Japan and Metamodernity” by O.G. Rose, anime is more “unbound” than live-action, which suggests anime may help us “live according to the possible” better than other mediums. Is anime unique in its capacity to make us “nonrational”?

7. Shestov tells us that a truth is what we live even if no one else lives like us.

8. If the unintelligible isn’t, perhaps the minds of babies don’t exist.

9. If paradise must be explained to be entered, then if the sight of it makes us speechless, paradise is empty. Perhaps the vacancy causes the silence?

10. If anything is possible, everything might cease being possible, so everything is a gift.

11. Where there is character, the is meaning and direction, but character is “nonrational” and must risk foolishness. Is not the Socratic phrase “good death” foolish?

Coda VI

1. “Fake news” is so powerful because it consists of truths not facts, and so isn’t bound by reality in its expression. Precisely because truths are not bound by reality (only informed if people so choose), they can be as entertaining as people want them to be, for they can be false. The power of truth lies precisely in its capacity to create meaning and story, but problematically that power is not “checked and balanced” by actuality necessarily, only human will (and facts only insomuch as people will it).

2. Bernard Hankins describes art as “making truths into art-a-facts,” the realization of something in a person’s head into a thing that exists independent from the person in the world. “You have to make something—true,” Bernard says, suggesting that nothing in the world is “true” unless it is influenced, shaped, etc. by humans; otherwise, it is only factual. Humans make truth into the world, stitching it into the fabric of reality, which in a way kills the truth. Meaning dies. Meaninglessness could be evidence of meaningful effort.

3. To convince someone of your truths can feel like trying to convince someone about your facts, because relative to you, truths and facts feel blurred (though falsification can pull them apart). Thus, everyone tends to think to some degree that getting people to accept their worldview is like trying to get people to believe “2 + 2 = 4”—an undebatable matter, and if it is debated, the world has lost its mind. Whether from the Right or Left, we hear warnings about the horrors of relativism and importance of truth: before Trump, the Right warned the Left about relativism; during Trump, the Left is horrified by the relativism of the Right. The accidents of arguments change but rarely the forms.

4. Even if thinking and I-so-much-as-I-think must assume, is that point itself an assumption or presuppositionless? Also, must we holistically assume something, or can something be arrived at “intersuppositionally” that is different in quality? Matters of “faithful presence,” these are points we will take up in The Absolute Choice and Belonging Again.

Anxiety and Schrödinger’s Conceivability Structures

On Pandora’s Rationality

Desire’s Masterpiece

The Pynchon Risk

Coda VII

1. Liberals think the country is becoming Conservative as Conservatives think the country is becoming Liberal, because the brain pays more attention to what disturbs its ideology versus what maintains it. Conservatives are convinced there are conspiracies against the free market as Liberals are convinced there are conspiracies against government, for we are most certain about that which protects our way of seeing the world. If we are certain Liberals are going to destroy the country, we are certain of what we need to do to save our country (stop Liberals), and vice-versa. When we feel that what we believe in is changing, we are primed to create an enemy, an enemy who functions as an explanation for why things are changing (when perhaps there is no explanation). This act, in of itself, is a function of ideology preservation.

Also, by creating an enemy, an individual can blame the short-comings of his or her “being true” on something external to the “being true,” versus accept that the “being true” doesn’t work in and of itself. It is preferable to believe a “thing” is causing one’s way of life not to work as it should than it is to believe that one’s way of life is incapable of working as it should.

2. The end of the rational life is convincing the self it is rational.

3. Aligning with what we discussed in II.1, “the pleasure principle” favors maps, because maps provide understanding, as the nature of “relational” reality itself favors maps.

4. An “ideology” is not “a viewpoint that is wrong” — this is comforting.

5. A two-year old who doesn’t know much about the world is rational if, relative to what the child believes constitutes the truth, acts consistently and logically relative to that truth — for a person to act rational is relative to what a person knows. Hence, a way that individuals can avoid existential uneasiness is by remaining ignorant, but in such a way that they aren’t aware that they are ignorant (for if they knew they were ignorant, this would cause uneasiness). This is no easy task, but human creativity is boundless.

6. As an example, to preserve one’s existential stability, a person may call someone (ironically) an “ideological” (or “liberal,” “fundamentalist,” “conspiracist,” etc.) who says something that threatens what the person believes is true, disqualifying that person from rational society (as admonished against in “Assuming the Best” by O.G. Rose). Having disqualified the threat, the person has preserved what he or she believes constitutes the truth, and yet done so in such a way that the person doesn’t even know that he or she has irrationally disqualified the other. The person, in calling the other an “ideological,” doesn’t even realize that he or she has preserved an ideology — the person just thinks that he or she called it “as it is.” In our society (for our own benefit, perhaps, putting on “standby” an ideological tool we could always use if the situation called for it), we’ve made it fair to disqualify others, and so it doesn’t dawn on us that this is an improper course of action (for if a liberal, fundamentalist, idiot, ideologue, etc. says “2 + 2 = 4,” the person still speaks truth); hence, the person remains ignorant that his or her disqualifying of the other preserves that person’s ignorance.

If a man has upset another and claims that person is “mentally unstable,” then the man can convince himself that he has done nothing wrong and doesn’t need to do anything to make up for his actions: he gives himself mental and ideological stability. By calling another “unstable,” a person maintains stability, as a person who calls another an “ideologue” avoids being seen as an “ideologue” (and so more objective, ironically). It should be noted at this point that “ideology” isn’t just about “macro-matters” like God and politics: everyone also has ideologies about their home, work, and personal lives. One’s “ideology” is a mixture of small and large beliefs, and one’s micro-beliefs tend to be an “image” of his or her macro-beliefs and vice-versa.

(Please note that “mental illness” not only helps a person preserve an ideology, it also enables a person to define his or her self as a savior, while simultaneously avoiding detection and judgment. Please note that I think the scientist, in a way, can treat the artist like he or she has a “mental illness” by believing a certain way of thinking, living, and/or working is superior to another, and in this way, the scientist disqualifies the artist from rational discourse for “not having the right brain.” Of course, the artist can treat the scientist the same way, making it hard to live together.)

7. As humans naturally seek to preserve their worldviews, they also naturally seek to preserve comfort and their “status quo.” How one “is” is often a reflection of “in what mode” that person finds comfort: if a person is Conservative, in Conservatism, the person “finds comfort,” as a Muslim “finds stability” in Islam. This doesn’t mean Conservatism or Islam are wrong, but that people find comfort in the worldview they accept. To stay in this comfort zone, humans have developed countless tactics and ways of thinking that aid them (such as not “assuming the best,” confusing “critical thinking” with “being critical,” discriminating in favor of “low order causality” — all topics addressed in the works of O.G. Rose). People also assume certain premises that help them avoid conflict, such as believing “everyone has a right to an opinion,” “all worldviews should be respected,” etc. Now, this isn’t to say we shouldn’t respect different worldviews or that people shouldn’t have opinions, but that we mustn’t respect the beliefs of others as a way to excuse ourselves from examining and deepening our own. “Tolerate others” can be selfish: it can mean, “If I don’t worry about what others think, they won’t worry about what I think” — it can be used to preserve existential stability. When respecting others is primarily about protecting oneself, the respect can be artificial, fragile, and result in shallow people. This tolerance will also be erected upon insecurity, and makes those different from oneself a threat, even if tolerable.

8. We learn more often to be better at ideology preservation than to make our ideology truer. Not that we necessary mean to do this: ill-equipped to know truth “beneath” our ideology, we are like those trying to see the ground directly under a building. Whatever we see, the structure covers it.

9. Racism and discrimination could often be a result of the natural tendency of humans to preserve ideology, and result because people are afraid of encountering people who will challenge their ideology, which is often people who are different from them. Do note that it is not necessarily so much the person they fear, so much as it is the challenge the person may pose on their view of the world. This may result in a rejection of the person, but not simply because the person is who the person is, but because the person causes the individual to existentially reflect on his or her self (which causes anxiety) (note how many Conservatives love Black Conservatives, for example). Racism and discrimination result not always because of direct dislike, but indirectly as a result of a person’s dislike of existential anxiety. It isn’t “the other” the person is upset at so much as it is the questions the person’s presence makes the individual ask his or her self. This leads to the self-segregation of Conservatives and Liberals, races, religions, etc.

All this might hint at why people who are Conservative think of their town as “a Liberal town” and yet Liberals thinks of that same town as “a Conservative town”; why Christians think of a place as Atheistic; Atheists, the same place as religious; why fighters of racism think of a place as racist; those who aren’t passionate about racism, think of a place as equal; and so on. We tend to be so bent on preserving ideology that any encounter that makes us challenge ourselves is remembered much more “vividly” than when there are no such challenges (similar to how we remember one mean comment a person makes and forget all the nice ones) (do note I mean “vivid” as discussed in “Incentives to Problem Solve” by O.G. Rose). It is only a fact of probability that every town consists of some percentage of those who are opposed to any given ideology, and hence a person will eventually encounter those whom challenge the person’s ideology. And these likely encounters will be remembered much more “vividly,” and hence contribute to the person thinking (“objectively”) of a given place as opposed to his or her ideology in some way. I believe this is important to recognize, for it will help a person not be so dissatisfied with where the person lives, and help the person not necessarily view as problems that which is simply “vivid,” probable, and unavoidable.

10. Since everyone is rational — since everyone has a standard of “being rational” — everyone has a standard against which they judge the rational, and that is their ideology, myth, and/or worldview — their “being true.” And preserving that standard is a drive of human action, for if it caves, everything caves. We preserve ideology because we desire stability and hope to avoid too much of “The Real”: we will take a false certainty over a true uncertainty.

History can be seen as a story of rationality defending a truth, a stage upon which ideologies clash. Relative to itself, each ideology is true, and by overcoming other ideologies, it erases falsities and restores existential stability. But the ideology that prevails isn’t necessarily “the most true” ideology, but the one that most easily and widely establishes existential ease (relative to other ideologies, the ruling worldview might be totally absurd). It is more likely that at the end of history lies a “Kingdom of Existential Stability” than simply a “Kingdom of Rationality” (though those kingdoms can be the same). What about “The Kingdom of the Best Being True?” We’ll see.

11. It is not the case that everyone’s truth is right: my point is that to simply dismiss everyone else as “being false” other than ourself is to misunderstand the world. Everyone is located within a “being true” — an ideology that each person is motivated to preserve — and relative to this standard, “everyone is rational.” Everyone “practically thinks” they are objective, so seeking “objectivity” in a conversation as a privileged position to which all others must conform will not work. Rather, we must seek a mutual agreement to “seek truth,” regardless what that means for our structure of understanding the world. In other words, for us to survive in Pluralism, we must all be willing to sacrifice our ideologies: we must not seek “objectivity” for ourselves but together. Jonathan Rauch helps show what this could look like in Kindly Inquisitors (considered in II.1), and if “The True” is “The Absolute” disclosed in “The Strike of Beauty,” than Global Pluralism need not be doomed.

12. A reason humans skillfully preserve ideology is because being wrong undermines their confidence in the entire act of believing, which is the necessary tool they need to organize the chaos and information of living. If belief can’t be trusted, it can’t be trusted that whatever belief puts together will stay together.

13. Thinking through topics and ideologies takes time and energy, and this very blunt fact contributes to ideology preservation and confirmation bias, for it makes it probable that when a person invests time and energy in thinking, the person will do so “toward” strengthening his or her ideology, versus against it (especially considering that questioning one’s ideology brings with it anxiety).

14. The concept of “bias” is useful for ideology preservation and discounting ideas that threaten us without facing them, even though bias in of itself doesn’t make an idea false (as discussed in “Basic Math” by O.G. Rose).

15. As we learn from Augustine that saying someone has “good intentions” tells us little (and potentially deceives us into thinking that means someone is “good”), so saying something is rational doesn’t tell us much, because “rational” isn’t a simile for “right,” “best,” etc. To say someone has “good intentions” is to say someone has “intentions”; likewise, to say someone is “rational” is to say someone is “acting,” little else.

16. To use Freudian language in light of “Belonging Again” by O.G. Rose, “givens” are what made a “meaningful” difference between the society’s conscious and subconscious mind.

17. Perhaps this suggests why women are generally more religious than men: women more naturally understand we cannot be explained in terms of materiality alone, that we are “lost causes” — “fallen.”

18. In Freud, we find a mythic masculinity, a revelatory femininity, a hysterical truth, and a self-deceptive rationality.

19. Reality doesn’t force us to believe in “free will” or determinism — we decide the lens through which we see reality. If we want, we can see x as a result of freedom and y as a result of determinism; hence, we are more responsible for x then we are for y. Likewise, if we want to see another as responsible for x and not for y, we can choose to interpret the situation as such (so long as we don’t allow ourselves to realize we are interpreting the situation as we so think is correct). In this way, free will, total freedom, and/or responsibility help us preserve ideology and “self-image” — the fact we control how we interpret — that the experience of phenomena x doesn’t “carry with it” a given interpretation of x — is invaluable for ideology.

20. “At/toward infinity,” there will be evidence justifying every possible case, given an observer is capable of interpreting phenomenon fittingly. Likewise, as the population approaches infinity — not just presently, but through all of history — it will increasingly be the case that evidence can be found for every possible case. Hence, through time, determining truth becomes increasingly difficult, and ideology preservation increasingly easy.

21. Believing that discussing politics and religion is bad for relationships is a great belief for ideology preservation. Furthermore, it makes the one who avoids questions that threaten our ideology the person who cares about others.

22. How do we substantiate an axiom, and how do we determine what constitutes an axiom? How we answer this question will probably help us preserve our ideology.

23. Like “situation creation,” personality and mood can be used to preserve ideology: I can be cold to “make true” that idea that reality is hard, or be happy to “make true” that people are nice (seeing as happy person tend to make the people around them joyful). We are the evidence of our making.

24. Nietzsche wrote that man will “will” above all, even if he must will death, and in the same way, I believe that man would rather have an ideology of nothingness than not have an ideology (though that isn’t to say it’s necessarily possible not to have a worldview). In many respects, to will is to have an ideology: will creates ideology and is within ideology. If I will x instead of y, I have a reason for willing x that is beget by a framework and/or worldview in which x is “valued” (for whatever reason) over y. If I rather do x than y and yet still do x, it is because for some reason, at the given time of the choice, I believe I should do x instead of y (perhaps to take care of family, due to pressure, etc.). All acts are orientated by and within a worldview, and hence “point to” their corresponding framework; in a sense, all acts are symbolic — all acts “point.” Humans rather carry out acts that “point to” nothingness than not act at all; in other words, humans rather be nihilists than not be anything.

(When a person wills, a person extends his or her worldview into the world. In action, a worldview always changes the world. In some shape. In some form. Perhaps in a little way. Perhaps in a big way. Every moment of every day, countless people are changing the world in(to) the image and likeness of their worldview; the world is full of competing potters. And people rather shape the world into nothingness than not shape at all…)

25. We “pick” our ideology via our “you” in such a way that we believe we pick it via rationality. We must, naturally, yes?

26. In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt argues that experiments showed people ‘cheated only up to the point where they themselves could no longer find a justification that would preserve their belief in their own honesty.’¹ Similarly, I would argue that people tend to explore other views, question themselves, and engage in critical thinking ‘only up to the point where they themselves [can] no longer find a justification that would preserve their belief in their own [ideology].’ ‘[G]ive people invisibility combined with plausible deniability, [and] most people cheat’; likewise, surround people with others who think like them and give them enough outside opinion by which they can give themselves evidence that they are critical thinkers, and most people will ideology preserve.² ‘We [then] have permission to believe.’³

¹Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind. New York, NY: First Vintage Books Edition, 2013: 97.

²Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind. New York, NY: First Vintage Books Edition, 2013: 97.

³Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind. New York, NY: First Vintage Books Edition, 2013: 98.

27. It can seem sometimes that the role of rationality is mostly to hide ourselves from the fact that we pick what we believe based on (not necessarily bad) nonrationalities (axioms, fundamental premises, emotions, etc.) — that the main function of rationality is self-deception, to hide us from ourselves. And yet we require rationality to live like human begins. Humans are ironies. Similarly, logic seems often to exist to aid “our truth” and to keep out “the truth” to the degree it doesn’t align with “our truth.” The function of logic often seems to be the preserving of ideas, such as the idea that “the function of logic often seems to be the preserving of ideas.”

28. It is possible that men are more likely to believe in (wrong) experts then women, for they realize that if we cannot trust the experts, our institutions, and so on, then we will be staring into a void (and in this way, men would be forced to be like women). This problem is outlined in the short story “Ludwig” by O.G. Rose.

29. Freud and Lacan both understood that psychoanalysis was something that was needed the more advanced a civilization became, which meant that there was something about psychoanalysis which could be perceived as “privileged.” We hear today people mock “first world problems,” but both Freud and Lacan understood that where basic needs were taken care of, the next great challenge which would develop was mental health, not because there couldn’t be mental health problems in less advanced nations, but because advanced nations were where the masculine “quest” for material comfort was finished and feminine “truth” encountered that no fulfillment would be found in materiality. Should mental health be laughed off where it is a “first world problem,” or should we instead learn to respect it as simply a different kind of problem which deserves our respect?

30. It has always been the case that we are grounded by something “a-rational,” but, until modernity, we could “plausibly deny” that this was the case: we could believe “the masculine quest” would not lead to a “hysterical truth” but a transcendent one.

31. The logic of dreams is concealment: dreams are not random and utterly irrational; instead, they are rational in ways different from the rationality of which we are familiar. Freud sought to determine the point where contradicting dream images “matched” and were “held together,” for he believed that was where “the truth” could be found (as if the point in Gödel where a system couldn’t complete itself).

32. Citizens can support totalitarianism because such regimes can restore “consistency,” meaning they can “smooth,” if you will, a country of differences into a singularity. They can make a country of many ideologies a country of one ideology, and this can make its people feel less existentially threatened, especially if they never encounter those holding ideologies that are “smoothed out.”

33. To be unable to think can be great for preserving ideology, for we lack the ability to threaten it by thinking for ourself or comprehending external ideas, and consequently, our ideology is safe. Perhaps this is why there has always been a spirit of “anti-intellectualism” in the world, as discussed in The House of Intellect by Jacques Barzun, which was perhaps fine until the tyrant came and used our thoughtlessness against us (as admonished by Hume).

34. Every interpretation of reality entails a belief that the interpreter is capable of accurate interpretation: even if the interpreter believes “humans can’t understand the world,” the interpreter must believe that he or she can be accurate in concluding that the complexity of the world transcends human conceivability. For a human to believe any view about reality (as all must), the human must believe something seemingly egotistical about his or her self (even if it is true). In a foundational way (a way that arguably makes sanity possibility), we cannot avoid a kind of selfishness, and perhaps this primes us for ideology preservation.

35. Are we not always naturally trying to convince people to join our side, whether we realize it or not?

36. We are masters at “contained doubt,” at letting in just enough doubt that it helps us strengthen ideology, but not so much that our ideology is broken.

37. Freud associates the male with perversion and the woman with hysteria, and a way we can consider the male “perverse” is in his dedication to a “mythic quest” that ultimately could prove to be “groundless.” Indeed, there is something “perverse” about living out a quest that is ultimately a big joke — the story of Don Quixote — as there is something “self-indulgent” in a perverse way about “searching for something that the search for creates,” which is what Freud warns is what often happens to us. By this, what is meant is that as the male embarks on a quest for honor and valor, he experiences trials and tests that provide him with (perhaps imagined) opportunities for honor and valor, but those opportunities wouldn’t have existed had the male not quested. What the male ultimately seeks may prove not to be there, but the trials along the way are very real, and so in the male seeking honor by achieving an end that is ultimately absent, the male still achieves honor.

38. According to Freud, the social order works because we conceal and repress our instincts and desires, but arguably “the masculine quest” is to find a place where instincts and desires don’t have to be held back. Strangely, rationality, which is associated with masculinity, is often in service of socialization and “repression,” which suggests that even men fail to realize that rationality is a force of repression and self-deception more than something that “unleashes.” Men can stand in the way of their own goals, but if when they reach their feminine goals they could have those goals unveiled as empty, perhaps men are not entirely foolish to “hold themselves back.” If they clearly and obviously “held themselves back,” men would have to acknowledge the act and stop it (to maintain internal consistency), but if they “held themselves back” subtly, they could at least delay their efforts to reach the feminine and hysterical truth.

39. Can the artist not say something about us and succeed? If not, the history of art reliably speaks of our story.

40. Men can hide fantasies that would destroy our whole symbolic order while simultaneously seeking a revelation that destroys their world order.

41. We seem innately designed to interpret the world in a manner that makes us feel right and good because we are right. To put it another way, we seem gifted in unconsciously living in such a way that optimizes self-deception. Could we survive any other way (long enough to realize we do this and so perhaps open to Beauty)?

42. Intentionality can contribute to ideology preservation, for intentionality contributes to self-justification — “self-justice,” per se. When I experience x, I do so either indifferently or through “focus.” If there is a pencil on my desk, I might glance over it, continuing on without much thought, or I might focus on it, perhaps picking it up. If I focus on the pen and think about it, I experience it “one with” my thoughts about the pen: if I’m thinking about picking the pen up, I experience the thought “pick up the pen” in the act of focusing upon it. In other words, I experience “my intention of x” (y1) at the same time I experience x: when I focus on the pen, I don’t experience “x and y1” so much as I experience “x/y1.”

Because when we experience x, we experience x/y, our experience of the world primes us to forget that everyone else experiences x as either only x or as x/yx≠1 (yx≠1 being “a different intentionality of x from y1”). Though we experience everything in the world as “one with” our intentionality (or “interpretation of,” “understanding of,” “idea of,” etc.) “toward” it, everyone else experiences everything in the world either indifferently or “one with” their intentionality. And we all experience things as so united with our intentionality that it’s difficult to grasp that others don’t see what is “obvious” to us. This can contribute to misunderstandings, ideology preservation, and a feeling that if people don’t see the world like we do, they don’t see what’s obvious, which either means they’re stupid, ignorant, or intentionally looking away (in line with the admonishments of Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz).

Similarly, when we put a cup in a given spot, we experience it as “one with” the reason for why we put it there. It seems so obvious to us that the cup wasn’t put there randomly, but when someone else comes upon the cup, they experience only “a cup (randomly) in this spot.” If people experienced things “one with” the intentionality behind those things (regardless the source), we might be much less likely to constantly find ourselves in conflicts and misunderstandings. Unfortunately, because we don’t experience things with the “why” behind them, we are prone to misunderstand them, especially since we do experience the “whys” we are responsible for as “one with” the things those “whys” are behind, making us feel as if the intention is “obvious,” and hence that those who don’t “get it” are either careless, stupid, or even evil.

We experience the world in a way that naturally “self-justifies ourselves”: we experience the cup we put in spot x as “one with” the reason why we put the cup there, and hence that the cup is “justified” to be where it is — if someone moves it, they work against a kind of “just-ice,” per se — “a way things should be.” Likewise, if we are a Christian, we can experience that world in a way that makes me “justified” to be a Christian, and if someone else isn’t, there is a sense in which that person works against “justice.” This makes us primed for conflict when we encounter those who are different from us.

We experience the world as if our understanding of it is “just” — “as things should be” — and hence our worldview is protected thanks to intentionality by an armor of “justice.” And this armor protects ideology, for it comes to feel as if questioning it is to question a kind of cosmic “justice.” And so we easily don’t.

42.1 “The phenomenology of intentionality” contributes to ideology preservation, for things “say back to us” the intention we read in, under, and/or over them, which means our experience of the world confirms the narrative(s) of why we believe the world is how the world is. For example, when we experience Democrats, we experience them “one with” the narrative we believe applies to them, good or bad, and this helps protect and/or support our worldview.

42.2 We experience an intended-objective as if our intention is written clearly upon it, yet only we can see it (as if everyone sees it too). Likewise, we experience the explanation behind x as if it is one with x, and this makes us feel as if there is nothing to explain.

42.3 We only experience x without y if we are indifferent, and in such cases, x doesn’t impact ideology, for there is no connection to x by which to influence ideology. Hence, what we care about influences ideology (care preserves).

This begs a question: is love an act of ideology preservation? Perhaps (and perhaps every act is) — who would love someone that “stands against” their understanding of reality? If a Republican marries a Democrat, to some degree, they must believe that “it’s important to be in a relationship with someone who challenges you,” and hence, their marriage preserves their ideology. It doesn’t seem likely that a Republican who believes spouses should “have the same politics” would marry a Democrat who believes “spouses should challenge what one another thinks” — unless someone changes their minds or a “higher value” arises (which one never has to do, given they have the creativity for it), it seems highly unlikely a relationship would blossom (at least not one without conflict). It seems to me as if a common ideology is required for love to blossom, even self-sacrificial love — I’m not sure.

43. Freud warned that many examples of “rationality” are actually examples of “rationalization,” that using rationality to determine actuality is rare and so unnatural that usually there are only “appearances of rationality” (which are really self/neurosis-serving “rationalizations” in disguise). This is why associating men with “rationality” was not as sexist as it sounded: Freud associated men with “self-deception” and women with “the hysterical truth” which men self-deceived themselves away from having to confront.

44. We naturally desire (Primordial) Oneness, but if that is impossible, then “a sense of Oneness” can only be achieved through fantasy. Freud believed that sex involved four people, the two partners and their fantasies. People play the role of making possible fantasies about themselves to others, and it is through those fantasies that we use others as a way to achieve (a) Oneness (which never existed and to which we long to return). For Slavoj Žižek, this constant need for fantasy is represented by the plus sign at the end of LGBTQ+, and if it is the case that we need “a sense of Oneness” to function, then we likewise forever need imagination. If Pluralism today makes it ever-difficult to “believe in our fantasies,” then this will cause an anxiety with which it will prove difficult to live.

45. Foucault was fascinated by the question, “What is the function of knowledge?” and it would seem to me that the answer is often “ideology establishment and preservation (whether true or false).” Without ideology and/or “maps” entirely, there would be chaos and overwhelming existential anxiety (“The Real”): there would be no “direction,” and it would be difficult to live in the world; but with the existence of ideology, there comes the maddening quest for “what is” and the possibility of “apocalyptic ideology.”

Foucault realized profoundly that knowledge is conditioned by the possibility of what can be thought at the time of a given knowledge’s emerging, which is relative to society, social norms, technological development, and more. We can think of this as “the pre-conceptual” (or “nonrational”), and I would argue that this “basis” is often ideology, the parameters in which knowledge dynamically and organically formulates and that knowledge ultimately functions to establish, legitimize, and preserve, even though knowledge “carries with it” (the motivation for) the question for objectivism. As there is a structure (of society, of language, of religion, etc.) that structures knowledge, so the structure of ideology structures thinking, and with that ideological structure impeded, thinking inherently preserves that ideology, if for no more reason than to spread the presence of that “pre-conceptual” structure in the world.

Knowledge is an improvisation that generally occurs within the pre-conceptual that requires the pre-conceptual to not spill into chaos (where existential tension emerges). In other words, a “being rational” is an “improvisational occurrence” within a “being true”; a “being true” leads a person to formulating a certain self, which lead to the (improvisational) formation of a certain “being rational.” Motivated by existential tension, a point of the self then is to live in such a way that “lines up” the individual’s “being rational” with his or her “being true” (relative to which “right and wrong,” “perfect and imperfect,” etc. are determined), and even though a given “being true” can be wrong, that won’t stop the self from engaging well in “ideology preservation” and “pre-conceptual preservation.”

46. For good and for bad, a mind that doesn’t change is like a rock.

47. As Taleb talks about trees in Antifragility, the longer an ideology isn’t overturned — that it is in fact an ideology — the higher the likelihood it will never be overturned — that it will always be an ideology, that it is a “map” not a mere “notion.”

48. It is advantageous for ideology preservation to believe that we are the only person who knows the truth, for it disqualifies others from being capable of making us question ourselves.

49. If we are a Christian, we will likely feel there is too much Atheism; if we are an Atheist, we will likely feel there is too much religion; if we are a Liberal, we will feel Conservatives are controlling the world; if we are a Conservative, the Liberals are coming; and so on. As we notice Heidegger’s “broken doorknob,” we notice that which “breaks” and/or “threatens to break” our ideology much more than we notice that which confirms it or doesn’t threaten it at all. In other words, we will likely always feel there is “too much” of what we don’t do or believe in; we will always feel we are surrounded by threats to our ideology, even when we aren’t threatened at all. This perhaps motivates our tendencies to ideology preserve and to negatively portray “the other.”

To use language from “Incentives to Problem Solve” by O.G. Rose, we naturally notice everything that goes against our ideology much more “vividly” than what doesn’t. Hence, we are likely to constantly feel that our ideology is being questioned and that everyone and everything is against us, which doesn’t bode well for democracy, especially in an age that is skilled in vilifying “the other.”

50. Skepticism is usually thought of as more objective than not, but it is usually still biased in its appeal to objectivity: we are skeptical of what threatens our ideology much more than we are skeptical of what confirms it. Skepticism is usually “toward” — skepticism is naturally targeted — though it helps us preserve our ideology. Ideology orientates the “toward-ness” of our skepticism; it is the standard by which we (subconsciously) decide what and what not to be skeptical of (and how intensely). Not even our means of achieving objectivity can avoid our nature — our tendency to preserve ideology.

51. How we are friends, how we are lovers, how we are workers, how we are students, how we are kind, how we speak, how we share truth, how we confess, etc. — all impacted by ideology preservation.

52. Memory, focus, notice, etc. (subconsciously) formulate and occur in a manner that preserves/confirms ideology.

53. When we have “a case” and/or “framework,” we have something to “hold” x data versus y data in memory, and hence are more likely to remember and notice x versus y (like a broken doorknob, to allude to Heidegger). X “stands out,” and hence a case, without us trying, creates an impression of the world that x is more valuable and “real” than y, when relative to a difference case, the complete opposite impression could be experienced. The hints at how we can ideology preserve without even meaning to do so (seeing as we must hold some “framework,” regardless) — even unconscious experience of the world is “toward” ideology preservation.

54. Hypocrisy is rarely too high a price to preserve ideology.

55. Ideology preservation can function like when we meet someone we know but sense the person can’t remember our name. When that person returns later and starts calling us by our name, we can think the individual may have asked someone, but we’d rather not find out so talk with the person like nothing happened. Consequently, the person feels like he or she didn’t hurt our feelings, and we get to feel that the person may have remembered our name after all.

56. Right or wrong, we are all in the business of protecting the system/language we have adopted by which we best understand and articulate what we have experienced.

57. Rationality can be associated with bets; truth, with surprise.

58. “Men” are A/A; women, “the without B.” We can move “toward B,” but if B is realized then B is realized into A and A/A. And the question is thus ever-lingering: is B a lack or nothing?

59. As discussed in “The Phenomenology of (True) Ignorance” by O.G. Rose, the act of thinking is an act that both hides and unveils truth. Since humans are creatures of ideology preservation, our thinking tends to hide what threatens our ideology more so than unveil those threats, all while the act of thinking strikes us as an act of “understanding” the world for what it actually is (nothing hidden). Thought often hides us from ourselves: it hides our ideology from the fact that it is a (potentially false) ideology (versus “truth”).

To offer an example of how we use the “hiding/unveiling” of thinking to ideology preserve: we tend to let in just enough “truth” through our thinking to make us feel “opposed,” and this way, we feel more objective about what we think, and consequently “objectivity” becomes another means of ideology preservation.

Thinking is often depicted as an act of understanding truth, but it is just as much an act of hiding truth in such a way that we (genuinely) believe we are understanding truth as itself. (The genius who doesn’t realize this probably thinks incredibly well in a manner that hides him or her from the reality that he or she is an ideology preserver like the rest of us.) Do note though that “ideology” isn’t a simile for “false”: just because we preserve ideology doesn’t mean we are necessarily wrong. The point is that thinking isn’t simply an act of unveiling truth but also of simultaneously hiding it.

60. According to “On Critical Thinking” by O.G. Rose, critical thinking is closely linked with empathy, and hence “the other” is needed in order for us to develop critical thinking about ourselves. Ideology preservers, and this would hint at why we can feel such strong existential tension before “the other.”

61. If we want a sense of how humans ideology preserve, study romance: how a boy and a girl know how they feel for one another and yet act like they don’t; how a girl will suspect a boy likes her but, not wanting to break his heart, will try to send indirect signals telling him that she’s not available; how two people will try to speak to one another by speaking about something else; how two people will avoid confirming that what they think is true so that they can continue to exist in a safe space of possibility; and so on. How people love can teach us how people think.

62. If there is no truth, there is (still) ideology.

63. Surely love and the desire to be loved is a greater drive of human action than ideology preservation? This is a fair objection, and I would acknowledge that the desire for acceptance is indeed a great motivator. However, I would argue that people want not only to be accepted, but also for what they believe to be accepted, hence helping them ideology preserve. Furthermore, once a person is accepted, I believe the motivator of love “falls into the background,” and then “ideology preservation” becomes a critical driver of human action, perhaps for the sake love (and preserving its definition). Certainly, if a person’s acceptance is threatened, the want to be loved shoots right back into the forefront, but once love “is a given,” ideology preservation takes control.

What about the desire for people to like us? Even if we are securely loved, we are still driven from day to day by a desire for the people around us to like us, yes? True enough, and certainly the high majority of us like to be liked, but I would also argue that a reason we like others to like us is because it makes us feel that we are “right about ourselves” — that the way we are is likable and “right,” that how we think is “right,” and so on. I would argue that being liked is a way that we ideology preserve, and that the question of which comes first, the desire to be liked or the desire to be right, is like asking if the chicken or the egg comes first. At best, it’s a tie, and I would acknowledge that the desire to “be accepted” can be equally as motivating as the desire to “be right” (and ideology preserve), but I do not think ideology preservation is less motivational. Furthermore, without ideology, “how we love” lacks structure and proves fragile. If love primarily drives us, ideology structures the drive.

64. Ideology is belief that can do the believing for us (just be sure to preserve ideology so that we never realize we have an ideology).

65. I have not always used “sublation” and “concretion” as similes, but I do think Hegel suggests that no sublation actually occurs unless it is ultimately made “concrete.” Negations might lead to sublation, but not necessarily, and those that don’t prove self-effacing.

66. “A Schrödinger Both-ness Moment” — is that what it all comes down to, ultimately? A “flip moment” when “The True Journey” turns out to “always already” be “The Hysterical Journey”? Do all paths lead to x/y (a negation/sublate or self-effacement)? If there is abstraction but not negation, or abstraction and negation but not concretion — it’s as if our effort was “always already” wrong.

67. If “the map is indestructible,” what is the role of reason? To oppress? To rationalize? And yet can we say that we would want a world without it? Perhaps reason is more of a problematic tool when used by those who cannot “move between truth foundations” (empathetically), which is unfortunately most people. Hence, if reason is to help us be fully human versus tribal, we must develop empathy (which is arguably all “critical thinking” is at the end of the day, to allude to “On Critical Thinking”). Without empathy, we will use reason to unintentionally oppress both others and ourselves.

68. If “the map is indestructible,” the problem isn’t indoctrination so much as it is the case that any premise which can be consistent with(in) a system is “in fact” true.

69. The only way to “practically observe” “the map is indestructible” would require taking “The Pynchon Risk,” and even if this was accomplished, it would only prove such about a single ideology.

70. Any idea can be incorporated into any ideology (from another ideology) that doesn’t contradict the ideology’s overall consistency. For example, the idea “all men are created equal” can emerge in the Enlightenment and then be incorporated into Western religions or vice-versa. This points to how intellectual evolution occurs.

On Critical Thinking

1. The reality that we cannot know we don’t know unless we know should create an existential tension within us that always motivates us to learn, question, and think (against “the current” of mere thinking, the nature of which is to settle, stop, and freeze).

2. In a sense, critical thinking is more “being wrong” versus “being right” (as Heideggerian terms): it is a mode of being that regularly questions its sense of “grounded-ness” in actuality.

3. As no one readily thinks they don’t critically think, no judge thinks that they do what they “believe is right” rather than follow the law. All thinkers, like all judges, readily think they are authentic; likewise, all interpreters of a book (like the Bible), naturally think they interpret correctly. Otherwise, we wouldn’t think, judge, and/or interpret the way we did think, judge, and/or interpret (eyes blind).

4. We can stop searching for truth when we feel like we know it—for then there is no reason to keep searching—and, generally, we can always feel like we know the truth.

5. Democracy is likely to turn against necessary and tragic compromise in a society where there is no meaningful distinction between “thinking” and “critical thinking,” for compromise can only be viewed as a failure of rationality (on one side or the other) versus that which must be accepted in the space between rationalities based on different axioms.

6. What has been said about critical thinking can also be said about objectivity. To know we lack objectivity, we would have to have objectivity; hence, if we lack objectivity, we must think have it. Furthermore, as we experience our thinking as “critical thinking,” nobody readily experiences their subjectivity as “subjective”: they experience it as “objective” (and everyone else’s as “subjective”). The experience of subjectivity is naturally “as objective,” for otherwise we wouldn’t think what we think—and if we think we think “subjectively,” we experience it as “objectivity true” that we are subjective, which is what we think. Hence, when it comes to “getting behind” our subjectivity, as with thinking, we find ourselves faced with paradox and irony. But the road to objectivity is the road to critical thinking, a road we seemingly must think we travel.

7. As the times a person is correct increases, so perhaps decreases the probability that the person will (continue to) critically think.

8. To allude to “The Death of Skepticism” by O.G. Rose, which relates to “On Critical Thinking,” people can feel that “because they are skeptical of us doing x, that means we should not do x”: if people are skeptical that we need to be skeptical about x (which tends to mimic “the social script”), they feel we should accept x. And yet if we are skeptical about x, that means there is reason to investigate x, not to disregard it. Similarly, if someone is skeptical about our skepticism about x, that means they should investigate our skepticism, not discount it and demand an acceptance of x. In this way, skepticism can be used as a tool to corral people into accepting something by “being skeptical of skepticism,” which though involves the problematic conflation of skepticism with disbelief, is used in a way to motivate conformity.

9. As with objectivity, if we are only critical about x, then we might be more of a thinker than a critical thinker, but the fact that we are critical about x can hide this reality from us, seeing as we have evidence (to ourselves) that we do indeed critically think. And since no one can critically think about everything, we are all only ultimately thinkers, at our best when we try to be what we can never be…

10. The more intellectual we are, the more we have reason to think we don’t need to be critical of our thinking: the more we are rational to not critically think. Strangely, unless we define “being rational and intelligent” as “being a critical thinker” (which runs the risk of conflating the categories of “thinking” and “critical thinking”), the lower our intelligence, the more we have reason to be critical of our thinking. The rationality of engaging in critical thinking correlates negatively with intelligence, suggesting that we need to expand our understanding of what constitutes “being smart.”

11. Since we naturally think critically about what we don’t agree with, we all can provide ourselves with plenty of evidence that we are critical thinkers.

12. Perhaps we can think of “the self-inflicted Sartrean Gaze” as a surgeon removing our eye from our head and turning it around to gaze at us—horrifying.

13. A genius isn’t necessarily going to be someone talented at critical thinking, no more than a master at emotional intelligence is necessarily going to be mathematically gifted. Likewise, a deep, critical thinker—say an older farmer who has learned from experience how often self-deception is at play—isn’t necessarily going to have read Aristotle.

14. Critical thinking will bring to our attention the possibility that not everything is within human comprehensibility and that we can only be intelligent about what we (can) think about. If I didn’t know Mars existed and I was Einstein, I couldn’t use my intelligence in regard to Mars; and in a sense, relative to the subject of Mars, I would be a fool. If Hayek is correct, on big enough of a scale, there is eventually a point where it is impossible for even geniuses to know the first, second, etc. order effects of an education policy, a tax break, and so on, then the policies must be like a planet Einstein doesn’t and/or can’t know exists.

15. Like empathy, perhaps belief in God can also be a way for people perform a “Sartrean Gaze” on themselves.

16. In Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz, Schulz asks the question “How does it feel to be wrong?” and notes that “It feels like being right” (though realizing “we are wrong,” when we are forced to encounter the reality directly, feels terrible). Furthermore, Schulz notes that if we want to learn how to think like we should, we should learn how to be comfortable with being wrong.

As first noted in “Assuming the Best” by O.G. Rose and in line with Schulz’s thought, I cannot think of anything I am wrong about, because if I thought I was wrong, I wouldn’t think the way I did. To think is to think we are right: if we think of something “as wrong,” we think we are right to think of it “as wrong.” Empathy and “assuming the best” help an individual escape this paradox, as does “critical thinking,” for to think critically is to critique the way “thought” structures reality “toward” the thinker. But even then, the paradox is hard to escape.

16.1 Education reform has been important in O.G. Rose, and I think Schulz offers further reason for why: school teaches us that being wrong is to be stupid and/or a failure, and so trains us to never be wrong (or think of ourselves as such). However, since being wrong is inevitable (and considering this possibility necessary for “critical thinking”), school can actually teach us to avoid ever wondering if we are wrong, for that way, we never have to give up the appearance, to ourselves and others, that we are always right (and so never stupid and/or a failure). School teaches us to deal with being wrong by always being right, but since that isn’t possible, we learn to conceal our faults. Indirectly, school can teach us to never introspect and to never be creative, both of which require the willingness to fail. On this note, if “The Creative Concord” is correct and without creativity the economy will collapse, school contributes to the shrinking of the artifex and self-destruction of the socioeconomic order.

Further in line with the thought of Schulz, school can also teach us to think of everyone who disagrees with us as wrong, since school has taught us to think of ourselves as right. Furthermore, school can indirectly teach us that people who are wrong are either stupid (unable to think), ignorant (able to think but unaware), or evil (aware of the truth but unwilling to believe it), and this is dangerous in a Pluralistic Age. This way of thinking sets us all up to think of ourselves as superior to others and to think of others as in need of our help. When everyone is trying to save each other though, living together becomes difficult.

I believe school teaches us this a lot because of grading (in fact, it may be impossible to grade and not teach these kinds of dangerous ways of thinking). Until schools though stop having the pressure upon them to help sort out who’s going to college (and which college: a prestigious one or not), I fear schools will never reform in a manner that teach us to critically think and to be creative. Furthermore, until colleges cease to be the method by which society determines who gets which jobs, schools will continue to be a threat—in threatening artifexianism—to Capitalism and our globalized world. A way, I believe, schools can be reformed can be found in “Innovating Credentials” by O.G. Rose.

A Conclusive Overview

1. “The Figure in the Carpet” by Henry James portrays “The Pynchon Risk.”

2. A Theory of Every-thing is not possible, but a Theory of Every-relation could be (incomplete).

3. “Scripts” can contribute to ideology and keep us in our “map,” both in that everything outside our “map” can feel inauthentic (and we don’t want to have to think about if it really is or isn’t), while the “scripts” inside our “map” feel like ones we can trust.

4. Conspiracy is a threat to Absolute Knowing yet seems radically similar (like Lucifer with Gabriel). Instead of subject being substance dialectically, subject is substance equally, which seems the same, but it means that “conspiracy” is unbound. In Hegel, where subject is substance, the subject is (un)bound. Conspiracy is one-sided in its spurious infinity.

5. I enjoyed Trey at telosbound’s discussion between Graham Harman & Todd McGowan, and I do think it was a conversation of good will. The point that if things were not contradictory and totally self-relating, they wouldn’t be open to us, was beautiful, and I enjoyed hearing thoughts on how aesthetics could bring epistemology and ontology together — that was excellent. The points Dr. Harman made on “the reality of cultural differences” were great, and made me think of Dr. James Hunter and Dr. Peter Berger, who warned decades ago that if we didn’t take cultural differences seriously, we could end up unintentionally making authoritarianism appealing (as I fear indeed transpired). Difference must be taken seriously, but that means we must live with the risk and danger of ascribing to an essentialism which oppresses others. We must live with that risk and not fall into its temptation, but that is no easy endeavor.

I am infinitely fascinated by the relation between ontology and epistemology, and I’m glad the conversation centered around that topic. “Truth organizes values,” as argued in The Conflict of Mind, which means in this context that labeling one thing as “truly” being “imaginary” and another “real” would constitute an evaluation. Determining ontology thus requires epistemology, and the epistemology we are capable of is relative to our ontology. If we are incapable of determining the real from the imagined “readily” or “at hand,” what kind of being must we be to be so limited? In this way, for me at least, the inability to divide epistemology and ontology brings us to Hegel’s Absolute Knowing.

Absolute Knowing suggests a knowing of our limits, and for me that includes knowing that we cannot separate ontology and epistemology. If we are capable of x epistemology, then we must be beings who are capable of x epistemology, and thus x has ontological ramifications. At the same time, if we are y ontology, that shapes and influences what epistemologies we can entertain, and thus y has epistemological ramifications. Problematically though, that means we have a circular problem, for we need to understand our ontology before we can really understand our epistemology, but we cannot understand our ontology outside an epistemology. And this is a limit which Absolute Knowing takes seriously, but that leaves us with a question: What are we like ontologically to be unable to divide ontology and epistemology?

Absolute Knowing can be seen as the inability to “not” smuggle an epistemology into an ontology or an ontology into an epistemology, and, again, Hegel leaves us with the question of “What kind of being then are we?” Is that a question which we are “limited” from answering? Yes? No? Partially?

6. Ideologies seem more like possessions, brining Jung to mind: ideologies might have us more than we have them.

7. The brain is the frenemy, the great “mapmaker” (as even possible because “the true isn’t the rational”), capable of generating, sealing, insulating — but the “good philosophy” of David Hume might protect us from ourselves, fundamentally dialectical.

8. The terms “fixedness,” “relativism,” “nihilism,” and “confidence” might be useful to approach relations to thought.

9. C.S. Pierce was a genius, and his thinking that “we seek fixed belief more than truth” is critical. By “fixed belief,” Pierce suggests “a worldview that feels stable and secure to us,” and basically Pierce argues that we think “just enough” to feel like our beliefs “are right” and then stop. The feeling of stability is the sign that we have reached our goal, and at this point further thinking would just be “impractical.” If need we can never be certain of the truth even if we had to (a point discussed throughout O.G. Rose), then “fixedness” is the best we can hope for — once we get it, why risk it with more thinking? Seem irrational…

“Fixedness,” as I will refer to it for short, is a state where we feel like what we believe is true, which in of itself is not bad (in fact, it’s necessary), but in “fixedness” we grip and hold tightly what we believe. We can associate the problems of “fixedness” with the problems of “certainty”: conversations about ideas become threats, our worldviews are fragile, and we overall become neurotic and pathological (as expanded on in “Certainty Entails a Lot of Unintended Consequences” by O.G. Rose). “Others” becomes threats to our “fixedness,” and we enact cultural and social strategies accordingly. Tribalism spreads, but not community.¹

“Relativism” is a state where we achieve “existential stability,” like “the fixed,” but by generally believing “all worldviews are the same,” which means that “no worldviews are any more true or false than any other.” Practically, this grants a person the same existential stability as does someone who believes that their worldview is “the view of the world,” for both “smooth out all differences,” and it is “difference” which causes existential anxiety. If all worldviews are false except mine, there is really only “one view of the world,” and that if “all worldviews are equally true/false,” then no real disagreement is possible. Disagreement and difference can cause us to lose “stability” and “fixedness,” opening us up to existential and psychological difficulty. Both “fixedness” and “relativism” “smooth out” differences,” saving us from existential anxiety, but at a great price: both are fragile and neurotic.

More can be said, but generally the view of the relativist is destroyed if he or she encounters an indisputable fact or worldview which necessarily excludes other worldviews, while the “fixed person” loses existential stability when he or she (personally) encounters real difference. Suffering the existential anxiety that can thus result, both the relativist and “fixed person” can respond neurotically and viciously. As “Belonging Again” has argued, they can, for one, turn to totalitarianism. But of course if people remain “existentially stable” in a way that ignores real and substantive difference, this can generate and cause “the banality of evil” — what should be done? Between choosing to be one of “the relativists” or “the fixed,” we need to be one of “the confident.”

Unfortunately, when both fixedness and relativism prove to be inadequate, it seems more natural for us to turn to “nihilism” than it is for us to turn to “confidence.” Nihilism is basically where we stop believing truth is knowable in any meaningful sense, and if we don’t directly claim, “There is no truth,” we practically act as if this is the case. Nihilism is part of “the meaning crisis,” and I think it has resulted from the failures of the strategies of “fixedness” and “relativism.” It is the incorrect response, but the more “the meaning crisis” intensifies, the more we will be forced to look for an alternative. Instead of joining “the nihilists” or regressing back into “fundamentalism” or “relativism,” both failed strategies, we need to join “the confident.”

“The confident” are basically those who face difference and for whom difference is real and personal. The confident have beliefs that they invest in and commit to, and yet at the same time realize they might be wrong. Their investment might prove to be a mistake; the risk they take might prove unprofitable. They know they don’t know everything, but they also know that they have to commit to something “as if” they know it in order to make a “real choice” and live fully (as discussed in (Re)constructing “A Is A”). Hopefully the work of O.G. Rose, notably The True Isn’t the Rational trilogy, has clearly outlined epistemic tools and orientations of “the confident.” To survive Pluralism, “epistemic confidence,” that space between “givens” and “releases,” is what we desperately need to spread. If not, the resulting “suboptimal result” will be dire.

In his wonderful On Certainty, Wittgenstein tells us (another favorite quote of mine) that we must believe something to function. ‘We just can’t investigate everything,’ he tells us, ‘and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put.’² For this reason, the relativist who won’t commit to a belief is dysfunctional, and the fixed actually don’t believe at all, for they have not submitted their beliefs to “the test of difference” so that it can be meaningfully believed in. The nihilist also doesn’t readily take difference seriously, for by saying (generally), “There is no truth,” all difference loses power and substance. (To use Aristotle’s language, there are differences according to “accidents” but not “essences,” suggesting that “difference is not really that different” at all). Thus, the nihilist doesn’t believe in anything meaningfully, which means the nihilist cannot readily function in the way Wittgenstein speaks (as “the meaning crisis” makes clear). Yes, nihilists believe, “Nothing matters,” but that premise doesn’t matter to them…

As discussed in The Map Is Indestructible by O.G. Rose, to the degree a society is “fixed” instead of “confident” is to the degree the “Nash Equilibrium of conversation” will likely occur (for example), and to that degree the society will fall into a “suboptimal result.” This is described in “The Game Theory on Why Many Conversations Are Bad and Democracy Likely Doomed,” which lists out “dominate strategies” that people can use to maintain their beliefs and avoid existential anxiety.³ I will not elaborate on them here, but fixedness, relativism, and nihilism are all “strategies which erase difference,” which is in essence and practically what constitute “a dominate strategy.” Where “dominate strategies” are widespread, society will suffer a Nash Equilibrium, a “suboptimal result,” easily catastrophic.

To point to the larger thought of (Re)constructing “A Is A,” “fixedness,” “relativism,” and “nihilism” are all A/A, while “confidence” is A/B. The first three don’t involve a dialectic — we either “know what we know,” “don’t know what we don’t know,” or “know there’s nothing to know” — whereas “confidence” entails a dialectic, for we “know that which must always be open to what we don’t know.” A closed fist and upside-down open hand do not undergo change, but an open hand on which a free bird rests is a place where something is alive and happening. In requires discipline to not, in fear and anxiety, close the hand around the bird’s feet.

¹“Fixed” a term which means “cannot reproduce.”

²Wittgenstein, Ludwig. On Certainty. New York: First Harper Torchbook Edition, 1972: 44e.

³This problem of conversation is profoundly worsened which education teaches us that our goal is to “be right.” In this way, the arising and spread of “Nash Equilibria in conversations” (and more generally) is greatly tied to the state of a society’s schooling. If we are taught to “be right” (certain) versus “be epistemically confident,” we are trained to fall into fixedness.

10. Kafka is literature in which everyone might become “a useful idiot,” and “maps” might train us into being “useful idiots” — and all of us naturally map-make.

11. A way to perhaps think of an address for maps is to consider the difference between Intention (A/A) and Attention (A/B) (which I’ll capitalize to draw attention to). We’ve already discussed “intention” in this book, but we’ll revisit the topic here to suggest that Intention tends to contribute to map-making and map-strengthening. With Intention, it is very likely we will engage in map-vanishing — how could we do otherwise? Attention. Awareness. The concerns of Simone Weil, Ivan Illich, McGilchrist, and Metashamanism of Layman Pascal (topics discussed in II.1). Attention seems more important than Intention, as A/B is our stress versus A/A. Intention seemingly must be ideological, but Attention might see how maps work and even beyond them (and perhaps a problem with intention is precisely that is can distract us from cultivating Attention). Intention seems ego-based, for Intention always belongs to some “our,” while Attention can be world-based, for we are trying to “see beyond ourselves” and to see beyond selves more generally. Intention also doesn’t seem as relational as Attention, while Attention seems necessarily relational. And yes, Intention to some degree is unavoidable (there must be an “A” in “A/B,” after all), but while it seems more likely to have Attention lead to Intention while keeping both (A/B), it seems hard to start with Intention and then bring in Attention (A/A).

Critically, the word Intention is also a word that suggests movement and action toward or action, while Attention is easier to align with a “faithful presence.” We have discussed throughout O.G. Rose the centrality of “faithful presence,” and it might be the case that if we overemphasize Intention, we could find ourselves more frustrated and struggling to maintain “faithful presence.” This is because “faithful presence” is necessarily a long-term strategy that is like running a marathon, and if we overemphasize Intention, than we are constantly highlighting a question on if we are or aren’t accomplishing a goal. Did we get what we were after or not? Are we making progress or not? Such matters are not always in our control, and the more we emphasize Intention, the more we can get frustrated with a feeling of failure and quit. But if instead our focus and emphasis is on “cultivating Attention,” well, that is something we can work on and exercise now, for we have everything we need to work on Attention. No, we can’t always control if we can access or reach what we Intend, but working on Attention is (if not always) more readily available to us, meaning a goal of Attention can be less frustrating and more empowering. We can feel like we making progress as we maintain “faithful presence”; we can more easily find a spirit to keep going.

12. “Does it aid love? Does it aid community? Does it make life easier? Does it simplify?” — perhaps there are questions we can ask to help us realize if our map is totalizing us into self-effacement.

13. A first step to good decision-making is realizing that the map is not the territory. We always are making decisions within models, which means we must be aware that we “choose” a model in which we make decisions (we could say there is a “meta-decision” before decisions). If we know this, we can be wiser in the models we choose, but this also poses a question: If we choose to say x model doesn’t match the terrain “here,” does that make the map match the territory? Where do we locate a choice that suggests a choice cannot be made or “fitted”? Is that a choice part of the map, part of the map/territory, or is that part of the territory? Who can say?

14. If we “assess” instead of “judge,” we are better reminding ourselves that we are dealing with a “map and not the territory,” as is the case if we realize we deal with “polytheorism” and “scripts” — both of these can help us keep in mind Javier Rivera’s warning that our models in which we make decisions are indeed models.

15. There is no limit to what we will do or come up with to defend our “map.”

16. Though “the natural” is critical to consider (as Nina Power teaches on), emphasis on “the natural” can be in service of a neurotypical and/or A/A self-entrapment, especially where we don’t stress that “the true isn’t the rational.” This is where someone like Hegel is so important, because if things actually “are” contradictory as A/B, then oddly integrating with contradiction and “becoming” is in alignment with nature. In this, we see why metaphysics is so important, because it sets the frame in which all our terms are defined and understood.

17. To speak of “maps” is to speak of “the problem of internally consistent systems,” which has been a critical focus of our work, and increasingly, I feel (as I’ve already stated) that “the problem of internally consistent systems” is the problem, one to which an answer always seems fleeting. Without an answer, we seem incapable of solving problems of conflicting values, which will become increasingly prevalent in Global Pluralism. For example, for a person in system w, it could be rationally and morally the case that x is indeed an injustice, but relative to a person in system y, x could merely be “a mistake.” Thus, the person in w would be rational and justified to believe the other person is “contributing to injustice,” while for the person in system y, it would be rational and justified to believe the other person is mistaken and frighteningly willing to rational force over “a mere mistake.” According to his or her rationality, there is no way for the person in system w to not view the other person as part of the injustice, while according to the other person’s rationality, he or she should view the other as totalitarian. And if there is no way for the “space between” ideologies to be crossed, there is no way for this tension and misunderstanding to be resolved without one party feeling like he or she is “betraying” the truth, justice, or what have you.

As rationality seems “predestined” toward its truth, so too do values seem “predestined” and “indivisible” from their truth. If this is the case, as rationality cannot help us move between ideologies, so too might values prove powerless to help us unite ideologically diverse people. As argued in “Pluralism and the Essential Limits of the Mind” (featured in II.1), the very structure of rationality/truth/ideology is against compromise, which is necessary if Pluralism isn’t to devolve into tribalism and totalitarianism. However, understanding that this is structurally the case about rationality can help us redefine what constitutes “being true” in a manner that is arguably more capable of saving us from the problems of Pluralism, as can perhaps understanding the very fact that rationality itself is bound to a truth (in a worldview). Again, as argued in “Pluralism and the Essential Limits of the Mind” by O.G. Rose, if we can rationally conclude that rationality itself is limited, then it becomes rational to live and think according to those limits: we can redefine rationality, as opposed to losing faith in it (which I think is dangerous for imperfectly rational creatures to do, possibly leading to disillusionment and abandonment of rationality altogether). Likewise, if we can rationally conclude that “the problem of internally consistent systems” cannot be solved, then we can rationally, justifiably, and epistemically morally change our focus in Pluralism from say hosting democratic debates to determine who is right, for example, to hosting democratic debates to determine how disagreeing sides can reach a respectful compromise (which as argued in “Pluralism and the Essential Limits of the Mind”, is intellectually justifiable considering the necessary structuring of ideology itself). Now, I don’t mean to say there is no value in hosting debates to determine who is right, because indeed, there is value in figuring out how a system is internally consistent and which worldviews aren’t internally consistent (and thus don’t rationally have to be compromised with); rather, what I’m saying is that there needs to be another level of interaction, based on “faithful presence,” encounter, the Liminal Web, etc.¹ If we get through the first stage, there should still be a second.

It is rational for humans not to try flying without aid of invention, because humans are incapable of it: accepting this limit is evidence of intelligence, not a lack of it. If there is no answer to the problem of internally consistent systems, then for society, it becomes rational to stop spending so much time and money on trying to convince people to think like us, and rather for example to shift focus on what ways you can reach a middle ground of “substantive democracy” with other people (despite how your ideology will necessarily be against this). If rationality cannot solve the problems of Pluralism alone, it is rational not to try.²

People with limitations must learn to live with their limits (Hegel); likewise, society may have to learn how to live with the problem of internally consistent systems. This problem has always existed, but not until Pluralism, Globalization, and “the loss of givens” has the problem been personalized, unavoidable, immune to compartmentalization, and a daily reality. Hence, it has not been until our present age that the problem has “felt” like a problem; arguably, since the beginning of civilization, people have “known” it was a problem, but that knowledge was reserved to intellectuals and a minority, and I would venture to say it did not feel as real as it does now. Presently, not only do we feel the problem more profoundly, but that feeling has been expanded to the majority. As I think 2016 gave us reason to believe, responses so far have not been the best, but perhaps these are only birth pangs (one can only hope)…

What does it look like to manage the problem of internally consistent systems? Avoiding intellectual topics all together? Segregating ourselves apart from people who don’t think like us? Creating isolated communities? Destroying religion? Ending diversity? Outlawing the believes that impede diversity? Forcing everyone to ascribe to a single (ultimately arbitrary though not necessarily false) ideology? It’s hard to say. What are the consequences if we don’t accept that maps must be addressed instead of solved? We could end up like Benjamin Fondane. We could end up at the mercy of an “autonomous rationality” we could never stop. We will end up with an ever-pluralizing “Pandora’s Rationality.” (Land waits.) But having understanding of rationality’s essential limits isn’t the same as having an address for the problem of internally consistent systems, and yet understanding seems to be all of which we are capable, which doesn’t seem nearly enough…

Fine, but what should I do? How should I live? If ideology x is equally rational and true as ideology y (as far as we can know), why should I ascent to x and not y? Sure, perhaps I was born into x, but being born into x doesn’t make x “more likely to be actual” than y, and in many respects just sticking with x would be passive and epistemically lazy, especially without any serious investigation into x. So what would be the epistemically moral way for me to act? Which ideology should I choose? Is there nothing but “a conflict of mind”?

Well, accepting the essential limits of rationality and the problem of internally consistent systems is important to redefine what constitutes “being rational,” but then…? Certainly, how I should act toward people who think different than me has been suggested, but how should I determine what I should think? If Christianity is equally as consistent as Atheism and Sufism, why should I continue to be a Christian? Because it will make my parents happy? That seems epistemically passive and weak, but then again, if rationality can only take us so far, why is that reason not as good as any other? Perhaps finding Christianity especially beautiful, perhaps being born into a Christian home, perhaps enjoying the particular way Christians do church — perhaps these reasons are good enough considering the essential limits of rationality. Then again, how could we know if these reasons are good enough except from within the system of Christianity itself, which could be brainwashing me? The reasons seem arbitrary, but if all reasons are such — internally consistent at best but not totally consistent — is that not the best we can do?

What we should do is put ourselves in the “faithful presence” of the Liminal Web, the social coordination system, and let ourselves be “baptized.” Let it wash over. Feelings can change. How we think. We can’t think ourselves out of “internally consistent systems,” but we can be moved out of them. We can be changed.

¹Please note that I’m not saying that beliefs which cannot be internally justified aren’t beliefs that society should let people live with; rather, to echo a Rauch point from Kindly Inquisitors, I’m saying these beliefs will not have the same right to claim “we should be taught in school” as will those that manage to prove their internal consistency after intense testing (for example). If both x and y prove themselves and both have an equal right to a certain limited resource (for example), then a compromise should be struck between the two that w — an unjustified belief — will have no right of which to be part.

²Again, to emphasis a point, I think it is important to redefine rationality versus just say “rationality isn’t enough” without justification, because humans do operate according to their (imperfect) rationality, and if they feel they are betraying it, they will feel off, existentially unstable, and so on, all of which will make Pluralism more fragile.

18. “Discourse” and “map” can be connected (from II.1), with Discourse naturally leading to map-totalization.

19. ‘[P]ublic thinking, theorizing, and philosophizing must always be instrumentalized toward truth-seeking’ — Peter Limberg writes beautifully here, and I would say that if what he writes is not taken seriously, it will just be in the business of map-making. Isn’t that inevitable? To a degree, but not every “A” must end up in a A/A versus A/B.

20. Kurt Gödel found that an Algebraic “formal system” was impossible, which is to say that a “theory of everything” today is only possible that entails incompleteness, which could be Geometric irreducibility. No theory can explain itself without any irreducibility and/or incompleteness, which means that if we want to still discuss “formal systems” in a meaningful way, we must mean something different when we talk about “formal systems.” Logic must be Geometric versus Algebraic; reasoning must be situational versus point-ed.

21. A liberation movement that is universal instead of particular is at risk of being “captured” by the capturer.

22. ‘How could it circulate through the flesh of all the nations of Europe if it did not contain absolutely everything in itself?’¹ (A/A? A/B? A…?)

¹Weil, Simone. Waiting for God. Translated by Emma Craufurd. New York, NY: First Harper Perennial Modern Classics Edition, 2009: 32.

23. Perhaps we are postured for “ontological design’ (Daniel Fraga) in being natural “map-makers”?

24. The introduction of Mahon McCann to The Republic, on “How Plato’s Republic Solves the Meaning Crisis,” speaks of us beautifully. Embracing “map-making” as an end in itself could be associated with the Sophist.

25. To become conscious of “maps” can open possibilities of the aesthetic, to “high-order causality.” “Maps” also might suggest why creativity and progress ultimately require working with what “is” into negation/sublation; otherwise, maps just replace maps which replace maps, but no map is destroyed and each just waits in the wings to come back…

26. Also, the map-drive keeps us entertained in our maps so that they don’t become boring to us and they keep us moving, for if bored might “see them” or quit.

27. Truth is polytheistic, rationality monotheistic, and together, henotheistic.

28. Does rationality without mysticism end in conspiracy?

29. A world where “maps” are a problem is one where debating will prove frivolous; we need to “change conditions of possibility,” hence the case of this book.

30. ‘[W]e can sit on the object called ‘a chair’, but we cannot sit on the noise we made or the name we applied to that object’; likewise, though an ideology (“a truth”) may describe “what is” (“the truth”), we cannot actually experience the ideology, only the world which the ideology “points to.”¹ Hence, no one can experience the ideology to necessarily say “that ideology is a bad idea” — that definition can always lie in the hands of the person who ascribes to the ideology, whose drive can be ideology preservation.

¹Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity. Fort Worth, TX. Institute of General Semantics, 2010: 19.

Geometry & the Interior Life (Amazon)

31. I’ve had a number of chances to speak on Leibniz, both at Parallax and Philosophy Portal, on who all my thinking is profoundly indebted to Anthony Morely and his masterful Geometry & the Interior Life. Like from Hegel, we learn from Leibniz that all quantification require qualities to quantify, and so to treat “quantity” as “more real” than quality is to treat quantity as if it doesn’t need the foundation which makes it possible. It is impossible to “count” (versus randomly “list”) without counting something, which is to say a quality, which suggests it is impossible for us to engage in real and meaningful counting that ultimately doesn’t incorporate qualification. So it is with “maps” and “territory”: we couldn’t make a map if there wasn’t something for the map to be “of,” which means every map is a testament to A/B, and yet just like with quantification, we can forget this and fall into “autonomous quantification/mapping” (A/A).

32. The hope of learning about “maps” is to help us learn what might be called “meta-awareness,” as Andrew Luber discussed, which is a capability to move out of “fixedness,” as thought itself is prone to fall into in being “toward” map-making and ideology. Meta-Awareness though is an act of “faithful presence,” where we are using thought to avoid fixedness so that we stay toward the Mystery and don’t lose it (as I’ve discussed with Matthew Allison). It is easy to lose the Mystery and not know it, but meta-awareness is to help us keep that relation with Mystery and away from a fixedness we don’t realize develops.

In this way, serving meta-awareness, thinking is precisely in the business of helping us keep and maintain Mystery when we might lose it and not realize it. That’s the problem: just because we have a relation with Mystery today doesn’t mean we will have it tomorrow; we can lose the connection, and Andrew Luber is right that we can do so because we are over-fixed. This in mind, the development of “meta-thinking” (as I talked with Matthew Allison about, comparing “Meta” and “Mystery”), is indeed an epistemological advance, but it also brings with it risk. Because we can think “meta,” it is possible for us to be lost ever-meta, which we can then easily confuse with Mystery, precisely because “meta” entails an “ever-more” to it. But this is a counterfeit, and yet it is necessary so that we can keep ourselves “faithfully present” and relating to Mystery in a world where we can lose that relation and not even realize it.

But how do we develop meta-awareness? Surprise and Encounterology. Risk.

33. It will not suffice for us simply to say “the map isn’t the territory” — we must make a decision. Perhaps the key move from philosophy (which is necessary) to fields like forensics, economics, politics, military strategy (to reference Dr. Simpkin’s work), etc. is the having to make “a decision” based on how we believe “maps” and “territories” relate, as opposed to just “knowing” they are not the same. Hard to say, but when “judgment” and “decision” are part of the equation is perhaps where most of the anxiety, trade-offs, and tragedy arise.

34. Todd McGowan is right that ideology turns contradiction into difference and opposite; it would prefer not to face the reality that “all passes over into otherness.”

35. Cadell notes with Aaron at “The Golden Shadow” that the challenges of “mental health” correlate with industrialization: it’s as if the better we become at taking care of our exterior, the more we cannot be distracted from our interior, and so the more we have to live with the reality of how strange we are (a consideration also found in the essays of Walker Percy). There is a longstanding tradition of viewing theology and theologians as pharmacists, and understanding that “pastoring” required “theology” to be useful: we cannot heal our mental health without the right ideas and “mental models” in which to handle those ideas. Considering this, religion once had the function of helping people keep themselves mentally healthy by providing ways to understand “the strange paradox” we are in hopes of making ourselves manageable to ourselves. Christianity, in particular, helped people accomplish this with countless paradoxes: the least will be first; God comes for the sinner, not the righteous; God is a slayed lamb; and so on. If we are tensions, then language and metaphors which entail tensions are an appropriate remedy.

After Nietzsche though, as Cadell notes, the ability of religion to successfully “treat us” has wanned, arguably precisely when we need those resources and tools most. The challenge for mental health is enormous, and yet we seem to have had better tools to cope with it before the challenge intensified. The fall of religion releases incredible psychological energy: religion channeled sexual energy, but no longer, and so eros has become a “hungry burden” still seeking Oneness it feels that it can no longer trust in the divine to provide (note how eros love is primary in many mythical thinkers or in works like Theology of the Body by John Paul II; also, the Christian “beatific vision” can be associated with climax). Unleashing eros, the loss of religion causes immense psychological struggles, and we arguably lost the best tools for handling that struggle exactly when it countered most. But that doesn’t mean there is no new opportunity…

As we’ve reviewed, Philip Rieff basically argued that society needs “givens” or will otherwise be overwhelmed by the psychological burden of itself. Peter Berger, likewise, warns that without “plausibility structures,” systems that support our beliefs and views of the universe, everyone must become experts on themselves, which few people have the tools to handle (if anyone). This I think is similar to Cadell’s point that everyone today must “become philosophers” — I agree. As you know, my concern is that under these existentially difficult conditions, totalitarianism becomes appealing.

As discussed extensively in the work of O.G. Rose, we are paradoxes, tensions: not a nothing, not a something, but a kind of “(some/no)thing.” As Cadell so rightly brought to my attention, this is the genius of Hegel to say “A is B” versus “A is A.” We are a tension, but since I don’t think our brains can practically think thoughts structured like “A is B,” only “A is A” — our brains operate according to “low order complexity” versus “high order complexity” — then “the ontological reality of A is B” is always being hidden from us by our very act of trying to consider it. Thinking considers “A is B” (ourselves) and (un)veils it as “A is A,” but if we are an “A is B,” per se, that means our minds can never fully grasp ourselves as ourselves (this also hints at the difference between “thinking” and “perceiving”). And we have to live with this reality personally now that “givens” have weakened (reminiscent of thoughts on Ivan Karamazov in “The Grand Technology” by O.G. Rose).

We are a kind of “both-ness,” but not wanting to deal with this reality (perhaps precisely in not having the tools to do so), we naturally consider ourselves as “one thing” or as a “singularity.” Knowing we are actually a “both-ness” is why, as Hegel says, the essential moment is contradiction (additionally, I think this is what great literature “shows,” as discussed in “Fiction is the Mathematics of the Humanities” ). The fact though that we are a “both-ness or “(no)thing” which wants to be a singularity or “thing” is why I fear totalitarianism grows in appeal as the modern world increasingly forces us all to become “philosophers” but we prove ourselves unprepared. Perhaps the temptation in the Garden of Evil was to (falsely, in a dichotomy) know good and evil versus be unsure what to think and trust God, the Unknown?

As Cadell teaches, “I am” is the major feature of our whole existence (a point which makes me think of David Foster Wallace’s “This Is Water” speech), and now we can freely consider this feature in the modern world (and basically must: it’s as if we’re not free to wonder if we’re free), especially where basic necessities are provided for and religions no longer provide “givens” to keep that feature from having to be considered (in the past, what “I am” was — a child of God, etc. — was basically answered for us; yes, details had to be worked out, but the framework was “given”). And what do we find? A paradox. A walking contradiction. Something that the act of trying to understand makes it harder to understand. And so a question arises: how do we respond? Do we run to a totalitarian who will “make life simple again”? Do we become philosophical so that we can handle and live with abstraction? What should we do? Regardless what we do, what will the majority do?

Humans seem to need singularity, and my personal hope is that “beauty” can play a useful role in this regard, as discussed in The Fate of Beauty by O.G. Rose. In a world of “givens,” we could believe we possessed that singularity in ourselves; unfortunately, we cannot easily believe this anymore or “feel like” it is true. Now, it feels like Hegel was right, and do note it’s one thing for Hegel to “be” right and for us now to “feel” like he was right. But eros feels like it needs singularity (unity, oneness, etc.) and it will naturally find it (or die trying). The question is will eros find it in totalitarianism or something else? This brings into focus a key dimension of Last’s work: the Global Singularity.

God once functioned as a “nothing” — the “(without B)” in the formulation of “A is A,” to allude to “On A is A” by O.G. Rose — eros could direct itself “toward” and “feel like” singularity was possible and nigh (even if never reached, thus the term “nothing”), and this once balanced us. When eros was so directed, “belonging” was possible; now where it doesn’t feel “believable” for eros to be so directed and it not be an act of self-deception (due partially to the loss of “plausibility structures,” as Berger describes), “belonging” feels lost (do note that I associate “belonging” with “singularity”). To put it another way, in the past, it felt like we were just “without B” for now; today, it feels like we are “without B” for good. We feel like we have to become one with God, and it used to feel t like we one day would be. Now, we still want Oneness, but feel like this want might be a self-inflicted joke. We are all a K, but now we feel like Kafka more than Kierkegaard. We want to leap into loving arms but find ourselves on the edge of a roof.

The abstractions in Hegel are now things we consciously experience but may not consciously understand, and things we know but don’t understand are burdens. With the loss of “givens” so goes the possibility of being ignorant of our lack of “givens” (thanks to a “plausible sense” of (incomplete) “A/A”), which forces us to experience the “A/B” that we are, which causes an existential tension that makes totalitarianism appealing to restore an (illusion) of singular identity (A/A) versus our paradoxical reality (A/B). “Givens” let us believe “A is A” held, per se, but now we are experiencing the incompleteness of “A is A” (as “A/(A-isn’t-A)’ is ‘A/(A-isn’t-A)’ (without B)” (to allude to our paper).

With religion and “givens” weak, it seems our unleashed eros is directing us either toward a digital singularity or a political singularity (totalitarianism). To reach the digital singularity, the majority will have to resist the temptations of totalitarianism, which considering Trump, Brexit, and the like, I fear we have evidence to believe isn’t happening. But even if so, without a “new philosophy” like what Cadell Last’s labors on, the digital singularity will easily turn out to be a disaster. For why, I suggest his extraordinary work, which we need today more than ever. A few more points:

a. I agree with Cadell that rationality is not even in a way rationality when it is “autonomous” and/or “secular” to the extent that ignores “the needs of the heart.”

b. History is a tale of humanity becoming “more cultured” and “less biological,” suggesting why Freud associated civilization with “discontent.”

c. The “revenge of philosophy” — the idea that philosophy has been cast aside but will come roaring back as critically essential — is fascinating.

d. Cadell suggests a need for a word that combines “order” and “chaos,” something like “chaotic,” to aptly describe A/B entities like ourselves.

e. I appreciate Cadell’s answer to the question “Is consciousness a mistake?” — he replies that the mistake is actually in “where we locate truth.” If consciousness searched for truth in the right place — in the “gap” and “space between,” in “nothing” versus “something” — consciousness would not be a mistake. Orientation is the problem, not the possibility of orientation.

f. I personally love the idea that “a strong man is weak,” that “a strong man is aware of the pain of being,” that it takes strength to accept that “the ego is frustration.” “The child comes into consciousness crying” — what an amazing image. We come into being with a sense of “the gap of being,” aware A/B, but then “mature” into an illusion that A/A (or at least try).

g. Awareness is always awareness of being trapped — I think Cadell is especially correct about this today in our world without “givens,” for we cannot escape A/B into (a simulation of) A/A.

h. To allude to Cadell’s centipede example, “givens” helped us function as a “A/B,” because we could believe we were “A/A” and never think about it. Now, “givens” cease to work as well, and so we must figure out “how we use all our legs” (how we exist as an “A/B”) and have no idea, which can cost us our capacity to walk (making “maps” appealing as “practically given”). The psychological weight of ourselves today is heavy and can make carrying out simple tasks difficult. And yet, especially in first world nations, we can look around, see many of our basic needs taken care of, and feel self-hatred. Why is life so hard for us? We’re well-off! And so we can feel a “disconnect” between our external and internal selves, perhaps causing a collapse of mental health, a collapse of which we hate ourselves more for undergoing, considering how “well off” we should be, all of which stresses a need for a “new philosophy,” as Cadell argues.

i. As Last notes, God is the container of I to keep I from destroying itself, and Nietzsche warned that God is dead. We are problem-solvers who must solve problems and there is only one problem left: the problem of ourselves. The solution is death. This suggests the importance of Heidegger and need for us to somehow “ontologically evolve” out of our “problem-solving”-ness (instrumental rationality). The need to escape a kind of “capture,” it seems, as discussed by Justin Murphy and Johannes Niederhauser.

j. In “The Weight of Glory,” C.S. Lewis established “The Argument from Desire” for God’s Existence, and I believe it was Peter Kreeft who took this idea and suggested that if we have a desire for God and God doesn’t exist, then we are a cruel joke on ourselves. And indeed, this might be so. Using the phraseology of “the weight of glory,” perhaps we could discuss “the weight of B” or “the weight of singularity”? I think “The Argument from Desire” could actually be worked into the discussion on Hegel’s “A is B” in interesting ways.

36. Is it true that the mind cannot readily think in terms of A/B and naturally thinks in terms of A/A? Well, we can try to think of a horse and the atoms that make up that horse at the same time, try to simultaneously think of ourselves at this second and who we were ten minutes ago. Can we do it? If we try, I would bet that the image in our head is a combination of x1 and x2, who we were in the past and who we are now, not both things, in their distinction, at the same time. This is the key: thinking in terms of A/B cannot be a synthesis; it must be simultaneous (which is somewhat impossible) If we synthesize x1 and x2, we create a new A, which isn’t an example of A/B.

There is phenomenological evidence that we cannot naturally think in terms of A/B; at best, it seems we can be aware that our thinking is always “missing” A/B, and thus try to “outline” A/B versus deny the existence of it. We need to make “space for” A/B in our thinking, which is notably difficult, because A/B can’t be in our thinking: we must engage in something paradoxical to achieve accuracy. Thinking approximates more than reaches: the “/” between “A/B” is always present, per se, for A never “resolves” into B or vice-versa.

“A/B thinking” seems important for overcoming the problems of “belonging again,” for it seems we need something like (paradoxical) “open givens” to save ourselves from the destructive tension between justice and belonging. This suggests the projects of Hegel and Deleuze, as taken up in “Beauty Saves” by O.G. Rose, but the question lingers on if the majority could ever develop “A/B thinking” or only a minority (which I the question of “spreading Childhood”). Personally, this is where I hope beauty can play a role.

Critically, what is A/B cannot be proven linearly or syllogistically in the terms of A/A we seem stuck in, only suggested. This being the case, we might say that dynamic proofs are needed which “show” instead of “tell,” and that, in my mind, is a role of literature. Perhaps literature is our best resource for “showing” the problems of “belonging again.”

37. If we accept the idea that the loss of “givens” unleashes eros (which seems easier to accept if we understand the classical connection between “givens” and religion, and furthermore the close connection between sex and religion), then perhaps eros desires a state of Oneness that “givens” prevent. If we believe eros desires reproduction, but associates reproduction with immorality, then the desire for Oneness by eros is tied to this desire for “reproduction/immorality,” for if we are One and something is alive, we are all alive. We will live “forever,” because we will be around if something is conscious (note the term “forever” only has possible meaning where consciousness is present).

38. Paradoxically, if “givens” are necessary for “belonging,” eros may fight against what it requires for the belonging it seeks. Unless Oneness entails a new “given” within itself, which perhaps it does.

39. Is it likely that we ever reach Oneness? I don’t want to say something like a “Global Singularity” is impossible, but I do think such a state is probably very difficult to achieve and also self-effacing. Why? Well, we have to overcome “the temptation of totalitarianism,” to start, which will grow in intensity as does our existential anxiety, but we also have to survive a kind of “transvaluation of our heroes,” which is also very hard to bear. What do I mean? Well, it is questionable if Thomas More is someone today who we would consider a hero or a man of character versus a fundamental dogmatist. Furthermore, the collapse of “givens” today can seem to “reach back in time” and transform the meaning of More to us today, making it “as if” Thomas More was never charactered at all. It’s not merely that More “stops” being charactered to us, which might be more existential bearable, but instead that More was never not a “closed-minded” fundamentalist. So it goes with the Founding Fathers of America, fighters in the American Revolution, and so on: whenever “givens” collapse, the meaning of “always” changes (as discussed in “Flip Moments” by O.G. Rose). And if say ten “sets” of “givens” must be broken through for Oneness to be achieved, each set will bring with it its own “transformation of the ‘always’-meaning of past heroes,” and each of those “transvaluations” will prove existentially difficult to bear. We might make it through, but there are only so many times a people’s heroes can change into villains (as if they were “always” villains) and people not fight back.

40. “On Critical Thinking” by O.G. Rose argued that there is generally a correlation between the presence of pain and the presence of “real thinking.” If the thinking doesn’t cause any existential anxiety, it’s probably just “thinking” versus “critical thinking,” and on this point, “critical thinking” and “love” are linked together, because love entails existential and painful consequences, and furthermore the deepest critical thinking emerges out of “loving our enemies.” Considering this, critical thinking is “dialectical thinking,” and dialectical thinking is very hard: it is unlikely the majority will do it.

To make a significant claim that I believe “Belonging Again” establishes, where there is a lack of dialectical thinking, totalitarianism is likely creeping in. This is because totalitarianism is likely where there are no “givens” and where “givens” are too strong, in anarchism and in over-centralization — definitions that are not constantly examined are likely to become oppressive boundaries, but where there is no definition, there lacks identity, meaning, etc. — so a dialectical tension must be maintained, which is unnatural for the brain to maintain (anything A/B versus A/A is something the brain is naturally against). A world with only “givens” (fundamentalism) and a world without them at all are both A/A; Hegel wants us to accept A/B, but while A/A can allow passivity — “set it and forget it” — A/B requires constant activity, like weeding and maintaining a garden. We naturally prefer A/A to A/B, but A/A is when “our ideas do our thinking for us”: our ideas and ideologies own us more than we own them.

So with “Beauty Saves” in mind, this brings us to the radically difficult question: how do we stay in A/B thinking? Cold showers, dynamic meditation, exercise — all these could help us, but also not. Furthermore, will Derrida, Deleuze, Hegel, or Balthasar prove most useful for the majority in maintaining A/B over the temptation of A/A?

41. ‘[P]eople seldom do things for just one reason,’ Henry Plotkin points out, and argues strongly that reason is always social.¹ He examines war and killing, and sees something odd. ‘[M]ost people participate in war with extreme reluctance and at great and palpable risk to themselves. The personal rewards are usually negligible. What, then, causes wars and why do people fight in them?’² It’s to a degree because “the true isn’t the rational” and reasoning is never a lone act. We are caught in social horizons we don’t want to disappoint. We are caught in communities that makes us question ourselves. And the communities provide us “the truth” according to which we can question ourselves…

¹Plotkin, Henry. The Imagined World Made Real. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003:126.

²Plotkin, Henry. The Imagined World Made Real. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003:125.

42. The loss of religion seems to have been the loss of “nonrationality,” and now the way to Absolute Knowing is blocked by “irrationality.” “Rational animals,” we arrive at the gate and turn away, never checking to see if we could unlock it, not wanting to waste time…

43. The completion of coherence is the moment where correspondence is realized not to be present. The moment of coherence’s “great victory” is the moment that might unveil its irrelevance.

44. Where “nonrationality” is lacking, there can be no Absolute Knowing. Religion was once a source of “nonrationality” — what will it be now? Hard to say, but I would like to highlight further how religion was full of “nonrational and negating practices,” and that whatever we replace religion with will have to do the same. We are taught not to boast of our accomplishments, which can seem irrational, for if we indeed have accomplished x, shouldn’t we talk about it (as often characters do in Greek literature)? We are taught to not seek riches and fame, but that too seems irrational, for won’t these things help us advance (and even take care of our families)? I could go on: religion is filled with “nonrational” teaching which, on the surface, seem “irrational.” To get that they are actually “nonrational,” we have to do them, but that requires faith, for we have “to look beyond” the irrationality right in front of us to take “the first step.” Nonrationality without faith seems difficult and perhaps impossible, but that would mean the only way to Absolute Knowing would be faith.

45. It was noted regarding “The Game Theory of Conversation” that it wouldn’t suffice simply to discuss the trouble with “dominate strategies”: we would also have to change our metric of a successful conversation. Indeed, and the same applies to ontology and epistemology as a whole: if our metric of “having gained a truth” is an expression of and conformity to “A/A”-thinking (basic Aristotelian logic), then philosophy will not advance from out of self-effacement. Our metric must become A/B, but that will require an “Absolute Choice” which will not be easy to make, and of which will be radically “nonrational.” If we don’t have such language, only the language of “irrational,” it is not likely we will prove able to make this choice: our very language will help trap us.

46. Those who are “(in)complete” can be “epistemically humble,” which is to say they are “open” to things they don’t understand and/or things which they cannot fully articulate into the terms of their worldview. With religion and martyrs wanning, what today can provide a new justified ground (versus “cheap ground”) for “(in)completeness”? Well, I think that gets us into the topic of “beauty,” as described in “Beauty Saves” by O.G. Rose, which will be approached amidst the options of nihilism, isolationism, Derrida, Deleuze, Hegel, and Balthasar. But that is an extensive case made in The Fate of Beauty, a case which will be “suggested” by all the ramifications the loss of beauty has on our society. If “the fate of beauty” is indeed “the fate of us,” then there is reason to think beauty is essential and foundational for a new and necessary sense of “(in)completeness.”

47. “The problem of internally consistent systems” and “conflict of mind” could be addressed by “zero-knowledge proofs” which avoid calculation. Beauty might be such, a “strike.” Encounterology.

48. It can seem like we don’t have hope because “the true isn’t the rational,” but that is precisely why we do. (Metaphysics maintains the possibility of seeing through ideology.)

50. Labor in Marx is fundamentally social, as is Capital, and so it is the Social which ends up as AI following Land. However, there is the Social of Transhumanism and the Social of Hyperhumanism — our choice before the Causer. Most of history has been the work of the Imagination being outsourced to the Symbolic to deal with the Real. Now, we are easily at the Causer which will move us to have to make the Imaginary primary, which risks psychosis (Symbolic risks neurotic, while the Imaginary risks psychosis). Hence, the Symbolic could be facing exhaustion/saturation with Global Pluralism to deal with the Real, requiring Imagination to move in, as perhaps modeled by Joyce for Lacan.

51. Can someone belong to system x and truly think like they belong to system y? Is anyone actually capable of that kind of empathy? Possible, but certainly not the majority, and even if people in mass were, if systems x, y, and z are all equally internally consistent, not even empathy could help a person decide which ideology is “best.” Empathy might be critical thinking, but it doesn’t seem critical thinking can help us solve our problem, only better manage it.

52. Can’t we encounter someone with a different ideology and that “emotionally” change us (perhaps suggesting “faithful presence”)? Can’t ideology B be tested by ideology C, as idea A can be tested against idea N, O, P…? Yes and no: ideology B isn’t so much tested by ideology C, as it is the case that ideology makes ideology B test itself against itself (“you” tests “you,” per se, though thanks to encounter). When I determine if idea A is true or false, it really isn’t against the ideas presented to me by another person. Rather, that other person says something that makes me reflect on the ideas within my ideology against one another. It isn’t so much that the person gives me a new idea that overthrows my system; rather, that person makes me think about the ideas in my system, and makes me realize that my idea conflicts with the rest of my ideology: it isn’t so much that I realize the idea conflicts with his or her ideology, for of course they do; that is no consequence to me.

If I am a Christian, the fact that my idea of God conflicts with the Muslim’s is to be expected: we ascribe to different worldviews. What is important to me though is if the Muslim points out a verse in the Bible I ascent to that challenges my idea of who God is, which, if it opens me up to the ideology of Islam, does so (indirectly) because I realize that my Christian ideology is inconsistent, and hence not an actual ideology (but instead a “notion”). This is pivotal: it is not that I realize my ideology is wrong: I realize my ideology was never an ideology in the first place. It never existed (as complete), and I realize this not so much because my ideology encounters another, but because I, within my ideology, reflect on my ideology as a result of encountering “the other,” and find it incomplete. Hence, if I “become open” to ideology B (and my “you” picks up ideology B), it’s not because ideology A is so much found to be false; rather, it is that I realize ideology A was never an ideology in the first place, but instead a bad idea.

53. Everyone must understand their ideology in a way where it is not just another ideology, which is to say that it is not merely “an internally consistent system”: otherwise, why would we ascribe to it and another some other worldview? But whichever way we define our “internally consistent system” as distinct from other ideologies, that understanding and definition must be thanks to a logic and rationality which arises within “the internally consistent system.” If for example I argue that “Revelation” makes the Bible different from Marx, the distinction between Revelation and Rationality arises within theology, which is thinking according to the Bible. To accept the premise that Revelation is “a different kind of thinking” than Rationality, we must ascribe to the Bible, and thus the distinction is “part of” the system of thought versus transcendent of it.

54. The rationality of an ideology “point to” its truth as its truth “points to” its rationality, but never are the two equal and “within” the other. They interact dialectically (and in a Hegelian “contradiction”), which means their relationship is tense and poised to try to dominate and overtake the other.

55. Theoretical-Awareness can coincide with when a society is conscious of itself, which could contribute to map-pluralization. As writers aware of Joyce might see themselves “like Joyce,” so a society aware of Gödel and “maps” can see itself differently and so act differently.

56. A problem with “progress” is that if it comes to be defined according to “certainty,” then we are likely “progressing” in map-creation that avoids “The Real,” which means progress is fragility. As Lacan understand “delusion” is more a matter of certainty than wrongness about reality, for no one accesses the territory.

57. Whitehead came to see logic as a subset of aesthetics, according to Matthew Segall.

58. This entire book might suggest why it is likely for philosophy to “vanish,” for its role is clearer when maps are “visible.”

59. Maps redundantly work and hence form habits of using them, which in a way helps make them “indestructible” in the sense that we will always follow our habits. We have an indestructible tendency to “reducing” things into what we can comprehend.

60. Capital is the end of the logic of “maps” (“autonomous reason”) used to avoid Gödel Points versus find them for “dwelling.”

61. If we don’t know “maps are indestructible,” when our map never fails, we will easily interpret this as evidence that there is no reason to think Others in Pluralism have something to teach us; if they did, our map would fail…

62. The more maps, the better — if we can handle it (if we can handle not thinking of other maps as “beneath us” while holding to our own). If we can handle the Gödel Point, the only place where a Costly versus Cheap Perennialism is possible.

63. We cannot assume that the process of map-making will ever realize the Absolute, however necessary.

1. The Counter-Enlightenment and Modern Counter-Enlightenment thinkers seem to point to a nonrational “Gestalt Theory,” which if lost means we end up in “internally consistent systems” that we build (“gestalt simulacra”). And we must make an “Absolute Choice” to see reality in terms of “gestalts all the way down” versus made of “parts and wholes,” for reality appears to us as equally either way (making us that donkey between equally-sized piles of grain).

2. We are naturally “toward” some whole, and if we don’t apprehend it, we will build it. We long for gestalt, and this suggests why Sociological forces can shape us so much: they provide with us a “built whole” and give us permission to build wholes ourselves that feel whole. If Society fails though, the wholes we build can feel like fragments, and then “we starve.” Man cannot live on non-gestalts; we require them. But if the Social cannot make gestalts plausible to us, then the Capital-Nation-State will provide that plausibility, and so from one “built gestalt” into another we will ever-fall. The chain can only be broken with “an apprehension of gestalt.” Beauty. Lack. River-Hole.

3. “Autonomous rationality” is when rationality is its own gestalt and so self-referential and autocannibalistic. All maps entails a rationality which is autonomous to itself, and so all maps that don’t realize they are maps deeply seem destined for self-effacement.

4. Everything is like everything else. Nothing is lesser: everything relates form-ally. And if we are “curving” gestalts into gestalts — analogy, association, flow — we might take Zwicky seriously.

5. “Internally consistent systems” can be idolatrous, and yet we require them (and so let us be sure they “point”). Does this mean we are “fallen”?

6. If we don’t own the primacy of gestalt, we will still require it, and so we will seek wholes, and that ultimately can manifest as map-making. Perhaps we naturally map-make because we naturally forget (apprehending) gestalt? Is this why Plato, Augustine, Bergson, and other stress memory? Is this why memory is so important? It is our “check and balance” on ourselves which tends to forsake gestalt? It seems that way.

7. Why are maps “simulacra of gestalt” and not just gestalts? They are and aren’t because they don’t include the territory, though the territory includes maps. To “apprehend gestalt” is to “apprehend the territory” without a map (perhaps through Bergson’s “intuition”) — an “experience of meaning.”

8. But doesn’t gestalt mean reality isn’t “incomplete” like Žižek teaches? No, because gestalt is never finished as “(a) form(s)-of-formulation” (“timespace”), and that means we are never finished. All we can ever experience is a moment of gestalt that is then a second later not the whole, for “the curve” has curved on: there are only moments of a “form” when the formulation of “the curve” passes through a point that “ties it all together” and/or “weaves it all.” Glimmers. Glimpses. Furthermore, we cannot think, calculate, or consciously “be” gestalt, and in that way there is always an excess of ourselves that we can’t entail to ourselves.

9. The moment we are building up into, we are at risk of map-making too much, though building is “practically inevitable.” Gestalts “curve” into gestalts as a gestalt; they are not built out of them, or they are nothing.

10. Myths like Christianity have seemingly functioned to give us a sense of “internal limitation” that we need to develop in say becoming more holy, spiritual, virtuous, etc., and in that sense Peterson is right to emphasize our need of them — but “myths’ without “givens” and/or the needed socioeconomic and political conditions can only do so much in light of Global Pluralism.

11. The map cannot be the territory and is indestructible, but the territory includes maps, and the territory can be apprehended. Also though, maps are indestructible, but we aren’t, hence why it’s easy for us to be replaced by Capital/AI.

12. Myths without philosophy only reify what “is” (like Capital), but philosophy without myths enacts “the barbarism of refinement” (self-effacement). We lose meaning, and yet that can benefit us — conspiracies are “maps of meaning,” for example, following from “drives creating myths,” and so meaning is our problem — as the loss of meaning can destroy us.

The problem is not that Capitalism makes us immoral, but rather it threatens social intelligibility, and yet where there is “social intelligibility” there could be “a banality of evil.” Where life makes sense, we could dominate it; where life doesn’t make sense, we cannot function. So we need “maps,” and yet “maps” could “enclose” us forever.

What hope is there? An insight, as Jan Zwicky discusses? Can nothing else but such a “zero-knowledge proof” — revelation — 

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The Map Is Indestructible (Amazon)

For more, please visit O.G. Rose.com. Also, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

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Third Thoughts is a collection of fifty considerations by O.G. Rose, author of Belonging Again, A Philosophy of Glimpses, Under the Wing, and The Conflict of Mind. Readers can enjoy the works in conjunction with each other or treat the collection like a box of chocolates, for each work is a completed insight. Third Thoughts reveals how our ideas are like eyes, giving perspective on everything in life and that we all see from somewhere.

Third Thoughts (Amazon)

Titles include:

The Socratic Embodiment

Truths, Falsities, and Blurs

Grind Culture
(Im)morality
A Valuable Life

History Is Actually Possible

Probable Cause
Citation Wars, Good Cheating, and Cultivating Oral Education
Socrates, the Simple, and Locating
Dialectical Ethics

The Elder Spirit Moves
Phenomenological Pragmaticism
Do Not Ask “Has it Been Said?” but “Has It Been Heard?”
The Story of the Japanese Renaissance
“The Such/Lack Solution” to the “Is/Ought Problem”

And many more!

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For more, please visit O.G. Rose.com. Also, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Instagram, Anchor, and Facebook.

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O.G. Rose (Website)

A related topic to the tension between reason and faith, but here we can touch on what could be called “the problem of propositional knowledge,” which loosely here is “the problem that ideas are not experiences” (alluding to The Conflict of Mind), in other words that people are not usually motivated by ideas like they are experiences. This becomes a central problem for O.G. Rose, but if that is true and we can associate Reason with “ideas” and Revelation more with “experience” (I acknowledge the division isn’t so clean), then what is the point of reasoning? It doesn’t motivate and change people like does “personal knowledge” (as Michael Polanyi discusses), and also doesn’t Reason risk us falling into “is-ness” and away from “such-ness,” as has been discussed throughout O.G. Rose with David Hume? If that’s all so, even if the tension between Reason and Revelation can be resolved (as we have attempted in O.G. Rose), why risk it? The risk seems to have little hope of any worthy return.

It is true that reasoning and philosophy more generally run the risk of destroying us—“the greatest problem of philosophy is philosophy,” after all (to allude to a piece in Belonging Again). However, as brought out by the great Dr. Livingston, we also learn in Hume that we require philosophy for self-defense and to avoid manipulation, for if we can’t think for ourselves, it’s only a matter of time before we end up in some “banality of evil” (Arendt) or unable to protect our loved ones from bad ideas and a dehumanizing zeitgeist (A/A), perhaps losing Beauty (discussed by Thomas Jockin). Reason is risky, and it alone cannot change us, but it is also necessary. Also, personally, I have found that every time I thought I had “reached the end of philosophy,” I came to realize that I had hardly started, and furthermore I came to (yet again) learn that which was incredibly consequential for me practically and personally. It is true that ideas do not change us like experiences, but ideas can lead to experiences we otherwise would not have, and furthermore can impact how we qualitatively undergo them, interpret them, prove open to them, and remember them. “Ideas have consequences,” as Weaver famously put it, for though they do not change us like experiences, they dramatically impact what and how we experience what we do.

I’ll offer here another reason beyond just self-defense: I have found propositional knowledge utterly invaluable for sustaining what I learn from what I experience, to help me not forget (and please note the stress of Plato and Socrates on “memory” in philosophy). Michelle and I often discuss that thinking, writing, and speaking are about the transformation of something we know into something we understand, which is to say we submit an intuition, insight, and/or experience to “conceptual meditation,” which basically means we seek to generate “propositional knowledge” about it. Why is that important? Because otherwise we tend to forget the insight. We don’t sustain. We lose it, and then we forget we lost it. And then we are “enclosed” (“locked from the inside”). Likewise, if we have an experience “of faith,” without reason, we can’t translate that experience into something we better understand to better live it, and furthermore, by failing to put it well into practice, we will then habituate ourselves, one day at a day, out of it. (“Remember the Lord God who…”—the Torah says.)

There is a long tradition in theology on the idea that “God sustains being,” and what I am suggesting here is that Reason with “propositional knowledge” is on the side of remembering and sustaining what we experience and gain by “personal knowledge.” It is true that thinking alone doesn’t change our lives, but the experiences that do change us will prove unable to sustain that change without thinking. Furthermore, thinking can help “unfold the fullness” of our experiences, insights, institutions…it helps us “bring out” what was latent in them that we didn’t fully realize at the time. Thinking also helps us share our lives with others: “propositional knowledge” can shed light on how we can be with others best, and I believe that kind of knowledge is especially needed in Global Pluralism, where it is not “given” how best we should relate. Considering this, faith without reason is likely to be lost with time and something we fail to share.

“Propositional knowledge” is necessary for “keeping a hold on” what we know, for by making what we know something we understand, we prove more able to believe in it when it is hard and not forget about it. If something is true but we lack understanding of it, when we face hardship, challenge, people who doubt us, etc. it is likely we will forget what we know and start to question it, possibly putting us in great jeopardy. No, reason alone isn’t enough, but without it, when times are tough, we are likely to lose and forget what matters. Also, reason could impact “what comes before our eyes” (to use a term Jockin highlights in Aristotle), which is to say “what stands out to us” and “grabs our attention” could be influenced by what we have thought, wrestled with, articulated, and the like. In this way, reason could impact what knowledge is personal to us. It does change us, but it does so indirectly, seeming irrelevant, but that is a mistake to assume.

Other reasons “propositional knowledge” matters arise when we are faced with limits in time, money, knowledge, and the like: if I am “limited” in what experiences I can have and/or I must choose between experiences, then reasoning can help me decide which experiences are most likely to generate valuable “personal knowledge.” Perhaps if I was “like God” and unlimited, I wouldn’t need reason, because everything would be “personal knowledge” relative to me, but since we are finite, we must tarry with “the necessary tragedy of propositional knowledge,” per se. “I cannot know everything,” is basically to say, “I cannot have personal knowledge of everything,” in not being God, and the role of Reason arises precisely from our finitude. Also, Reason can help us not get trapped in “a language game” and from losing the ability to think outside that schema. Language structures our thinking not just represent it, and if we are “enclosed” in a language, Symbolic, and/or “way of understanding,” that can prove practically consequential in our lives—a role of philosophy and say “nihilation” (Heidegger) or “negation” (Hegel) is to keep that from happening. We are “always already” speaking, so it is not an option to avoid language altogether: the question is only if we might think about our words and how we use them to keep them from over-determining us (consider “Meaningful and Metaphoric Tendencies”)—a lifelong effort. If “in faith” we discard Reason, the quality of our choices and our capacity to avoid over-determination are both likely to lessen.

Lastly, and perhaps the most important reason “propositional knowledge” matters, is that we are “always already” closing ourselves off from experience, and we need reason to keep that from happening. What do I mean? Well, our brains are in the business of saving energy, and we naturally and gradually come to experience the world in the least energy-using way, which means we simplify, overlook nuance, reduce complexity to simple binaries, and the like. In a complex world of Global Pluralism, this sets us up for misunderstanding and reductionism, which can render Pluralism unworkable, make us see ourselves as inferior to Artificial Intelligence, and other consequences. Aligned with this point, as Jockin has emphasized (“The Net (181)”), we need philosophy and spaces of discussion because we are not (necessarily) free. Far from philosophy getting us stuck in ideas, the problem is that we’re “always already” stuck in our “(good) ideas,” and we need philosophy to free ourselves from them. Philosophy uses ideas to free us from ideas, which makes it seem like “all it ever does is get lost in ideas,” when really it makes visible the ideas we’re “always already” lost in. As those truly in despair don’t know they’re in despair for Kierkegaard, so those trapped in ideas doesn’t think about ideas—they’re “enclosed” (in “obviousness”), destined for (Kafkalike) “gutters,” as Javier and I discussed (#239 with II.1). Also, the one who seems to be in despair isn’t, as the one who seems lost in ideas isn’t unable to escape them—we must seem trapped to escape. Yes, the “bad philosopher” Hume warns about is “lost in ideas” in a sense (though “lost” here means something more like “damnation”), but so is the one who doesn’t philosophize at all: as we must go through despair in Kierkegaard, so we must go through ideas for freedom. (But do we want freedom? Perhaps not…)

As we’ve discussed throughout O.G. Rose, we are naturally “toward” understanding reality as A/A, and if we don’t think about it, we will conclude A/A is the case, cutting us off from A/B. Our experience of reality alone does not “wear on its face” (alluding to Cardinal Newman again) if it is metaphysically “identity-based” (A/A) or “relational/situational” (A/B)—we have to make that Absolute Choice—and if we don’t think about it, we will likely simply “absorb” a position, say A/A (which is ultimately self-effacing and autocannibalistic). Yes, reason itself could contribute to and solidify that enclosure (A/A), but at least reason has a chance of keeping us “open” (A/B) and we’re “always already” self-enclosing, so what do we have to lose that we’re not already in the process of losing?

Reason is necessary if we are to realize and choose that “lacks are not nothing” (A/B), as Jockin and I have discussed, and in this sense, reason plays a role just as important as “personal knowledge.” Without it, we will naturally end up believing “lacks are nothing” (A/A), and no matter how much “personal knowledge” changes us, it will not change us in kind from A/A to A/B. Why? Because we cannot experience that “lacks are not nothing” — we instead experience “lacks (are (not) nothing)” and then decide what they mean. Phenomenology can entail a dream that it is possible to arrive at “a full presence,” but even if a phenomenon could be “fully immediate,” it would not in that disclose to us if it the metaphysics of Kant or Hegel was best (for example). As Hegel stresses, there is a point where conceptual meditation is necessary—to avoid thought is to think what comes most naturally, which is naturally self-effacing.

A thing cannot in its presence “in-form us” what mode we should see and interpret it through: we must decide “the glasses we will wear,” and that decision must involve thinking. “Lacks” cannot give us by their “presence” and experience of A/A or A/B; rather, a “lack” can only give us an experience of “a both-ness” (a “Buridan Donkey”) that we then decide is either A/A or A/B. How we might realize “the both-ness of lack” into either A/A or A/B must come to us as an abstraction, for experience itself will not “give us this choice,” and hence we need reason for the “toward-ness” of our “personal knowledge” — but all of this requires elaboration…

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Thoughts (Series)

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Factviews, Net-Works, Situation Creation, and Map-Mazes

1. The act of saying, “This is a fact,” implies a worldview and/or “mode of being,” and a person who “pulls out” a fact from its appropriate “network of facts” is a person who “points to” and justifies this worldview (for whatever reason). To say, “This is a fact,” can be to attempt to make it a fact “toward” the hearer, to make the hearer agree, “Yes, that is a fact.” To say, “This is a fact,” necessitates the presence of a worldview in which the fact is defined as a fact, and yet people can appeal to facts as if they transcend worldviews. There would be no facts if there were no worldviews: facts are precisely evidence of worldview, not evidence of their absence. This isn’t to say there are no true worldviews or truths, but that appeals to facts as an “authority” don’t necessarily add to a discussion; in fact, they can muddle conversation.

2. How “worldview” is being used in this paper could be associated with how some discuss “myth.” According to Jung, a myth is the narrative in which a person lives, operates, and understands the world. It is the standard by which what constitutes “rational,” “spiritual,” “loving,” and so on, is defined. In this sense, everyone lives within a “myth,” rather religious or nonreligious (as everyone has a notion of what constitutes “being true”). Relative to their appropriate myths, “being for gay marriage” and “being against gay marriage” are both rational, so the question becomes rather why does a person pick the “myth” a person does? The answer seems tied to one’s family, society, background, etc. — why the person is their “you,” per se. In this way, all humans are “myth creators,” for humans reason relative to their standard of truth. Reasoning is always “toward” some “myth,” for reasoning is always “toward” an idea of what constitutes “truth” (“being rational” and “being mythical” seem to be two sides of same coin, per se).

Generally, we create “myths” to handle large, complex ideas, and in order to determine for ourselves what constitutes “being rational” and “being true.” Today, words like “government” and “corporation” can function like “myths” through which we can understand our socioeconomic condition. Even “The McDonald’s Coffee Lady” can be like a “myth” we can reference to allude to the idea that lawsuits are out of control (whether or not the story is true, or whether lawyers really are out of control, are secondary concerns), as attending Harvard is to participate in a “myth” that ascents to the idea that “Harvard equals accreditation” — the examples abound. And as we constantly create “myth(s),” for the sake of helping us grasp reality, we also create symbols: we turn Republicans into symbols of corruption, as we turn Democrats into symbols of government take-over. These symbols help us organize reality and “point to” the “myth” in which we operate, live, and die.

3. Perhaps by determining through facts what most probabilistically constitutes “being true” (“leapt to” by our “you”) we can find a way to escape, but only insomuch as facts lead to questions of what truly constitutes “being true” versus only “being rational.” If facts are only used to determine the factual, we shall not readily confront worldviews; rather, we shall only dive deeper into them.

4. A Conflict of Visons by Thomas Sowell is helpful for understanding the power of ideology and its role in the modern world, and rather we ultimately agree with Sowell isn’t nearly as important as recognizing the importance of his investigation, which I believe poises a great challenge to achieving any Habermasian goal of Pluralistic harmony.

5. Facts emerge with frameworks — it is in frameworks that phenomena are turned into evidence “toward” an observer — and from these “facts” there can be “a transfer of objectivity” to frameworks. Hence, it is a closed system, one that is subjective yet “appears” concrete.

6. If we lack training with philosophy and only deal with facts and science, we might be especially prone to fall victim to “the paradox of judgment,” “the transfer of objectivity,” and seeing facts that aren’t there. We must learn to jump between scopes and see facts within scopes; otherwise, error is probable.

7. Everyone naturally experiences their worldview as justified or grounded and yet worldviews float.

8. Action creates “object-ivity”: if I drive a car, I create “an object-ive fact” that “I am driving a car.” Action begets situation. Again, this is obvious and seemingly mundane, but let’s say that we constantly say “sorry” (a habit). Let’s say one of our friends hears us do this all the time — haven’t we created “objective reason” for our friends to think we’re overly-submissive, that something happened to us that makes us feel guilty, or something similar? Though saying “sorry” is nothing but a habit, it can function as evidence that “something is wrong” to the one who so chooses to think something is wrong (which we have possibly given others “objective reason” to believe by saying “sorry” so much). If the person asks us about this and we say “nothing is wrong,” the person may think we are just saying this because it’s too painful for us to discuss. And so our friend might ask again, and this might irritate us, an emotion which may function to the friend as evidence that we really are hiding something. And so a cycle may begin that destroys the friendship, all because of a situation arising from a habit.

Every moment of everyday, we are “situation creators.” We’re so used to this that we easily don’t think about it (the point seems irrelevant). But if we aren’t aware that we are situation creators, we won’t be aware of the “objective realities” our actions can construct (relative to others), realities which may function as cases that ruin relationships and ourselves. If we are aware of this, we might be much better at avoiding the creation of situations that are to no one’s benefit and to focus on the creation of situations that benefit all.

9. We don’t seem to pick our own facts so much as we perhaps pick our worldview and this orientates which phenomena become facts “toward” us. This is why we can say, “You aren’t entitled to your own facts,” and be sincere. Indirectly, we can pick our facts by picking which lens through which we see the world, and so decide when “the failure of others to believe” is evidence that they choose their own facts.

10. Without empathy or “critical thinking” (as expounded on in “On Critical Thinking” by O.G. Rose), moving between “worldviews” might be impossible, and ignorance might always be ignorant of its ignorance (suggesting why ignorance is so hard to escape: there never seems to be a need to flee it).

11. Would Wolfgang Smith have something to say on “factviews”?

12. If at all, we might let just enough of other ideologies in so we can give ourselves a sense of objectivity, but not more than we can handle — a way to preserve ideology while convincing ourselves we aren’t protective of ideology.

13. Facts and truths are always located within worldviews and frameworks. To create a situation is like creating a worldview: it is to create a structure within which facts and truths are defined as “facts” and “truths” (we are always dealing with networks). Without worldviews and frameworks, there would be no facts and truths (they always require a “big picture,” per se). Without situations, there would be no evidence or facts: there would be — hard to say.

To use a different language than “fact(s)/worldview(s),” material realities are objective facts: they are object-ive, per se. What we experience “in reality” is likewise object-ive and should be considered as such. What is object-ive though changes: when I move a cup from one table to another, what constitutes “object-ive reality” changes. Humans change materiality, and in doing so, can change object-ivity. As we are “situation creators,” we are “object-ivity creators” (“Conditionalists”).

To make a distinction unique to right here in this note and nowhere else, perhaps we might say that true, non-material realities are “objective,” while true, material realities are “object-ive.” Since metaphysical truths consist of objects, object-ive truths are constantly crossing over with, merging with, and separating with, objective truths. They require one another (as “object(-)ivity”) and cannot be defined without the other. To create an object-ive reality is to provide material for the creation of an objective reality, and if we aren’t aware of how the object-ive realities we create inform the objective realities that people create within themselves, we might be prone to create metaphysical dimensions with negative consequences.

Facts (situated within worldviews) (can) deceive (perhaps more than lies): object-ivity might be more of a threat to objectivity than subjectivity. But because object-ivity and objectivity are so similar and hard to tell about (as symbolized by the homophonous nature of the terms), between the two, “the transfer of objectivity” is very likely, making things worse.

14. We might tend to locate ourselves within a diverse group of people like ourselves. True diversity is a state of mixed ideologies: there can be more of a difference between whites with different ways of seeing the world than between different ethnicities who do the same kind of work.

15. If you are interested in the ideas of this paper, read Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz, which discusses many of the ideas expressed here.

16. The relation between facts and worldviews is “tight”: they are always close to and with one another. Therefore, they are very easy to “lose sight of” amongst one another: because of one another, they are prone to invisibility. This being the case, there is a phenomenon that occurs between them that we might call “the transfer of objectivity.” As Thomas Sowell warns that we can believe a Ph.D. in one field is also competent in another (and so we “transfer competence,” though that doesn’t necessarily follow), so we can “transfer the objectivity” of the facts that inform our interpretations to our interpretations. In other words, we can come to think of our interpretations “as objective” as the facts within them (though ironically the facts can only be “facts” within a subject-based framework). If we believe our friend is insecure, then when we hear her say “sorry” constantly, “the objectivity of the fact” that “she says sorry” can give our belief a “sense of factualness and objectivity” that shouldn’t be so readily granted. This isn’t to say our interpretation isn’t true, but that determining if it is true or not will be much harder if we are unaware of “the transfer of objectivity” we can all easily carry out between facts and interpretations.

17. As we are “situation creators,” we are also “evidence absorbers,” taking in everything that justifies our “being true” and ideology while “happening to miss” everything that challenges it. Something similar can happen with hermeneutics: we naturally tend to take in everything that supports an interpretation and “happen to miss” everything that challenges it. There’s a way in which the way a “being rational” is established from a “being true” is hermeneutical.

18. If I am not an insecure individual but say “sorry” constantly, I can create situations, relative to other people, in which it is “objectively true” that I am insecure, for I create objective, material reality that proves such (relative to others). This isn’t to say the interpretations are true, but that the situations I created give it a “sense of factualness” that provides others with reason to believe they are objectively correct. By saying “sorry” constantly, I can create “facts” individuals can “transfer objectivity” from to their interpretations, and create situations in which others believe “being true” entails trying to comfort me, and “being false” entails leaving me alone and thinking I’m alright. The situation I have created defines what constitutes “being true” and “being false,” all while simultaneously motivating an erroneous “transfer of objectivity.”

The fact there is truth in a situation doesn’t mean the (understanding of the) situation itself is true, but unfortunately, primed to “transfer truthfulness” or “transfer validity,” we can be prone to forget this reality. All situations entail within them a “true and false”-dichotomy, we might say: the moment I place a cup on a table, I create a dichotomy of it “being false that a cup isn’t on the table” and “being true that a cup is on the table.” Action creates a “true versus false”-situation, per se.

Likewise, if I constantly say “sorry,” it becomes true that I say “sorry” a lot, and false that I don’t: if I would have stayed quiet, this “true versus false”-situation wouldn’t exist. But now that I’ve spoken, I have created facts that orientate the true and the false, facts which others must now deal with and potentially interpret. My words may make others think that they are now involved in a situation in which “my friend is insecure,” but this “situation” is false: I just have a bad habit. But now, having interpreted themselves into this situation, my friends must decide between a truth and a falsity (“I am in need of help” and “I am not in need of help”). Had I not spoken however, I would have not created this false situation.

The Map Is Indestructible

1. Like Geometry in Algebra, Non-Locality perhaps cannot be included in Locality, and yet Non-Locality could be from what Locality arises. (Is this why sanity isn’t possible without A/B?)

2. As discussed in II.2, if language is a “halo,” then does this mean the same of mathematics? Does math “gather” like do words, and also do “halos” operate in a manner that suggests “nonlocality is fundamental” and also that “lacks are not nothing”?

3. Without metaphysics, if we are stuck in Roman Numerals trying to do modern cosmology, we will find “no exit.” Madness? Genius.

4. All of thought is a “Gödel Numbering,” per se: the very act of thinking is the act of creating a “Gödel map” over the territory.

5. Whenever I encounter a phenomenon/fact, I experience a “Liar’s Paradox”: I experience a “True or False: this A is B.” If I say “true,” I claim that “A isn’t A” and that a logical contradiction is true. Hence, if I am right, I necessarily claim that B must ontologically “be” in a way different from how A “is.” If A and B were both words, it couldn’t be true that “A is B,” but if A is a thing while B is a word, it is possible that “A is B” across dimensions and/or ontologies (that or perhaps indivisible).

If to the inquiry “True or False: this A is B” I answer “false,” I claim that what constitutes A doesn’t in fact constitute A, and that hence A “is not what A is.” For according to the fact presented, “this A is B,” and if I think otherwise, I think that which that fact asserts isn’t so; hence, I say that which “is,” “is not,” and what “is not,” “is.”

When I encounter the-phenomenon-of-a-cat, I experience a “True or false: this cat is a ‘cat.’ ” If I say “true,” I claim “a thing is a word,” which is false, but if I say “false,” I say something isn’t true that is true according to the reality in which cats are “cats.” The only way I could avoid this paradox is that when I say either “true” or “false,” I consider “cat” ontologically distinct from cat. If when I say “true” I consider “cat” a word and cat a thing, I consider the things different in such a way that they can “be” one another without contradicting (the same goes if I say “false”). All this brings up the distinction between “thinking” and “perceiving,” as established in “On Thinking and Perceiving” by O.G. Rose. “Cat” is a thought, while cat is a perception. When I say “True or false: this cat is a ‘cat,’ ” considering that “cat” is a thought and cat is a thing that is perceived, I say something the answer to which is “true”: the different “ways of being” save one another from paradox.

6. We often ‘fail to appreciate [that] a single structurally important new term might lead to a re-postulation of the whole structure of the language in the given field,’ which alone is evidence that reductionism is problematic, denying “complexity”).¹

¹Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity. Fifth Edition (Second Printing). Brooklyn, NY: Institute of General Semantics, 2000: 107.

7. Gödel believed that ‘Leibniz was an even greater thinker than posterity [had] realized,’ suggesting that unpublished manuscripts of his had been destroyed, perhaps by those ‘who [did] not want men to become more intelligent’…¹ Gödel also admired Kafka.²

¹Goldstein, Rebecca. Incompleteness. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005: 247.

²See Incompleteness by Rebecca Goldstein. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005: 247.

8. To think is to assign a “Gödel Number,” per se: to think is to “Gödel Map.” If I think about “the-phenomenon-of-A,” I assign A an “A” “as if” “A” axiomatically signifies A, when “A” is “groundless.” By thinking, I make ‘the meaningless symbol ‘0’ merit the interpretation of ‘zero,’ and the meaningless symbol ‘+’ merit the interpretation of ‘plus,’ ’ and I believe these symbols ‘genuinely represent[]’ their assigned ‘abstract concepts’ because of how well they consistency signify what they have been assigned to signify (though another signifier would function just as well, if the entire system “consistently” adapted).¹ Paradoxically, the methods by which we know the world are not grounded, and yet those methods can actually accurately orientate us in the world, while at the same time confusing us about what actually does constitute the world “actually.”

¹Gödel’s Proof by Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman. New York University Press, 2001: 71.

9. Under identification, we might live under what Lacan called “The Neurotic” (A/A). Might we think of Korzybski as helping bridge Hegel and Lacan with Žižek? (Nobody lives as if their ideology is an ideology, per se — no one “practically lives” as if their subjectivity is subjective…How could we?)

10. Actual or not, because ideology is “groundless,” it can forever avoid falsification, even when it should be falsified, not so much because we consciously avoid that which can falsify ideology, but more so because we unconsciously live “as if” ideology “is true” versus “a truth” (as we think “as if” perception, thought, and mathematics are “grounded”), and as a result, never think to challenge it or consider a given phenomenon as evidence against it (in the same way no one thinks they don’t “critically think,” for that would take “critical thinking” to recognize). Yes, if directly asked, “Is your worldview objective?” people know the answer is “it’s subjective,” but in practice, when they’re not thinking about it, people (necessarily) live as if their subjectivity is objective.

11. Let’s say I believe that a homo sapien is that with “human DNA,” and hence I believe the category of “human” is “grounded” in a physical reality (DNA) and that it isn’t from the human mind. Consequently, I argue the idea that “killing humans is murder” isn’t “groundless,” for it’s “grounded” in the reality of DNA. But who am I to say that “human” is constituted by DNA? DNA doesn’t “wear on its face,” per se, that it constitutes human-ness and hence that its presence necessitates the placing of its holder in the category of “human”; rather, I decide if all this follows from the presence of DNA. Nowhere upon or in the physicality of DNA is there that which makes the “placing of x into category ‘human’ ” empirical: I think this “over” the perception of DNA, “coloring” it as if it has always been so “colored” (in its physicality). Humans decide if human DNA equates “the granting of innate dignity” — such causality follows completely from the human mind, but in such a way that can make us forget that the causality isn’t in reality (in line with the admonishments of Korzybski). But humans don’t necessarily have to decide this: DNA gives humans “the space” by which they decide either way. By not offering up a “map,” “the territory” gives humans the “space” in which to make a “map” of their own…

The connection between “human-ness” and “human DNA” itself isn’t axiomatic: humans decide if the connection is present “as if” it is axiomatic, and humans decide hence if they act as if the connection is always present and “above” human subjectivity, when the existence of the connection is ironically only possible because of human subjectivity, for without human subjectivity, it wouldn’t be possible to add the “A” (of the connection) to “the phenomenon of A” (the DNA). This doesn’t mean the connection shouldn’t exist or that it doesn’t “share in” objectivity in some way or form: that cannot be known, though falsification can help us live with this reality. If we meet a deaf and blind girl who is named Sarah and make an informed guess that her name is Sarah, though we are right, we can never know we are right (assuming we cannot contact her in any shape or form). Hence, our guess lacks the possibility of being “grounded” in actuality, even though it is accurate (to say something is “groundless” isn’t to say it is “wrong”).

12. Identification, certainty, A/A…all perhaps “a mind-virus,” suggesting philosophy is about Humean self-defense.

13. Can we develop a sixth sense in which we can intuit “forms,” like “gutters” in bowling where the game is to move things into their “gutters” in which they might rightly “unfold”? Conspiracies and maps can threaten this training, unfortunately. But is this “gutter” an “underlying structure”? No — it is a narrowing caused by the past of future probabilities, as discussed in “The Net (148).”

14. ‘We should notice,’ Korzybski wrote, ‘first, that the language of Principia Mathematics is A, and involves the ‘is’ of identity.’¹

¹Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity. Fifth Edition (Second Printing). Brooklyn, NY: Institute of General Semantics, 2000: 432.

15. For Bergson, entities do not “pass over” from young to old; they “are” this “unfolding.” Time is fundamental. Creative.

16. “Always already” is perhaps a phrase we often use because there is only ever a whole.

17. Every “field of conditions” that emerges to a unique representation (like a rainbow) can be considered a monad. Animals represent the world to themselves, as do plants (though perhaps not with sight), and that representation is relative to their “binding” (Korzybski), and furthermore can only be known personally through love (Michael Polanyi), for we cannot know “the quality” of that with which we don’t seek communion.

18. “Contradiction” almost seems like it must be situational and relational, or else there would be a point that sustained itself as itself (there would be A-relating-to-A not A-relating-to-B hence situation).

19. Also, to copy an addition in both books, we can associate “maps” with MetaAesthetics discussed in II.2, for if we “see” a certain aesthetic and connect that with our ideology, that can help confirm our ideology. A MetaAesthetic can operate in a feedback loop with our map, our map with our MetaAesthetic, on and on.

20. However perfectly or imperfectly, the way by which we generate a “life language,” “(w)hole hope,” “sensualization,” “true ignorance”…is often relative to what preserves ideology.

21. To beat an apocalyptic ideology, a military option will only be as effective as is simultaneously launched an intellectual war against the ideology to discover a contradicting inconsistency within it (though that isn’t to say the military option is never necessary). This means someone must take “The Pynchon Risk,” with no guarantee of success — is this the appeal of the military?

22. Amongst “consistency,” what evidence is there that we aren’t a Philosopher King? The reality that the idea of a smell isn’t the experience of the smell? But why care, especially if that would give up our crown?

23. If “the map is indestructible,” it would make sense why religion seems permanent.

24. Forever, ideology can enable us to be interesting without truth.

25. People tend to believe the worldview that gives them words for their experience.

26. The limitlessness of books suggests “indestructible maps.”

27. Apologetics often work on “internally consistent systems.”

28. Maps suggest why it is very difficult to cure someone who is mentally unhealthy.

29. Perhaps history repeats because “the map is indestructible,” which is to say no ideology isn’t so much erased, only reinvented, rearranged, and revisited as if revolutionary.

30. Ideologies aren’t irrational: they sustain themselves through rationality. And yet most ideologies can be false; in fact, only one of them can be true — yes? No? But by what standard? An ideology?

31. If “the map is indestructible,” interpretation is limitless: it never breaks.

32. As described in The Message in the Bottle by Walker Percy, the “Delta Moment” (as we might call it) is when a person (liken Hellen Keller) realizes that there is a connection between “the thought” and “the perceived” — “the signifier” and “the signified” — and hence enters into deeper humanness, and yet this is also the very moment when the person is now at risk of the errors warned about by Korzybski, and also able to take “The Pynchon Risk.” Must the dangers of being human be so steep?

33. A reason ideologies seem invincible is because they allow for (endless) neoreading (to allude to “What is a Judge to Do?”).

34. To break “certainty deterrence” might always be a Pynchon Risk.

34. Maps might particularly benefit from an inability to define the noteworthy from the valuable.

35. Considering maps, those who have the most children will probably be those who shape the future. (Are those having children the best people…?)

36. It seems useful for ideology preservation to believe we are part of a thinking minority. Furthermore, it is likewise useful to believe we are part of a minority who is willing to learn what could undermine their worldview — who isn’t isolated in a bubble (especially if we’re humble about it).

37. Life entails searching for words. Those who are more philosophically inclined can search for the words, sentences, and paragraphs that articulate what they have experienced into that which they understand; those who are more emotionally inclined can search for words, sentences, and paragraphs to articulate what they have felt into that which they can explain to others and themselves; and so on. We all search for words because we all require to some degree a hold on our lives: it is hard to feel at the mercy of what we experience. Yes, we must learn to live with uncertainty — for we cannot be certain about everything — but we cannot live totally uncertain. Words help us strike a balance that we must diligently work at striking each day, all while words help us understand what exactly constitutes that balance. This in mind, perhaps thinking, speaking, and writing often aren’t so much about truth as they are about getting a hold on ourselves and our worlds; perhaps the need to think, speak, and write — whether emotional literature or dense philosophy — is a sign of a psychological weakness, an inability to handle uncertainty, of a “need” to grasp the world rather than let the world grasp us? Perhaps what we think is about truth is really about us, and if “the map is indestructible,” perhaps we will never be able to tell? Perhaps, but we also seem doomed if we do not think.

38. If “the map is indestructible,” we would expect there to be a correlation between where a person lives and what a person thinks. This is because children naturally absorb the ideology of their parents, and since this “starting point” seems invincible, it is unlikely that the majority of people will ever change their ideology (at least drastically). Hence, for most, whether the ideology is true or not, birth will be ideological destiny. This in mind, whatever ideology a given university, town, etc. ascribes to (for whatever reason) will likely be the ideology which its intellectuals ascribe to genuinely, for the ideology will work — it will be internally consistent. If a college is Conservative, its professors will often genuinely be Conservative; if a town is Liberal, its educated populous will often genuinely be Progressive…And if it happens to be the case that a given institution runs the world, whatever happens to be its ideology will be the ideology the institution’s intellectuals will genuinely preach. Again, this all points to why it is the case that where a person lives and/or is from tends to be a reliable indicator of what he or she believes, why the ideology a person starts with tends to be the ideology a person dies with — an ideology is ever-adaptable, and what we believe is profoundly shaped by the emotions and ideas of those around us. Can we think at all, then? If we can this — maybe.

39. If reality really is “situation all the way down,” and if we cannot escape “the problem of internally consistent systems” (maps), then a social infrastructure of “The Liminal Web” seems of importance.

40. It is possible that religion can help people think like Korzybski wanted people to think. This is because in believing in God, a person believes in that which knowledge cannot fully conceptualize, and yet can conceptualize truth insomuch as it does so aware that its concepts of God are (infinitely) incomplete. Theology can consist of an “apophatic” and “cataphatic” dialectic: a dialectic of using “negative” and “positive” terms by which to refer to God. If I say, “God is just,” I am saying something true about God, and yet I am also saying something false, for God isn’t “just” in the way I mean when I use that word. This dialectical thinking could align with Korzybski, who wants us in the act of asserting an identity, to recognize that identity isn’t the thing identified (we (mis)understand to think) — that the signifier isn’t the signified. Then again, religion might make us “insane” in other ways…

41. What Quine calls “the web of belief” seems like “ideology.”

42. The truth is structured like an ideology, which means “like a fiction,” but a given ideology isn’t necessarily true.

43. Theology is a description of ideology, the rational arising out of the true, and right or wrong — everyone is ideological.

44. Ideology seems essentially “toward” extremism.

Everyone has an ideology.

45. How do we determine which books are “good books” without feeding our confirmation bias, for with what else can we judge a book but by what we think makes a book true, beautiful, and good (and how could we live without such a standard)?

46. Conflating “true” and “rational” is bad for mental health.

47. A reason it seems that ideologies entail functions that keep people inside them even when people feel like they have escaped is because rationality always requires a truth to be itself: the nature of thinking itself results in there being traps inside of traps inside of traps…It would seem the best we can do is live within (a) trap(s) without triggering anything (an impossibility, perhaps), meaning we are also susceptible/justified to claim others “are stuck in their ideology’ (perhaps without looking at ourselves)” fanning perhaps revolutionary/circular sentiments.

48. Ideology is what makes critical thinking possible and that which makes us bad at critical thinking.

49. The division between “the true” and “the rational” can also help us understand why something that is logical is not necessarily true and vice-versa. Furthermore, those who don’t think like us may indeed be less logical, but it would not follow from this that they are therefore wrong.

50. Without providing them with the tools to do so, our age is an age that forces all to think or run.

51. If the premise is only “possibly true” versus “probably true,” it is reasonable to not think about it, considering the possibility of a “Pynchon Risk.” Also, only logical contradictions cannot “possibly” be true, so the bar is too low if anything that might be true is worth investigating — we will investigate everything and likely make no progress (it is already hard enough to make progress in general).

52. If ideology x is equally or at least “almost” as rational as ideology y — if both are (nearly) equally “internally consistent systems” — but argument x is more emotional and artistic, than people will likely be “moved into” x versus y. Perhaps then art is the only way to stop an Apocalyptic ideology?

53. It is perhaps not so much the rational arguments of ideology that change and bind us, but the feelings which accompany an ideology and its argument. Yes, an argument that “x is true” helps us believe x, but it is the feeling that “I am right to think x is true” that is more consequential. This distinction may seem unnecessary, but it means that the first premise could be wrong (“x is true”) without necessarily changing the second (“I am right to think x is true”). Additionally, moving from the first premise to the second, I can begin focusing once finding evidence that “I am right to think x is true” versus evidence that “x is true,” which is significant. Evidence that “x is true” could be “x is not disproven by y,” “x turns out to be the case in 100 out of 110 experiments,” etc., while evidence that “I am right to think x is true” could be “everyone I know thinks x is true,” “I feel better believing x is true,” etc. If I feel better believing in x, this doesn’t necessarily increase the likelihood that x is true, but if I am focused on “I am right to think x is true,” I will easily miss this point.

It is not possible to believe “x is true” and not also believe “I am right to think x is true,” which means that we all seem arranged by the very nature of thought and ascent itself to be vulnerable to the mistake described above. Furthermore, since believing “x is true” feels like believing “I am right to think x is true,” we are vulnerable to ceasing to think “x is true” and focusing instead on “I am right to think x is true” without feeling any difference. Considering this, people who primarily believe “x is true” versus those who primarily focus on “I am right to think x is true” will emotionally be difficult to distinguish. Everyone will feel like everyone else, and if there is little emotional difference, why go to all the trouble of focusing on “x is true” versus “I feel like x is true” at all? It is difficult to tell if we believe both “x is true” and “I feel like x is true” versus just “I feel like x is true,” and if in the end there is no emotional payout for the extra work, why bother? Perhaps rationally, it is doubtful the majority will so toil for no reason…

54. Do ideologies necessarily have ideal reference points? Libertarianism can rest its case on a state where free markets are utterly free; State Communism can rest its case upon a state where Marxism is fully followed; Christianity can point to the coming of New Jerusalem; Atheism imagines a world without what it considers superstition…All of these ideals play a role in ultimately justifying their respected ideologies and suggest “essential incompleteness” (the choice between Idealism and Realism seems false).

55. If rationality progressively increases through time, it does not follow that correctness will increase proportionally.

56. We can think of an ideology that can “protect itself” as an ideology that is true precisely because it is able to “protect itself,” but that is a characteristic of any ideology, because “groundlessness” is a necessary part of being (as “inconsistency” is essentially part of “consistency,” rendering it “(in)consistent”). The ability to “protect itself” is an essential quality of ideology: if there is ideology, there will be that which is defended and ultimately indestructible.

57. An ideology is essentially inconsistent in its consistency (“(in)consistent”), and so that which is “inconsistent” as opposed to “consistent” is that which isn’t an ideology but notion. It’s an idea, precisely because it is found “as false” against the necessary standard of an ideology, and precisely because if it was an ideology, it would entail a consistency that wouldn’t allow it to be found as false. And this brings us to the great quandary: a reason I would leave ideology A is because I found it is inconsistent, but I can avoid that by simply avoiding what would make “me” reflect on my ideology. I have all the power: I decide if my ideology is put at risk, which I have every incentive not to do (subconsciously and consciously). For one, it’s existentially frightening, would force me to change my lifestyle, and more. I am the one who changes my ideology (seeing as it is picked through my “you”), and so I decide if I existentially suffer, choosing of which would always necessarily be irrational, seeing as “rational” is relative to “truth” and “ideology,” and seeing as the ideology I am currently situated within, if a true ideology, is consistent. It works, so why would I leave it, when the best I could gain is another, working ideology, which I already have?

58. Maps can never be the territory, but they also never get destroyed.

59. Perhaps it would only make sense to take “The Pynchon Risk” if the ideology threatened the world, seeing as “the apocalypse” changes “the rules,” as discussed in “Death Is the Event Horizon of Reason” by O.G. Rose, and yet at the same time, according to that paper, I’m not to engage in “apocalyptic-thinking” unless I earn the position that “the ideology is apocalyptic.” But how do I do that? By “stepping into” the ideology. By taking “The Pynchon Risk.” Hence, determining if “The Pynchon Risk” is worth taking requires taking “The Pynchon Risk.” (Comical.)

Well, then let’s just do away with all ideology; that way, we know we are saved from “apocalyptic ideology” — better safe than sorry, yes? Ah, but we cannot erase all ideology, for deciding to erase all ideologies would be within and according to an ideology (a worldview that believed all ideology was a threat, which couldn’t be said for sure). And how would we supposedly erase ideology? Surely we’d have to use State force and violence, which could easily fuel ideology creation in revenge and response (though perhaps we could blind ourselves to our violence with “certainty”). And we also need ideology: if we didn’t have a system based on the premise “humans deserve dignity,” for example, we’d have no basis or reason for stopping murder. Without ideology, there’d be chaos.

Well let’s work gradually toward a world in which ideology cannot be formulated. Well, the only world that is possible in is a world in which there is no thinking, for thinking is the soil out of which ideology sprouts. Critical thinking can at least “check and balance” thinking, as argued in “On Critical Thinking” by O.G. Rose, but it cannot erase thinking entirely, and all critical thinking necessarily occurs “within” an ideology (a standard of “truth” and system of rationality). All critical thinking can do at the end of the day is critique an ideology and unveil contradictory inconsistencies as present in a system: it cannot overturn essential inconsistencies, nor erase ideology entirely. Furthermore, to train people to critically think, we’d have to train them to “think better,” which means people could use these lessons to fortify ideology just as easily as they could use these lessons to erase ideology: the Christian who attends Harvard can learn to defend Christianity with the same intelligence with which he attacks Islam (and keep in mind everyone must ascribe to some ideology, true or false).

Then let’s just not teach people to critically think, yes? And set them up to be slaves? To save the world. But if we don’t teach people to critically think, then they cannot be creative, and if people aren’t creative, the socioeconomic order will self-destruct, as argued in “The Creative Concord”. If we don’t teach people to be creative, the economy will stagnate, but if they are creative, they will be creative geniuses at “preserving ideology,” and if an ideology is apocalyptic, this may bring about the end of the world. To avoid the possibility of the void, we’d have to collapse the economy, bringing about a destruction which ideology was erased for the sake of avoiding.

Well, if ideology is indestructible, what was the point of all those papers on how to think and speak well and hopes of surviving Pluralism? Personally, I think reading has a higher likelihood of changing a person’s ideology than does speaking to them directly, and a hope was that the papers had a higher likelihood of causing an “internal change” (of a person changing his or her self) than changing when externally confronted (since all change is ultimately a change through a “you”). But didn’t we argue that all ideology is indestructible? Doesn’t that mean the Habermasian project of say “communicative rationality” is doomed? Perhaps, but either way, I have a tendency to fight for lost causes. Or to be in denial? A hope of mine was to help people on the micro-level, even if the macro-level was hopeless. But it is hopeless, isn’t it?

Well, perhaps there is no such thing as an apocalyptic ideology? Perhaps, at least at this present point, but in infinity, all possibilities are realized, so unless an “apocalyptic ideology” is entirely impossible, one will emerge eventually. And there are some good candidates today for being apocalyptic, such as the ideologies which formulate around the premises “there is no such thing as Global Warming” and Antinatalism. Perhaps these premises don’t lead to apocalyptic ideologies? Well, how can we tell if an ideology is apocalyptic or not? We would need “The Truth” — yes, Oedipa?

60. A strong ideology provides plausible reasons to believe we aren’t “rationalizing” but “reasoning.”

61. There cannot readily be “Big Others” or “Master Signifiers” in “situations,” for all the relata need all the other relata and their relations to “be” (all the relata are in everything together) — hence another benefit of moving toward “situation” from “thinghood.”

62. I spoke with Clayton (#184) on the necessity of “fuzzy logic” (A/B) to find “gutters” and “forms,” without which self-effacement seems hard to avoid.

63. If there is always a problem, there is always training and meaning.

64. If relations are most real, “The Real” is most real.

65. Some old books are from the future.

66. There’s a terror in realizing that we can’t necessarily tell by how well a map works on if the map corresponds or not. And who decides what “working” means?

67. The monads of Leibniz are “windowless” in the sense that we cannot see outside our subjective experience: every monad is forced to see according to its “shared representation” and subjectivity. I cannot enter the experience of a bat (alluding to Nagel).

68. Considering Korybiski, everything with “identification” at its basis is doomed, whether Ethics, Ontology, Phenomenology — it doesn’t matter. It must be situation all the way down.

69. A map “is,” so we “ought” to realize the Gödel Point. But if don’t know this and interpret consistency as meaning we “ought” to be “consistent with that consistency,” we will likely spend our days making our map invincible (what it “is”). As people get older, it seems natural for the person who claims to be a Christian (for example), to then say, “I need to start being what I am,” and start taking up days and day of studying the Bible (for example). This isn’t necessary a bad thing, but it does mean the natural course of a life is to end working on consistency, which feels like advancement (and in a way is), but it isn’t the work that is sufficient for our Pluralistic Age.

70. Faith is Love/Mad.

The Problem of Internally Consistent Systems

1. If all or most notions/ideologies are internally consistent as maps, how do we rationally decide if we should be part of society x or y (and keep in mind if a person is even making such a choice, the “givens” of the society will arguably not function as “givens,” increasing existential anxiety and the appeal of totalitarianism)? There would seem to be no rational reason to step into x or y, and if rationality is always necessarily grounded in a system, then the perhaps true reasons for why a person should enter into x can only be known in x: they can’t readily help the person make the first choice. No rationality seems available outside systems, so what could possibly move a person “inside” one? Beauty? It must be something attractive. Testimonies? Stories? Or perhaps the decision is always irrational or nonrational, even when right?

2. It should be noticed that if community x demands something of its members, while community y does not, even if community x is ultimately “better,” it will be arguably rational for people to choose y over x (if a person isn’t outsider all community at all where rationality lacks an orienting truth). A reason communities can feel empty is precisely because they don’t ask anything of their members, and yet when they do, they can feel rational to oppose.

3. Even if there was a solution to the problem of internally consistent systems, we would still have to deal with the problem of diverse personalities. For some people, even if x was a solution, if x didn’t feel like a solution, it would be meaningless to them (a situation which seems likely, considering how even awareness of the problem can damage the “stickiness” of truths). Likewise, if one person believes that the point of life is to increase beauty while another believes the point is to increase justice, for those people to accept x, x would have to be translated into terms that matches with their life’s purpose (something which might not be possible). In other words, even if a solution could be found, there is no guarantee that people would be able to understand it as a solution — or even want it.

4. Perhaps many logical fallacies and emotional responses to debates and points are psychological defense mechanisms from having to look down the void that is “the problem of internally consistent systems,” a void that once we see, we cannot “unsee.” If one goes too deep down the road of thinking, one eventually finds themselves having looped back around to the beginning — best to never be tempted by the road in the first place (or…?).

5. If the problem of internally consistent systems is indeed a problem that can only be managed, this may have theological implications. For example, in Christianity, there is an emphasis on “choosing Christ” for Salvation, and some believe that a failure to do so results in eternal damnation. Yet if God created a world where multiple ideologies would be internally consistent, is it just for God to punish people who are stuck to an ideology (rationally and justifiably)? Perhaps the problem of internally consistent systems suggests that Universalism is true, but that train of thought entails its own theological problems. Furthermore, the very existence of the problem of internally consistent systems could be taken as evidence to the Christian that the world is indeed “fallen.”

6. On the problem of justification, another reason why we’re stuck in ideology: there is no objective standard for how many pieces of evidence I should move out of a truth into another. And the bar can shift relative to my ideology, which will shift the responsibilities of my rationality, possibly making me “justified” not to shift.

7. Because of the problem of internally consistent systems, we cannot say something like “ideology is useful for people who can’t handle reality,” because we cannot readily say what constitutes reality any more than any other consistent ideology. And do note that our ideology must necessarily make us one of the people who can “handle reality”: it must define most people as unable to handle it.

8. Identifying the difference between rationalization and reasoning ultimately requires stepping outside all systems — an impossibility. At best, we can only achieve “reason to believe” x is rational while y is rationalization, but of course how we are so convinced will be shaped by our ideology.

9. Both Gregory Lewis, author of “In Defense of Epistemic Modesty,” and Lorenzo Barberis Canonico, may prove useful for managing the problem, and at the end of the day, as Gergory Lewis writes, ‘[i]f modesty cannot help us, it can at least provide the solace of a pre-emptive funeral, rather than (as immodest views would) cheer us on to our almost certain demise.’ Wanting to take things a step further than Lewis and a fallibist, Canonico stresses asking if a true premise is “successful” more so than “correct.” This doesn’t mean Canonico doesn’t think “correctness” matters at all, only that if “correctness” cannot be established, a person shouldn’t give up on the premise but rather ask if it is “successful.” Understanding the human genome would have been useless during the Middle Ages — no one could understand what you were talking about — and yet the ideas would have been correct. Canonico argues that ultimately, most of what we believe will be disproven or divulged to be incomplete, so knowing should be thought of as mostly instrumental and as a means to achieve ends which will depreciate over time. For Canonico, knowledge can be approached with a financial paradigm.

Correctness helps make an idea less vulnerable, and so it contributes to the likelihood that an idea is successful: it should be stressed that Canonico does not believe in a hard choice between “correctness” and “successfulness.” Ultimately, Canonico believes that if a person must choose between the predictive power of a premise and its consistency, the person should choose predictive power. The fact x is predictive is evidence that x is also consistent, but the consistency of x won’t necessarily provide us with any predictive powers.

Canonico’s thinking can also help address a problem that alludes to Ray Dalio’s teachings on “levels of reality” (which seems similar to Thomas Sowell’s thinking on “effects” in his book Applied Economics): why is it that geniuses can make incredible mistakes, while people who haven’t graduated from high school can avoid those same errors? For Canonico, it’s a matter not always of self-deception but perception: people take in reality through rising layers of perception, and thus some see patterns that other people don’t (a genius on level one will fail to see what an average student could see on level two). Each “level of reality” can tempt the perceiver to stay on it, precisely because the level proves “consistent” or “true,” and this is a reason why Canonico stresses “predictive power” or “the good”: it can help a person realize there are more levels, especially when the person makes a mistake. Suffering a failure, the person understanding “the good” will not get stuck reexamining endlessly the consistency of his or her true or “level of reality”; rather, the person will begin “looking up,” per se. Also, a genius who is aware of “levels of reality” will not only exercise genius but also self-criticism (as discussed in “On Critical Thinking” by O.G. Rose — note the word “critical” could mean “the most important thinking”).

All that said, it would be fair to warn though that arguably slavery produced “good” results for slave masters in America, and thus slave masters could have claimed they had “reason to believe” that it was indeed true that “blacks were meant to be slaves” (it worked for them). A worldview completely devoid of “the true” is susceptible to corruption and evil, but at the same time, on what other grounds do we determine that metaphysical entities like “human rights” are real other than through the consequences? Canonico might point out that the benefits to a given person of x premise must be weighed against the damages that very premise does to others, and that if x successfully predicts “x will increase your revenue” but it is also the case that “x causes great suffering,” then x would be rational to avoid. And yet, why should someone care if other people suffer? I could go on, but it does seem like we cannot avoid (meta)physics, some “effort to get at the truth” — a reason we will need to turn to Hegel, I think. Regardless, Lorenzo provides us with invaluable tools.

10. Art and beauty may contribute to the “stickiness” of a truth more than say syllogisms. While rationality can help us determine if x is coherent, beauty might be what makes us “stick” to x; while thinkers investigate and defend internal consistency (to determine if a person is justified to believe x), artists may create and maintain “stickiness.” Both are needed, especially in Pluralism, where the internal consistency of a premise alone is not enough to keep people trusting in that premise. Though what if x is bad and it would be better if people become “unstuck” to it? Well, then we see how the arts can be used for propaganda, even when artists are just doing their best.

If accepting the limits of rationality is itself a rational act, and if it is the case that art for example can intellectually move people in ways rationality cannot, then art is reasonable, in a way. If art can help people choose which truth they live by, seeing as rationality is organized by truth, then art could be said to play an essential and foundational role in the life of the mind. Perhaps similar points can be made about traveling, empathy, having fun — and so on. This is all to say that when it comes to the question of managing Pluralism, there might be a rational role for art, beauty, empathy, and so on to play. We must not limit our options to only what we traditionally consider intellectual ones, precisely because we should expand what options constitute “intellectual.”

11. Is epistemic morality a matter of system consistency or a system’s foundational validity? By what standard?

12. Faced with the problem of internally consistent systems, how do we decide which worldview system by which we should live? “By birth” seems to be how most of us pick, and since the system we are born into is (likely) internally consistent, from that point, we will likely never see a rational reason to leave it, only to stay. But along with birth, power also plays a role: we tend to think according to the beliefs and ideas that the powerful have incubated in us through institutions, governments, education, and so on. This doesn’t mean the beliefs are wrong, for it isn’t necessarily the case that everything we learn from the powerful is bad, but it does mean that power plays a role in helping us “hold to” and “feel stuck to” a truth. Considering this, if we are entirely without power, it can feel even more difficult to be “grounded,” but where Federalism doesn’t apply, only a very limited group of people can have that “grounding” and for a very limited time. For the long term, this seems unsustainable, especially the more the power of the central State increases (likely for “the best of reasons”).

13. “The Specter of McCarthyism” in mind (discussed in II.1), if people don’t agree on axioms or first principles, then democratic discussion becomes difficult and complex to have, yet if people are all forced to share first principles, their freedoms of speech and thought will be curtailed. Also, if multiple systems of thought are indeed internally consistent, there will be little way to move people to the same axioms so that discussion can flourish: progress seems impossible. What should be done then? Censorship to keep out more than one internally consistent view?

14. If most ideologies are ultimately internally consistent, then democracies are likely not changed through debate, but through socioeconomic shifts that cause more people to live in the city than in the country or vice-versa (for example), seeing how profoundly what a people think is tied to where a people live. If Capitalism naturally clusters people into cities, then it could be argued that Capitalism makes a country Liberal, which tends to be skeptical of Capitalism. But this might mean we just end up with backlashes from Conservatives, ever back-and-forth.

15. Conspiracy fills the vacuum of legitimacy. Conspiracy feels like thinking, progress, legitimacy…

16. When facing “the problem of internally consistent systems” — when encountering one person who argues for x convincingly, then another who argues just as convincingly that x is false — it may be natural to cling to what we already know. Perhaps this is why a growth of Pluralism is accompanied by a resurgence of Nationalism, Neo-Conservatism, etc.?

17. Where there is no memory, there is always discovery: internal consistency is always “in progress.”

18. Nothing seems to make sense outside every possible system. There is “no(n)sense” defined outside systems, and yet an internally consistent system is one in which what is false could be that which made sense, and in order to realize it was false, we would have to step outside the internally consistent system. However, if we did that, we could just as easily step into another system in which a falsity was consistent, and if we were in no system at all, no sense of sense would be possible, without which functionality is perhaps impossible.

19. If an internally consistent system can be erected on the axiom “x = y,” while another internally consistent system can be erected on “x = z,” then within either system, there will be little reason to transition to the other system, even though it cannot be the case that both systems are true (unless “y = z,” of which determining might be an example of synthesizing, though this would give rise to a new system grounded on (a) new axiom(s), meaning the problem of internally consistent systems would still be present). Perhaps “a leap of faith” could be the grounds for such a necessarily “non-rational transition,” but if rationality cannot apply here, for what reason would a person make such a leap? This seems to be a mystery that explaining would be to put in terms of reason.

20. We make our ideologies, and then our ideologies make us.

21. Between internally consistent systems, what can be exchanged but descriptions?

22. It would seem that “black swans” are probable, because there will be “space between” sets of truths and their rationalities.

23. Since there are many worldviews that rationality can internally deconstruct, it’s easy to think that all but one worldview in the end will be left standing (especially given the logical truth that there can only be one truth), but though rationality can deconstruct many notions, many are internally invincible systems. Rationality gives us the impression it can take us to the end, but it can only take us so far.

24. As is the case with the problems discussed in Belonging Again by O.G. Rose, the problem of internally consistent systems is one that likely won’t haunt us until we feel it, which Pluralism increases the likelihood that we will. Generally, Liberals have been correct that diversity contributes to people realizing and feeling certain problems that minorities have possibly been more aware of, and in this, diversity has intellectual and philosophical value. At the same, if people aren’t mentally ready for feeling deep, philosophical problems, anxiety could result that makes totalitarianism appealing. If it is the case that only a minority will ever be mentally ready for this challenge, then it is unlikely that democratic societies will handle Pluralism without backlash — benefiting the Capital-Nation-State.

25. Are people being radicalized? YouTube can be accused of causing right-wing radicalization, but what is “radicalization” anyway? “The Making of a YouTube Radical” was put out by The New York Times in 2019, and the piece basically argues that YouTube contributes to young men especially being indoctrinated into right-wing radicals (Mark Ledwich debated the premise). Personally, I think we need a conversation about what it means to be “radicalized.” If all our views are Liberal, are we radical? Or if 90% of our views are Liberal and 10% Conservative? Perhaps we need 62.4% Liberal views to be “balanced”? Or is it 50/50? By what standard? According to who? A fitting counter would be that “we are radical when we start rationalizing violence,” but would supporting the 2nd Amendment fall under that category? What about supporting uprisings to overturn white supremacy? Perhaps violence is necessary to stop white supremacy? If so, then what is required for racial equality could be forbidden from conversation. Perhaps some Trump supporters are correct that “a militia” is the only way to save America from corporate-takeover? Is this radical? Is even considering this radical?

I wonder if the category of “radical” is even helpful — it seems too relative. I would be surprised if anyone thinks they are radical in a bad way, and perhaps the people who stormed the Capitol consider themselves “radical” in a positive light? Weren’t the Founding Fathers radical? Wasn’t Jesus radical? And so on. Is “radicalization” just something “we know when we see it“? Perhaps, but that might give someone a lot of power.

Is YouTube uniquely able to cause radicalization? I’m sure every media source in history has caused radicalization, but conversely, the lack of media can contribute to radicalization too, I’m sure, for then people are less intellectually developed and able to be taken advantage of (say in line with the thinking of Hannah Arendt). Is radicalization today worse than radicalization in the past? If Steven Pinker is correct that violence is decreasing, then even if “radicalization” is increasing (however it is defined), then is it “practically” a problem? What is the line that if a person crosses, they become a radical? Is it based on what they believe, an unwillingness to compromise, and/or a willingness to use violence? Is anyone who isn’t a moderate a radical? Are moderates innately right?

Perhaps YouTube does cause radicalization in some people, but perhaps it also radically increases empathy and opens people up to personal stories they otherwise would have never experienced? Can we imagine sentiments changing so radically in favor of LGBT marriage before YouTube? What about the legalization of different drugs? The concern with racism? For every radical YouTube creates, I’m not sure it doesn’t create someone more Pluralistic.

Many Trump supporters believe The New York Times radicalizes readers; many Liberals believe Fox News is monstrous. Is the category of “radical” even useful beyond application to someone who directly encourages violence? Perhaps the category of “radical” needs to be reserved for “the encouragement of violence,” and that the thinkers who should be de-platformed are those who “encourage violence” regardless ideological leaning (assuming anyone should ever be de-platformed at all, which is debatable). Of course, this hardly solves the problem, for then we have to determine what constitutes “encouraging violence.” Should Eric Metaxas be de-platformed because he so passionately and strongly believed the election was a fraud? Should Cornell West be taken down for referring to Trump and his supporters as “Neo-Fascists,” for if Liberals believe Conservatives are Fascists, that might encourage desperate, violent, and “necessary” action to save America from the Fascists. What about Plastic Pills, who has suggested that “being polite” can be a way that Capitalism controls people? He implied that “not burning buildings” was “being polite” — sounds problematic, but what if Plastic Pills is spot on?

Perhaps we need to make distinctions between “encouraging violence indirectly” and “encouraging violence directly.” I’m not saying these are easy categories to use, but something like this seems necessary. I doubt anyone thinks they are radical “in a bad way,” for there is no such thing as an evil motivation — if we are doing it, we must by definition believe it is good for us — so I doubt that there is such a thing as an “evil motivation for radicalization.” “Being radical” can easily be framed as a badge of honor and accusing people of being radical might just agitate them into becoming more extreme. Furthermore, I’m not sure anyone plans to “be radical”; rather, they follow their beliefs to where their beliefs lead (they “follow the internal consistency”) and end up somewhere where someone else one day says to them “you are radical.” I doubt the realization “I am radical” is embedded in a set of beliefs themselves — it seems to be something that comes from “the outside” (we just experience ourselves “following the argument,” of being more rational).

This of course suggests the importance of surrounding ourselves with people who think differently from us, but though critically important, I question if this alone will be enough to “balance” us unless we also finally separate the categories of “rational” and “right” (something I stress). We must by definition think that we are right (to some degree), for otherwise we would not think the way we do, but then if we conflate “rational” and “right,” that means anyone who doesn’t think like us must be “irrational,” and what would we benefit from being around people who are “irrational”? We probably can’t learn anything from them, and there’s no possibility of a constructive conversation, so what’s the point? Better to be around people who are rational, people who only “happen” to think like us…(Kathryn Schulz is invaluable on this topic).

Furthermore, until we understand that “what is rational” is relative to “what we believe is true,” and that it is possible for different people to ascribe to different axioms and consequently follow different rationalities without being irrational, then we will be stuck following the logic of our axioms to their “logical end,” making “radicalization” a logical and perhaps inevitable outcome. The nature of all worldviews is to be internally consistent and correspondingly “radical” (though that’s not to say they all equally succeeded), but it wasn’t perhaps until the internet that we could easily discover arguments that helped us justify becoming “more Conservative,” “more Liberal,” etc. by easily tapping into the best and most creative minds on our side. All social coordination today is perhaps becoming more effective, for good and for bad — are we doing the work to offer more constructive options?

I’ve heard it suggested that we are extreme today because we are less intelligent, and though that might be true in many situations, I think we fail to realize that we can be more extreme because we are more rational. It is a hangover of the Enlightenment to believe that where there is more rationality, there is more “goodness” — this only perhaps follows if “true” and “rational” are necessarily similes. This doesn’t mean that answer is for us to be “anti-rationalists,” but it does mean we need to abandon the dream of “autonomous rationality” and make space for knowledge acquired “pre-” or “non-rationally) (as discussed in “Deconstructing Common Life”).

I think there are multiple worldviews (though perhaps not many and certainly not infinite) which are “internally consistent,” meaning they entail no “essential contradictions” and so very well might be true. Only God can verify, so we cannot say which system is “absolutely true,” only note which systems “might be absolutely true” based on the fact they lack internal contradiction (and are not falsified). Well, if there are systems without internal contradiction, then it is rational to believe everything those systems entail, which could make us “radical,” so increasing rationality will not necessarily help us with our problem. To put all this another way, I don’t think YouTube is “radicalizing” people so much as it is unveiling the always present “problem of internally consistent system” by providing sources of information by which people can internally complete their systems. YouTube only causes radicalization insomuch as it enables worldviews to complete themselves internally, which can generate “radicalness.” That said, the prime culprit is not YoutTube, but the structures of worldviews themselves (which has implications for our problem with conspiracies today).

YouTube has helped unveil the problem of “multiple rationalities,” but since we have generally been brought up our whole lives believing rationality could make the world a better place (because there are not “rationalities but “a rationality,” and because “rational,” “right,” and “good” are all used as similes), we find ourselves unable to manage the problem. This is because our only tool is rationality, and all that does is add to the noise and help worldviews “complete themselves” (we need something else, as expanded on in other works). If we don’t just understand that there are different axioms that entail different rationalities, and that thus we are “rationally justified” to moderate and compromise because of the nature of thinking itself, then we will feel that we are only justified to follow our axioms “to their logical end,” which likely entails radicalization. And from this there will be no “rational” escape (this is elaborated on in “The Conflict of Mind”).

“Radicalization” can be a logical end of an “internally consistent system of thought,” but in this schema, “radicalization” and “violent” are not necessarily similes (perhaps I should instead say “extreme” instead of “radical”). I am not familiar with an ideology that tells us to “only believe in it halfway” — if there is a system, it wants us “all in.” After all, it’s a system, not a premise, and, who knows, it might be true…If we believe abortion is murder, being “radical” about it seems logical; if we believe the Drug War was established by whites to maintain white supremacy, “radically” opposing the police seems necessary. For me, then, it all comes down to the question of “what is true,” for “truth organizes values.” But very problematically, determining what is true is incredibly hard. And at the end of the day, there is no guarantee we even can — thus, “the conflict of mind.”

Basically, to review and summarize, the problem of “radicalization” for me is simply an expression of “the problem of internally consistent systems”: it is a symptom, not a cause. Media helps people realize/make maps, but this is “always already” something people do regardless. For this reason, rather than worry about radicalization, I think it is far more productive and useful to look into the construction of social infrastructures like the Liminal Web by which people might “surprisingly encounter the Other” and understand a loss of “stickiness” emotionally, imaginatively, and the like. A focus on radicalization is simply a distraction, seeing as I doubt many people think of themselves as radicals.

26. Kennan Grant notes that ideologies can manifest fractally. By this, he means not only that ideologies are re-created at different levels of society on down to the family, but that each family can create an idiosyncratic ideology, a world of its own. Though “givens” bracket infinite expansion, it’s still fair to say “Christian” could be more a snowstorm than an umbrella.

27. AI will unleash and could make “vivid” our “problem of internally consistent system”; then again, AI might unleash “maps” so quickly and stealthily that we find ourselves taking “Pynchon Risks” before we realize it — and then we are “entrapped in is-ness.”

28. As David Hume in his A Treatise of Human Nature makes case studies of causality, the self, etc. to show that rationality is ultimately incapable of grounding itself and reliant on “natural beliefs,” so I am arguing that a case study could be made of Capitalism, Marxism, Maoism, Liberalism, etc. that each ideology is likewise “internally consistent” and that the deciding vote for which ideology comes down not to matters of argument, but matters of experience, for only experiences can overturn or confirm assumptions and “first principles” necessary for a system to come into existence at all. No ideology can be rational “all the way down,” as no rationality can ultimately be “autonomously rational”: though “internally consistent,” an “autonomous ideology” is impossible, even though an ideology’s “internal consistency” seems to be evidence of the ideology’s self-sustainability. (We all have reason to be humble.) And yet experience too can just serve ideology, so what do we mean? Well, we need a focus on a particular kind of experience, mainly “The Surprising Encounter of the Face” — a focus of O.G. Rose when it comes to the Liminal Web and “social coordination system.”

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O.G. Rose (YouTube)

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VI

If Jesus was a carpenter, a person who worked on buildings, then Jesus claiming in Mark 13:1–2 that the temple would be torn down can became more significant. Jesus is undermining and deconstructing his own field: after his followers comment on the beauty of the temple, Jesus claims it ultimately doesn’t matter. This strikes me as a Hegelian “negation” which opens up new possibilities: in Jesus denying the carpentry he inherited from his father and labored over, Jesus is “opening up” the possibility of his crucifixion and all that would bring about. Please note that what Jesus is doing isn’t “self-sabotage” but “negation,” which is different. There is also a difference between “negation” and “effacement,” two terms which sound similar but are critically distinct. In Hegel, “negation” is part of dialectical development, while “effacement” can result when we seek “Primordial Unity,” “Wholeness,” or the like (as say discussed in Freud). Jesus does not disown carpentry or claim he wasted his time in mastering the practice; rather, he “negates” the trophies, social status, and ego-boosts the position could have given him, while at the same time owning the lessons, skills, and training. Often, “negation” seems to involve a disowning of the social benefits of a practice while keeping the invisible and hidden benefits that society doesn’t value. “Effacement,” on the other hand, can be a sacrificing of “the invisible benefits” for the social acknowledgment, wish-fulfillment, idealization, and the like. “Negation” can give up “the ego” for “the skills,” while “effacement” can give up “the skills” for “the ego.”

This in mind, we must work hard to establish “the coherence” of our system and thinking precisely to unveil that our “map” doesn’t ultimately and completely “correspond” with reality: even if we know Gödel’s “Incompleteness Theorem,” we have to earn this knowledge by working diligently to achieve complete “coherence” of our worldview, beliefs, and the like (“Costly Gödel” versus “Cheap Gödel,” to allude to Bonhoeffer). This is the difference between “cheap incompleteness”—simply saying that “coherent systems are ultimately incomplete” without any work—and “costly incompleteness”—doing the work to personally, experientially, emotionally, and fully encounter “ultimate incompleteness.” Hegel demands work of us, to not say “we know what Hegel concludes” and therefore not do the work to experience “what Hegel concludes.” “Ideas are not experiences,” as Hegel understood, and Absolute Knowing ultimately cannot be an idea. It must be experienced or won’t be present at all.

“Indestructible maps” cannot be destroyed, only left (or “curved”), and that effort must be experienced, which means it must hurt. But—why would we ever challenge something in which we could be “invincible”? It’s irrational and absurd, yes? In a very real sense, yes, and yet “abandoning invincibility” is what Hegel (and Hume) would demand of us. Where Hegel leads us is to make a decision that cannot be understood easily in terms of “rationality or irrationality”: it transcends the dichotomy. This hints though at why “nonrationally leaving behind indestructible maps” can help “fill the gap” left behind by the collapse of religion, as Nietzsche saw: religion has traditionally entailed ascribing to “faith,” a (“nonrational”) category of understanding which transcends rational understanding. Faith can in this way be dangerous, and yet faith also seems necessary if we are to act “nonrationally,” as is necessary in Hegel. If we are to do the work Hegel would have us do, it will require “faith,” keeping our eyes “on the unseen,” for all we will see around us in our “invincible map” is extremely good reason to stay there and make ourselves at home. In the midst of “complete coherence,” we will not readily see reason to leave it behind: we will easily always see reason to stay where we are, which means we might never make it to Absolute Knowing. Faith is required for us to move from Spirit to Absolute Knowing, and Religion could train us in that faith. With Religion not doing so, we must find different sources for providing ourselves “reason to have faith in faith” (a hope of The True Isn’t the Rational has been to argue this “nonrational” case, to see such “reason” through Hegel, Hume, Gödel, and others).

The Map Is Indestructible (Amazon)

Wait, doesn’t this mean seeking Absolute Knowing is somehow irrational? In a sense, yes, as it is irrational to “leave behind an indestructible map,” and yet this is what Hegel would demand of us. But once we carry out this “irrational act,” it can suddenly be unveiled to us as “nonrational”: the negation unveils and opens up a new possibility from which rationality could always keep us blinded. As Jesus “leaves behind” his carpentry to step into his destiny on the cross, so we must “leave behind” our invincibility so that we can continue on toward Absolute Knowing (A/B). But here is the million-dollar question: What makes some people willing to leave their “indestructible map” and not others? Note the motivation for this act must be intrinsic, because in an “indestructible map,” nothing external can force us to leave. We simply somehow must know better and find intrinsic motivation, in ourselves, to move on (as Hegel would have of us). Well, how do we know better? Where does this “intrinsic motivation” come from? It seems to have something to do with beauty, truth, goodness, all of which ultimately have something to do with pleasure, bliss, and libido. Encounterology? Surprise? Our new social coordination? Perhaps.

Anyway, Hegel would have us perpetually submit ourselves to a constant effort to work to establish complete coherence (“costly” versus “cheap,” to allude to Bonhoeffer again), an effort which succeeding at will unveil that our “coherent system” is unable to “correspond” with reality. “No map is its territory,” but we cannot simply know this: we must experience this by working as hard as we possibly can to make the map be the territory. Isn’t this absurd? Arguably, yes, which is why “rationality” will not readily guide us to engage in Hegel’s work toward Absolute Knowing — we must ascent to “nonrationality.” It is “rational” to not try to make a map that equals its territory when we know this is impossible, but it is actually not “irrational” to make this attempt — that is the revelation of Hegel that we can gain if we take seriously that “ideas are not experiences.” The work to establish “complete coherence,” while knowing that succeeding will be the act which unveils the impossibility of “complete coherence,” is nonrational.¹⁷

The great lesson of Gödel is that it is precisely because our “map is indestructible” that we should negate it, that we should declare it “empty” just like Jesus, the carpenter, declared such of the temple. Because our ideology and “map” is completely coherent, there will always be reason to occupy it, marry our identities to it, and fight for it “fundamentally,” but what Gödel would have us realize is that this very state of invincibility is itself evidence that we should choose to negate it and ourselves. Note the use of the word “choose” here, for if “a map is indestructible,” that means nothing can force us to leave it as everything: the identification must be chosen.¹⁸ And why would we do that? Is it rational (of people/corporations/x) to give up invincibility?

VII

‘By the end of The Crying of Lot 49,’ Edward Mendelson tells us, ‘the heroine has become almost saturated by her knowledge of coincidence and cohesiveness, but this knowledge only leaves her with the ‘binary choice’ of either the One of transcendent meaning or the Zero of chaos and paranoia.’¹⁹ ²⁰ The enjoyment of death could be the enjoyment that everything is connected, for to experience “everything as connected” would overwhelm and destroy us (bringing Ross Byrd to mind). It can feel like a transgression to see “everything as connected,” for this can seem absurd and “against nature” (as “full of things”), and there is enjoyment in transgression (as Žižek teaches). ‘Pynchon emphasizes that the fictional worlds exist because the Word is lacking,’ but that lack is easily a product of radical excess we cannot compute (as Ebert emphasizes).²¹ There is enjoyment in lack, as there is terror, and perhaps an enjoyment of lack we can enjoy is enjoyment of making connections beyond what we can comprehend (is this “an invention of God”?). ‘Pynchon’s subject, throughout his work, is not self-obsession but the connectedness and coherence of the minute particulars of the world,’ eventually generating an excess we cannot comprehend.²² We can enjoy being overwhelmed, of losing control (sexual) (and perhaps are habituated in this direction by “dream-equality,” discussed in II.2, at the heart of Rationality, Categories, Institutions, Capital, AI…) — ‘camping among telephone wires’ — ‘an invitation to the speaking animal to consider what he makes of the world into which he introduces his communication systems.’²³ ²⁴ Kafka? “Philosophical Ascent” (Livingston, Hume)? Or (re)turn (Hegel, T.S. Eliot)? In Plurality and Ambiguity, Tracy tells us ‘[t]here is only that interaction named conversation’: interaction is a feedback loop between us, others, and our worlds.²⁵ Will we make the Absolute Choice of this Absolute Situation? A “(re)turn to (in-)common life,” of “faithful presence,” modeled in the Liminal Web?²⁶ Perhaps.

If “the map is indestructible” is correct, we cannot necessarily overturn ideologies or basically anything by opposing it; we must operate “within it” and change the conditions of possibility within, or otherwise we will end up like say Oedipa or “Byron the Bulb.” Throughout O.G. Rose, we have emphasized “changing the conditions of possibility,” and a hope of this book (and The True Isn’t the Rational more generally) is to justify this strategy. The patience and “faithful presence” of this strategy is justified by this trilogy, or so is the hope. There are bad ideas which can be destroyed with logical argument, but then I would argue these were never really “maps,” just notions and passing inclinations. A real map is indestructible, and so it can only be altered within it. Hence, we must work to be “faithfully present” to change “conditions of possibility” within somehow. Nothing else is sufficient. “The map is indestructible.”

If thought is a room without an entrance, we might enter thought by pondering why there are no doors. Similarly, if “the map is indestructible,” we can look for a (nonrational) way to “rise over it” versus try to destroy it. And perhaps in knowing how to “rise over” a “map,” we choose all the same to stay in our “map,” but this itself would be a beneficial and qualitative change: it could be “a return to common life” like what we are encouraged in Hume to embark on, as described in The Conflict of Mind. To “stay in common life” is not the same as “returning to common life”; likewise, to “absorb a map” is not the same as “choosing a map,” and though the later requires facing anxiety (like “the loss of givens”), this difficulty is why a different quality is possible. And for me, learning to live according to this “different quality” is required of us today, given the problems described in Belonging Again (such as “the banality of evil”) — but that means we must consider The Absolute Choice. But if we do, there is no telling the ways we might change ourselves.

Alright, but when I claim, “the map is indestructible,” am I saying people can never change? Am I “essentializing difference”? No. I am saying that we have spent a lot of time trying to change maps when we should try to change people. Maps never have to change. They can be changed, but not necessarily, and that means there can ultimately be limits to how far efforts to change maps can go. At this point in history, I believe these efforts (of Reason) have yielded the fruits they should (of Spirit and Religion), and now it is time for a negation/sublation (to Absolute Knowing). It is time to focus on people. This doesn’t mean we ignore maps, but it means that instead of focusing on maps then people, we need to focus on people then maps: instead of focusing on the rational as if it was the nonrational, we need to keep them distinct. We’ve made institutions, schools, churches, etc. in the business of maps; we need to make them in the business of helping people encounter difference. We need to focus on “surprising encounters” and “faithful presence,” preparation instead of planning — topics taken up later and elsewhere in O.G. Rose. To say, “the map is indestructible,” is to say, “we need to focus on subjects.”

In the Introduction, we said the phrase “the map is indestructible” is meant to suggest that no one must necessarily change their views or ideology, but this doesn’t mean no one can. It was argued that because people have employed the wrong strategy, we have lost hope in debate, discussion, democracy, and the like, and that as a result we seem today to be falling back onto threat and force. Democracy is in decline, but in an odd way the hope of this book has been to argue that “the map is indestructible” precisely to save democracy and rationality. That might not make any sense, but it is to get us to stop employing strategies which don’t work, and to stop using rationality in a way that leads to its self-effacing totalization. Instead of argument, this book is pointing to a world of “attraction” and “encounter,” where we try to model and show ourselves and our worlds to one another in spaces of interaction (like the “Liminal Web” and other modern “silk roads”), and it is this “shinning” that is our means of democracy. “A Democracy of Changing Conditions of Possibility” — this is the hope, but this hope could be dim if we don’t first understand how “maps” work and operate. Isn’t knowing “the map isn’t the territory” enough? No, for the idea that “the map isn’t the territory” could actually keep us employing our map without question, precisely because we can always tell ourselves, “I know it’s not the territory” and/or “I could disregard it whenever I wanted” (it’s just that we “always happen not to”). Furthermore, knowing “the map isn’t the territory” can create the impression that some maps are false and will deconstruct themselves, when the argument of this book is that maps never deconstruct themselves precisely because they are “internally consistent.” We are not in a world of telling the difference between “true and false maps” — that is a logic of “versus” (A/A) that is very problematic. No, there not “true and false maps”: there are “notions and maps” and (indestructible) maps will always be with us. Deconstruction was historically necessary to help us do away with false notions, yes, but there are limits to what Deconstruction can accomplish. Deconstruction cannot help us “address” maps (“the problem of internally consistent systems”); if we continue to use that tool in our current moment, we shall overfit it and suffer autocannibalism.

VIII

There is Volume III left of our trilogy, (Re)constructing “A Is A,” but here we can point to why that work is still needed by providing an outline that will hopefully at the same time help elucidate this book, while also helping put it in further conversation with Belonging Again. In Volume I, we learned of “conflicts of mind” which could existentially overwhelm us. In the past, sociological “givens” could protect us from these “conflicts,” but once they fell away and we had to think about our worlds more than just “absorb” them, it became possible for us to encounter these “conflicts” and then suffer the resulting anxiety. To deal with this anxiety, we could turn to “maps,” which for most of history arose with “givens” (as “givens/maps,” per se), but “maps” were not the primary drive of human organization or activity. There has always been an “internally consistent system” latent in Christianity (for example), but most of history that (theological) “map” didn’t have to do “the majority of the lifting” for people or the sociological order, precisely because that work fell on “givens,” and that work was done with “thoughtlessness,” hence why the “givens” could handle the responsibility (they really didn’t have to “defend themselves” just “be themselves”). However, as Modernity developed into Postmodernity and now us, the “givens/maps” increasingly just became “maps,” and theology in Christianity had to do more work, as did every religion and ideology, and many of them were able to avoid deconstruction as “mere notions” and indeed establish themselves as “internally consistent systems.” These are “indestructible” and so could be “practically like” (“thoughtless”) “givens,” making them an adequate substitute (“maps” are like “the shadow of Buddha” of “givens,” alluding to Nietzsche). And ever since Postmodernity the acceptance of “maps as an address” of our situation has only increased—but our argument is that this is not enough, for it will easily just fragment the world into small fascist states. The more centralized order after World War II will fail, and though this could seem like a liberation, without “the spread of Childhood” to make people the kinds of subjects who can handle this liberation, we will suffer autocannibalism.

Joel Carini of The Natural Theologian discusses how he became a Christian Humanist versus a Christian Presuppositionalist, and what he means by “Presuppositionalist” could help us understand what it means to claim we have treated “maps as an address” in response to Modernity and what followed. Presuppositionalism is when we accept axioms of how the universe works, say we nonrationally choose to believe in the Christian Trinity, and then we build a worldview up from that foundation. It is “map-making,” but critically Presuppositionalism is a belief that “all we can hope for is maps”—map-making is the end of the line. Isn’t that true, though? Haven’t we said this whole time that everyone must have “maps” and so everyone must be a Presuppositionalist? Well, we must accept and have “maps,” yes, and in a way we are all Presuppositionalists in the sense that we must all have “views from somewhere” but the question is must we be stuck and limited by presuppositions? Yes, but now the key Hegelian move: the limits and presuppositions we cannot avoid are what we are to work to (intersuppositionally) “encounter,” and in that, something can emerge via negation/sublation. Limits then are (un)limited. The fact thought must be assumed is a condition thought can think and be changed by: the acceptance of limits can be “an (un)limited unfolding.”

This book has argued that Kurt Gödel helped usher in our Age of Presuppositionalism, for though not everyone has made the switch yet, many have come to understand that it is not possible for a worldview to exist that is entirely and completely provable, which means that all worldviews must ultimately rely on premises that cannot be confirmed; ergo, (nonrational) presuppositions. And so many people have chosen their beliefs, assumptions, axioms, etc. and come to see their lack of final confirmation and certainty not as evidence against them but as a necessary structural reality of all possible worldviews — no one, in this way, has an edge on anyone else. This is to acknowledge Gödel’s point and “The Gödel Point,” which all of us hopefully will acknowledge, but how we do so is very consequential: do we use it to make our map indestructible and a means of defending ourselves, or do we acknowledge it as the place where we need to “faithfully dwell,” forgoing the use of the indestructibility of our maps to protect ourselves from negativity? (An Absolute Choice?)

With “the loss of givens” we alternatively fell back onto “indestructible maps” to support us, but this is more existentially and mentally exhausting then “givens,” though nevertheless it is better than nothing, for otherwise we would have already been self-effaced by “The Real” and incomprehensibility. But this “pleasure of understanding/relief” comes with the price of generating the condition of map-pluralization, which includes the conditions of possibility for the making and spread of small fascist states. But what else can we do? We are stuck with “maps,” aren’t we? And so we all seem poised to be Presuppositionalists now, which, without us realizing it, means we are positioned to be fascists. What then? Abandon the project and end up overwhelmed by “conflicts of mind”? Isolate ourselves radically from Global Pluralism? That could work, but only if we radically limit our exposure to technology. Is that what we must do? Perhaps — but that would not be the “new address” like we seek.

The Map Is Indestructible is a critique of Presuppositionalism as a sufficient “address” for Global Pluralism, especially in light of Global Techno-Capital. This book acknowledges Presuppositionalism while at the same time looking for something beyond/in it, and what that is and its implications shall be a main concern of Volume III. Our hope to avoid the possible fascistic results of Presuppositionalism — which is an avoidance of a Totalized Rationality which concerned Fondane but not much of an improvement from — is for us all to commit to something within our “maps” that at the same time unbinds us from a fascistic fate. What is that? “The Gödel Point,” which will be elaborated on in Volume III — the point where “correspondence” and “coherence” trade-off and unveil they are not identical. It is the point where rationality unveils a need for nonrationality, nonrationality a need for rationality, as it is the point where thinking needs perception and perception thinking. It is the point of “passing over into otherness” (A/B), and it is the point that when faced with we can either confirm the indestructibility of our “map” or “step into it” ourselves, not using “the indestructibility of our map” to protect us from anxiety, subjectivity destitution, etc. Why would anyone do that? It’s irrational. Well, it’s nonrational, and “why” exactly would have to be based on faith and courage for something that cannot be guaranteed (or else it would be a rational act). And what would that be? (Beauty?)

Where there is an “indestructible map,” we have a way to defend ourselves with something indestructible: whatever comes our way, we can incorporate, dismiss, rationalize, etc. it with our map. We never have to face “real difference” and/or “the (truly) surprising,” for whatever we encounter can be integrated into our consistency. In this way, the “indestructible map” is an ultimate shield and means of protecting ourselves as subjects from “The Real” and possibility of “subjective destitution” (“givens” are a comparable means of protection) — why in the world would we not use it as such? Are we mad? And aren’t we justified to so use it, seeing as maps are unavoidable and necessary (given the inevitably of presuppositions)? Why would we risk destruction? Well, perhaps only if we thought that using maps to avoid negativity could paradoxically lead to destruction — and that is indeed what is being claimed in this book. But aren’t “maps indestructible”? Doesn’t that mean we will inevitably so use them? No, it means “maps will always be with us,” but that doesn’t mean we have to use their indestructibility to defend ourselves from negativity. That there are maps is necessary, but how we use maps, and how we posture ourselves toward them, is open.

Maps are indestructible because without them the Real destroys us, because map-making is part of the territory and so will always emerge (back) from the territory, and because maps are internally consistent and hence never have to be deconstructed (even if they can be left). If we realize “maps are indestructible,” that can give us a choice to think differently about them and what we do when we think. Is thinking just about confirming the indestructibility of our maps, helping protect us from negativity? Or is thinking about something else? What? Keeping itself from “enclosures” (A/A), perhaps, which is only possible in the Gödel Point. We only find our Gödel Point where our map is (realized as) indestructible though, and hence the temptation of instead defending ourselves. (Satan tempted Christ with his future.)

The “double move” this book has tried to argue is that “autonomous rationality” devours itself, meaning we require “the nonrational.” But that realization alone is not enough, because we could with “(non)rationality” just choose to end up in a Presuppositionalism that leads us toward a world of small fascist states — or we could choose to do something else. What? To dwell in the Gödel Point. “The Gödel Point” is where we choose either (tempting) confirmation of our indestructible map and protection, or a place of “dwelling” and “faithful presence” in our “subjective destitution” for a reason we cannot rationally justify or guarantee (“The Absolute (Defining) Choice” of “lack and/or the Gödel Point is nothing” (A/A) or “lack and/or Gödel Point is not nothing” (A/B)). It is only rational perhaps that we have not chosen this second option (A/B) up to this point in history, but I think now we must. Can we? Perhaps. Always perhaps.

IX

We require something stable, reliable, and constant if we are not to be destroyed by “The Real,” but what? We’ve gone through a historic period where it was “givens,” and we have gone through a period of “maps.” But now? Us. We must be the source of indestructibility, but of course we ourselves as subjects are very destructible. Are we doomed? No, because even if we can’t be “technically indestructible,” we can be “practically (in)destructible,” in the sense that we can withstand and maintain “a faithful presence” through negativity (as Cadell discusses, our “immortality drive,” “unstoppable,” can be addressed this way, I think — it must Cost). Only through this can we (re)construct that which isn’t so deconstructible — we must practically be “the still point” (“like Christ” and “appearing heretical”…).

(Re)constructing “A Is A” will say more, but the Gödel Point is where we are “with” the territory, for it generates the tradeoff between correspondence and coherence, which is part of the territory. We can access the territory then, on this point, as Hegel understood, looking at Kant. This then means we can have a shared territory with Others and Difference — the dream of addressing Pluralism through a shared territory is possible, and what is realized here is that this is not a territory of facts, science, or empiricism, but a territory of the Gödel Point generating the break/tradeoff/(un)veiling between correspondence and coherence, (nonrational) truth and rationality, perception and thinking. The Gödel Point is to be our “homebase,” per se (our “homelack” we “orbit”). Yes, we will still use our maps, going away from our “Gödel Homebase” to function, but always (re)turning. We don’t deconstruct “maps,” no, for we keep them to know where there is a Gödel Point — to find where we feel lost (so that we might be driven). A world of Global Pluralism where everyone shared a Gödel Homebase — “the spread of Childhood” — possible without denying Difference, however hard.

“The Gödel Point” is where we as subjects do not use the indestructibility of our maps to defend ourselves from negativity (a choice in making that itself brings us negativity that we choose to commit to suffering). An “address” of Global Pluralism could be found in a world of subjects (nonrationally) committed to dwelling in their (maps’) Gödel Point, which means they are committed to suffering a “subjective destitution” despite always having “at hand” an “indestructible map” which could defend them from this negativity (perhaps like Christ on the cross choosing not to summon the angels to aid him). The fact every map has a Gödel Point is why this global connection is possible, but it is not primarily based on the Gödel Point itself so much as it is based on the subjectivity which is formed in the Gödel Point (A/B) by people who Absolutely Choose to “dwell” there in “faithful presence.” Without us so formed, the Gödel Point is just something structurally odd…

We must do the work of finding in our map the Gödel Point, which paradoxically requires us to do the incredibly rational and hard work of realizing the “internal consistency” of our maps, which could take decades, only to ultimately forgo the “indestructibility” then at our fingertips in favor of the “subjective destitution” found in our map’s Gödel Point. If we don’t do the rational work of realizing consistency, we can’t find this Point, meaning we can’t “skip ahead”: we can’t just read what is written here and find the Gödel Point and “dwell there”; we still have to go through the (ultimately sacrificial and negative/sublative) work of making/realizing our map (and its “internal consistency”). Then, once we do that and realize our map’s Gödel Point, we are finally positioned to make our Absolute Choice: do we accept a trophy and crown for our hard work of “an indestructible map” that can always protect us and even give us a (problematic) sense of belonging? Or do we step into the Gödel Point and suffer for something not guaranteed? (Choose life.)

We can never destroy “maps” without destroying ourselves, but we can relate to them differently in choosing to relate to the Gödel Point differently, but the way we can relate differently is for us to suffer nonrationally. This opens up the possibility of (re)constructing logic and ontoepistemology in terms of A/B versus A/A — but why? Why not just protect ourselves with an indestructible map? Why do something so hard without any guarantee? (Matthew 4.) Are we fools? Also, is not the Gödel Point where there is no direction in our map? Just raw choice? Yes. So, it is where we can be lost, yes? Yes — the point of a map for Children is to find the Gödel Point where we can be lost and stay there: we want to find the hardest possible spot to find in order to be where we can be lost. “Costly (In)destructibility” is earned with the feeling of being lost and not being destroyed by that feeling. This is the test. In Christianity, the law is how we realize the sin which the law also makes us realize we cannot but by grace be redeemed from; likewise, the map is how we realize where we can find the place where there is no direction, just us. Christ, are we mad? Until this point in history, when the “plausible deniability” is running out that Global Pluralism isn’t heading toward autocannibalism, that is perhaps the only conclusion we can reach. But history is increasingly unveiling that “the mad” is actually “the nonrational.” (Take up the cross.) And might there be “glimmers” there of something else? (Beauty?)

As a note of hope, after Kurt Gödel, I don’t believe there are any Differences that necessarily can’t be worked with, for all Differences must entail Gödel Points unless they are mere notions, and then they will deconstruct themselves away on their own with time. That doesn’t mean notions can’t be problematic — they might attack us and require self-defense again — but it is to say that if they are submitted to “free speech” and democracy, they can eventually be deconstructed. That makes them a secondary concern: the deeper challenge is “maps,” Real Differences, and those I am arguing must entail Gödel Points. If that is so, there is the possibility of a shared connected between subjects across Real Differences in the Gödel Point, which is a place where the subject suffers anxiety, “subjective destitution,” etc. Who would choose to do such a thing? No one bound by “autonomous rationality,” but perhaps a subject who has faith that this Absolute Choice is worth it. Why? How? (Beauty?)

(Re)constructing “A Is A” will approach logic and thinking not in service of map-making primarily (A/A), but (re)constructing it from within the Gödel Point (A/B). It is a(n) (unstable and more temporal) logic and ontoepistemology primarily based on the “passing-over” of correspondence into coherence, perception into thinking, and vice-versa — and never shall “the passing-over” be finished. This suggests I am simply repeating Hegel, yes, but hopefully there is value in the (re)peat. If not, I apologize — I’m glad I did it all the same (every repeat is its own). Ultimately, there is the Cheap, Technical Indestructibility (of maps), and then there is the Costly, Practical (In)destructibility of subjects who reside and learn to handle the Gödel Point. Costly (In)destructibility is our hope for addressing Global Pluralism, which is a quality of Childhood. And so the question: “Can we spread Childhood?” Maps are “Cheaply and Technically Indestructible” — rational to employ — while we as subjects must be “Costly and Practically (In)destructible” — nonrational and possibly mad. Can we resist the temptation of maps for this Christ- and Child-likeness? Even if we wanted to, how? That is a question of Belonging Again, a question of our “medium condition,” and more.

‘Durkheim concluded that people need obligations and constraints to provide structure and meaning to their lives’ — can we commit ourselves to something to such a degree that we become “an unstoppable force” (like our “immortality drive”), which is another way to say “practically (in)destructible” — the fruit of Costly (In)destructibility versus Cheap Indestructibility?²⁷ That is ultimately the question, I think: if we are dealing with something indestructible, our hope might be found in, regardless the negativity or “subjective destitution,” becoming unstoppable (“a self-turning wheel”)? Can we Absolutely Choose a “faithful presence” (at the Gödel Point) and so prove unstoppable in our work, as I think both Hegel and Nietzsche teach is needed of us? If something is indestructible, there is perhaps only one way to address it: we change the entire world in which it is situated. How do we do that? Negating/sublating A/A into A/B and not stopping until the work is completed (which it never is). What is indestructible cannot necessarily stop us, and certainly “maps” (A/A) can’t stop us from seeing the world differently (A/B), especially since the resources for seeing the world differently are in “maps” themselves (in “maps not being the territory” — at the Gödel Point). What makes “maps” indestructible is what makes them contain ways for seeing the world anew, and seeing the indestructible differently is how that invincibility can be addressed. We can’t destroy the indestructible but the unstoppable can hit and slant it — “maps” can change without changing. Even if “the map is indestructible,” it can be curved.

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Notes

¹⁷To offer an image to help us understand how “complete coherence” unveils “ultimate incompleteness,” imagine that we are in a dungeon, as say explored in the Zelda videogame series. We have a torch, and whenever we explore a corner of the room, it lights up and stays lit up on our map (it is no longer covered in darkness). The dungeon is very big and it is difficult for us to explore all of it, but eventually we do. The entire dungeon is now illuminated and visible, and it is exactly when that occurs that a flute sound plays and a door opens in the wall. It is a stairway leading up to another dark dungeon where we can repeat the process.

The door in the wall wouldn’t open until every inch of the dark dungeon was explored and illuminated. Perhaps we knew ahead of time that such a door would open up, and perhaps we were tempted to stop exploring the dark dungeons because “what’s the point” — we’d just be led into another dungeon to repeat the process. We could never finish or complete our task: there would also be more to do. This would be to fall into “bad nihilism,” if I were to use Nietzsche’s language; instead, we must take Hegel seriously and continue the work. To cease exploring the dungeon and “just know” a door will open would be “cheap Gödel,” per se, while doing the work and having the door open would be “costly Gödel.” Both Hume and Hegel would have us take “the costly route,” but that will not be easy.

But if a “trap door” opens when we establish “complete coherence,” doesn’t that mean there is “reason to leave” the “indestructible map”? Wouldn’t this mean the act isn’t really “nonrational”? Fair point, but this only applies if we look at the opening (a perhaps “nonrational act” itself) — the door could open up and we never look at it, instead marveling at how great of a job we did to illuminate the whole dungeon. There is nothing in “the map” which would force us to “acknowledge the opening”: we simply have to know to look for it and that we should leave through the door. But even if we do “glimpse” the opening, we can simply tell ourselves that this opening is “an inescapable opening in every system” — we can use Gödel precisely to maintain our current “indestructible” position (as discussed in the paper “The Map Is Indestructible” by O.G. Rose), which is to say we can use “incompleteness” in favor of ideology preservation. Acknowledging the opening is not the same as “traveling into it,” which we will arguably never have “rational reason” to do, especially once we figure out that we can make “the opening” work in service of our ideology. Once we learn, for example, that all ideologies must ultimately fall back on axioms and assumptions, we can simply say that “the opening” is where our axioms are found, and since every system requires axioms, every ideology has such an “opening,” and thus we have “no reason” to think that the presence of “the opening” in our ideology means we should change, questions ourselves, or adjust our thinking. We can always say that “we’re just like everyone else” and so “rationally” give ourselves reason to stay in our “invincible map.” For this reason, choosing to enter “the opening” versus only acknowledge it in service of our ideology will prove to be a “nonrational act.” It will require believing in something we don’t see, something like faith. Faith and trust, as so described, seem to be the only way to Absolute Knowing.

¹⁸Faith is a way to choose what transcends rationality, and we generally lost faith when we lost religion. As a result, we cannot easily reach Absolute Knowing. Hume’s journey is also an act of faith, for there will always be “good reason” not to return to “common life” and to instead occupy “the Ivy Tower” Hume warns about. And how crazy it sounds to spend so much time learning philosophy and mastering rationality, only to ultimately make a “nonrational” choice to “negate” that work and “return” to common life (where we likely will not be appreciated) — it’s crazy. (Jesus was crazy.)

Religion was once to a degree about engaging in a “nonrational process” and “nonrational work” (to allude to Hegel). In losing religion, we basically lost the category of “nonrationality,” leaving us only with “irrational versus rational.” Now, everything is either “irrational” or “rational,” and stuck in this dichotomy, it basically becomes impossible for us to engage in the work Hegel would have us do. Work is being done to bring back “nonrationality” (as can be seen in the work of Lorenzo Barberis Canonico on neurodiversity), but there is still much work to be done. Funny enough, if the consequences of the dichotomy between “rational and irrational” become too pronounced and obvious, that too can “wake us up” into the need for “nonrationality” (and arguably make “nonrationality rational,” strangely), but at that point the consequences could be too dire for us to recover from. Hard to say.

¹⁹Mendelson, Edward. “Pynchon’s Gravity.” Thomas Pynchon. Edited by Harold Bloom. Edgemont, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986: 21.

²⁰Every map seems like it must eventually lead us to this choice, and I would say it is here that we must Absolutely Choose to reside in “faithful presence” (and so “Absolute Letting,” as discussed in “The Net #135”).

²¹Hite, Molly. Ideas of Order in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon. New York, NY: Ohio State University Press, 1983: 89.

²²Mendelson, Edward. “Pynchon’s Gravity.” Thomas Pynchon. Edited by Harold Bloom. Edgemont, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986: 15.

²³Kermode, Frank. “The Use of Codes in The Cry of Love 49.” Thomas Pynchon. Edited by Harold Bloom. Edgemont, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986: 14.

²⁴Kermode, Frank. “The Use of Codes in The Cry of Love 49.” Thomas Pynchon. Edited by Harold Bloom. Edgemont, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986: 14.

²⁵Tracy, David. Plurality and Ambiguity. New York, NY: First Harper & Row Paperback Edition, 1989: 19.

²⁶Coherence can be thought of as “relation without Otherness”; relationship, “relation with Otherness.” “Otherness” bind imaginations and life from ending up mad, and in this act make possible “freedom in” the Absolute.

²⁷Haidt, Jonathan. The Happiness Hypothesis. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2006: 133.

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III

What does it matter to learn that “maps are indestructible”? Won’t this just make us hopeless? It might, but reasons for hope:

a. We can shift intellectual life to “faithful presence,” Encounterology, preparation, etc. versus focus on debate, achieving certainty, avoiding surprise, planning, and the like.

b. We are more aware of our natural tendency to end up in “internally consistent systems” like conspiracies, ideologies, etc.

c. We are less likely to discount entire projects because of bad results, say like Democracy and rationality, because we realize “everything is incomplete” in its very consistency. Perhaps the projects are misguided, but error won’t so readily totally deconstruct them.

d. We are less likely to outsource everything to technology and machines, realizing that limitations of human reason could be a strength of it, for human reason can be positioned to be dialectical versus totalizing, and so “situational” (Geometric) versus “syllogistic” (Algebra), which we need for our “sanity” (Korzybski).

e. We will be better positioned to identify “Game Theory Dynamics” in conversation, debate, and the like by which people position themselves to “win” versus “realize what’s best” (“the incentive to be stupid” will also be limited, as described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer).⁷ If everything is ultimately “(in)complete,” there is no “winning” in the sense of a complete and finished position: we are all forever exploring, the effort of which is a testament to our humanity.

f. We will identify the map-drive and be better positioned to channel drive away from mere map-making toward say Childhood (at scale).⁸

g. We will aim for dialectics versus consensus or syllogism.

h. We can realize that what Harold Bloom claims can be true about great characters in literature, so can be said about ideologies: they ‘will sustain any theory [we] bring to [them], as well or as badly as any other.’⁹

i. We can realize that those who don’t know “coherence isn’t correspondence” will be easily manipulated and lack self-defense (alluding to Hume).

And so on. To take seriously maps is to glimpse why there is reason to negate/sublate A/A to A/B, and ‘[t]he results [of this] are far-reaching. They help any individual to solve his problems by himself, to his own and others’ satisfaction. They also build up an affective semantic foundation for personal as well as for national and international agreement and adjustment.’¹⁰ Without this change, we might be forever stuck trying to debate and convince people, which will just be a disagreement between indestructible maps — for little, easily making it seem eventually like violence is the only way.

The Map Is Indestructible (O.G. Rose)

But — to stress a question we have asked to introduce a distinction between “maps” and “notions” — have not ideologies faded? Few if any worship Zeus today — doesn’t that disprove that “the map is indestructible”? No, for decreasing popularity doesn’t mean a genuine ideology becomes any less “internally consistent.”¹¹ When an ideology is abandoned, it isn’t necessarily through rational deconstruction, but because of some “loss of stickiness” (as discussed in “Compelling” by O.G. Rose). Ideologies aren’t “argued away” so much as people “stop stepping into them” (either due to boredom, peer pressure, a loss of sight of the ideology’s “internal consistency,” etc.). “The map is indestructible,” but that doesn’t mean people must “step into it” or that they can’t “step out of it,” but that’s different from claiming “the map can be destroyed.” “The map” is possibly vacant, sure, but not shredded.¹²

Also, maps can change and/or be “negated/sublated” without compromising their essential structure. Even if it was perhaps realized that belief in Zeus was “internally inconsistent,” the system of ideas can change to save itself, which perhaps some would argue has happened: though we don’t worship Zeus, we sill worship God. The particularities within and/or “of” the ideology of theism have changed, but the ideology of theism continues to this day. Perhaps it could be said the ideology of belief in Zeus has just been renamed “the ideology of theism” and that it is still with us, only morphed. Similarly, Capitalism can be sublated from an Austrian vision to a Keynesian one, with this development occurring alongside the spread and growth of Globalization, where more isolated societies could be Austrian but not more interconnected ones, which could be argued as evidence not that Capitalism has failed but that it has evolved with global developments. Hence, “the map” continues.

If maps aren’t destroyed but left or negated/sublated (“curved”), the question becomes how might we aid, accelerate, and/or incubate that process, which is important to ask so that problematic and/or apocalyptic ideologies are corrected? For me, this is a role of the Liminal Web, the Social Coordination Mechanism, and regular “surprising encounter’ with Otherness. Argument does not “reduce stickiness” with “maps,” while “encounter” and relationship can: it is more embodied and thus more like an experience than an idea — it is one thing to think Christianity is stupid, and another thing to tell a Christian that Christianity is stupid, and so on, a point which brings what Jonathan Haidt said to mind: ‘[r]eason and emotion must both work together to create intelligent behavior, but emotion (a major part of the elephant) does most of the work.’¹³ In the encounter, we don’t simply encounter new ideas but also train ourselves into the experience of a mode of being in the world (with others). However, if we just relate to others without the right training, say in philosophy, metaphysics, and/or the mental models discussed in O.G. Rose, then this encounter might not go well, hence the specific and particular way that the Liminal Web goes about organizing interaction (as discussed at say Theory Underground). This naturally trains “critical thinking” versus “just thinking,” which better aligns with empathy as well.

“Ideas are not experiences,” and it is experiences which are more likely to change the average person than ideas. Hence, a “critical thinking” which might scale and spread is one which is motivated by experience, and that means we need an infrastructure to make that “spreadable experience” possible. This could be the Liminal Web, a “silk road” on which we can encounter people and experience the need for empathy and critical thinking, versus simply sit back at home and know these acts are important. “The Liminal Web” can help accelerate the process of determining which “map/notions” are actually “maps” versus “deconstructible notions,” from which point we can then determine how to best go about a “faithful presence” to help habituate us “between” these maps. Also, once we know that most “deconstructible notions” are off the table, we can focus on the work of “faithful presence” and not worry so much about deconstruction—we can focus and work on the next stage. “How do we live with maps?”—perhaps all of Global Pluralism boils down to this question, which arises from out of “the problem of internally consistent systems.”

All this must be expanded on in Belonging Again, II.2 notably, and all of this basically means we cannot address “the problem of internally consistent systems” without a(n) (“(un)veiling”) social infrastructure that can help work on “stickiness”; right now, for the society at large, the closet model we have for that is the university system mixed with travel, but all of that is arguably restricted to an economic class, an age range, and a geography, making them limited in their effectiveness (not that they don’t have a role). This too needs to be expanded on, but mechanisms of debate and deconstruction are not enough for “maps”: we require ways to work on “stick” (which require “(un)veiling,” considering “Love(craft)”), and we need to do so at scale. Otherwise, negating/sublating maps, and identifying “incomplete notions” from “(in)complete maps,” will suffer.

For most of history, it would seem that all we could do was “practically agree” with Paul Veyne:

‘Only historical reflection can clarify the programs of truth and reveal their variations. But this reflection is not a constant beacon and does not mark a stage on the route taken by humanity. The road twists and turns. The truth does not direct it toward the horizon. Nor are its vagaries molded on the powerful contours of an infrastructure. The road winds haphazardly. Most of the time the travelers do not care. Each one believes that his road is the true one, and the turns that he sees others take scarcely disturb him. But on rare occasions it happens that a bend in the road permits the travelers to look back and see a long stretch of the road and all its zigzags. Some travelers are of such a temperament that this sight moves them. This retrospective vision speaks truly, but it does not make the road any more false, since the road could not be true. Therefore, the flashes of retrospective lucidity are not very important. They are simply accidents of the journey […]’¹⁴

But now things have changed. We have a Liminal Web, a Social Coordination Mechanism. “Glimmers” can be more regular; we can habituate ourselves anew.

“The Gödel Point” is where a map fails to be the territory, which is also the point that makes maps indestructible, in that we decide what constitutes the necessary “Gödel Point” in our worldview, and thus can always “define away” a critique. As I believe is the case with Postmodernism, the public and widespread realization of the Gödel Point is when we especially must shift into a new logic by which we approach different worldviews and beliefs, which locates the point of (onto)epistemological possibility in the place of encounter itself. Anywhere else will simply lack the conditions necessary for thought to be possible that doesn’t ultimately just prove “captured by maps” and unable to really take seriously that “the true isn’t the rational.” This is what I have in mind when I talk about “faithful presence,” indebted to Dr. James Hunter, and as we must expand on in (Re)constructing A Is A, it is only to the degree we are committed to that space of “surprising encounter of the face” that we can hope to address “the problem of internally consistent systems.” We must think where we encounter or we will not be thinking new conditions of possibility. Time and time again until the end of time, all while enclosed and unable to tell, we’ll simply confirm and ever-reconfirm that the map is indestructible. Avoiding this mistake is what the Liminal Web makes possible, but we must commit ourselves to it and be “faithfully present.”

If indeed The Map Is Indestructible has shown that worldviews based on nondialectical logic lead to “indestructible systems” we cannot escape (ideologies, conspiracies, etc.), and if The Conflict of Mind has shown that “autonomous rationality” ultimately eats itself, as does society which is A/A, following Belonging Again, then the case has been made for the desperate need to move into A/B-thinking, both from an examination of “autonomous rationality” proving self-effacing, and in the same proving the case regarding society as a whole. Though it cannot be proven with certainty, this gives us reason to believe a new ontoepistemology is needed with a corresponding socioeconomic order, one we can think of as A/B, which will be the work of (Re)constructing “A Is A” and Belonging Again (Part II). Having made our arguments for why there is reason to believe these efforts are worth trying, we will turn next in our efforts to make these cases, one from an epistemological angle which leads to ontology and thus ontoepistemology ((Re)constructing “A Is A”), the other from a sociological angle which orbits “the question of scale” (Belonging Again), and then from an aesthetic angle (The Fate of Beauty), with The Absolute Choice being a Hegelian take on all these works. Time will tell if we succeed.

Be Perfect by Ross Byrd

Ross Byrd of Patient Kingdom made the tremendous point that Eden was good but not perfect: ‘it was not yet perfect because it was not yet complete.’¹⁵ So we might speak of A/A and “maps”: they are good, but they are not complete, and if “the good” is maintained when it is an age of moving into the next phrase, it will become bad (“overfitting” and “underfitting” are often our trouble far more than “right or wrong”). Byrd notes that the logic of the Bible can be thought of as a tension between “holiness” and “inclusion,” and God in a sense has “a problem of God” to deal with, which is that God seeks a relationship with us and to include us with God, but God would destroy us. And so God has to “(un)veil” Godself at a rate and in a way we can handle, and all of history can be seen as “the story of this (un)veiling.” A similar logic is at play in Hegel in his view of history, and what we can say here is that if we didn’t experience A/A, we couldn’t be prepared for A/B: we’d be overwhelmed and destroyed. In this way, critically, we must not think that “maps are a mistake”; no, they have been historically necessary; it’s just that now, in this moment of Global Pluralism, we must negate/sublate into A/B. This is a move of the good toward perfection, but if the move is denied, “the good” will prove “overfit” and self-effacing. ‘And, of course,’ Byrd writes, ‘this is not merely a vision of the future. The beauty of the Christian understanding of perfection is that it’s not just something that will happen, but something that is happening now.’¹⁶

V

In Volume I of The True Isn’t the Rational, we discussed “The Conflict of Mind,” which is where “epistemic possibility” comes in conflict with “epistemology responsibility,” which is to say there are situations in the world where we can feel compelled by a sense of intellectual ethics to try to do that which is beyond what we are intellectually capable of undertaking and experiencing, meaning we can be compelled by ethics to suffer autocannibalism. Belonging Again (Part I) also discussed “The Conflict of Society,” which is where “social responsibility” comes in conflict with “social possibility,” and ultimately the book argued that societies are naturally organized and founded to manage this potentially self-effacing contradiction. In terms of the mind and the society, at the foundation of the human is a problem that facing and realizing has proven dangerous. Indeed, I think the average person is increasingly experiencing both of these Conflicts even if they don’t realize it, and the result has been a spread of mental health problems, nihilism, popularism, a dismissing of rationality, and collapse of social bonds (what some have called “The Meta-Crisis”). “Existential anxiety” has increased, tempting us with ways to escape it in the form of totalitarianism, isolationism, and worse, temptations that seem more difficult to resist by the day.

The Map Is Indestructible focuses on the role of ideology, conspiracy, worldview, “internally consistent systems,” and so “maps,” and how these prove to be temptations for escaping our Conflicts (while then turning around and worsening those Conflicts). They are ultimately traps, but they are also indestructible traps: once we enter them, there is no way to escape them according to their own internal logics. What must we do? Well, we must “leave behind” and/or “negate/sublate” (not so much “disprove”) forms of “autonomous rationality,” but how do we do that at scale? This is the question and concern of Belonging Again (Part II). We create “maps” to be sane, but these models risk our sanity in ways described by Korzybski, in that “maps” present the world as what it is not: Algebra instead of Geometry, identity versus situation, representation versus territory — consistency as if it were coherence. We must move to A/B, but A/B is odd and unnatural.

Thinking is not what we think it is: the model of reality in which thinking is just trying to “correspond” with phenomena isn’t totally false but problematically incomplete. Thinking is not primarily in the business of making sure that it’s “idea of a cat” is equivalent to “the thing that is a cat”: rather, thinking is in the business of feeling like “it’s idea of a cat is equivalent to the thing that is a cat.” Thinking works to mitigate existential anxiety before it prioritizes accuracy (C.S. Peirce was right), which means thinking prioritizing “coherence gaining full coherence,” and it will happily sacrifice “correspondence” to achieve that goal (as thinking can because certainty is mostly impossible, as described in “On Certainty” by O.G. Rose, and so thinking never has to fully face what it is doing).

It would be wrong to say that “correspondence” doesn’t play a role in thinking at all, for there is a difference between a hallucination and a “falsifiable” idea which has been challenged a thousand times, like a ball falling when released. No, we cannot escape Hume’s critique of Natural Law here in favor of “constant conjunction,” so we can never entirely verify things, but that doesn’t mean we cannot gain “strong reason to believe” in something based on patterns, probability, experience, and the like. Still, even acknowledging this difference between “certainty” and “confidence” draws into question the possibility or meaning of “correspondence,” and furthermore this can lead us to realizing that ideas of “correspondence” can contribute to ideology, closed-mindedness, and the like. So, though we must use the dialectic between “coherence and correspondence” to function (according to Understanding, following Hegel), what do we talk about when we talk about “correspondence” after realizing (or Reasoning) that there are inadequacies with this dialectic? What do we end up with once we “speculate” beyond the dialectic (thus moving into a fuller movement of Hegelian thought)? Well, it would seem we end up with a move “participatory” mode of being and thinking in the world, which is to say we arrive at not merely a new epistemology or ontology, but an ontoepistemology — which means we must move into (Re)constructing “A Is A” and The Absolute Choice.

If we realize that we cannot seek “correspondence” like we traditionally have, this alone can help us work against the tendency to fall into conspiracies, ideologies, and other “maps” without realizing it, for we come to see ourselves as more so participating in our structures of knowing and the way the world “presents itself” to us. We realize we are always at risk of self-enclosing ourselves in a fabrication, and this will help us be more self-skeptical and aware of how the feeling that “this is true” can be in service of leading us into something false. Why though are we so prone to fall into “unifying maps” that are so difficult to escape? In addition to the desire to avoid existential anxiety like C.S. Peirce taught on, as Lotoreo points out, experience itself is unifying, which is to say we experience everything “in experience” as one (a point touched on in “Ironically” by O.G. Rose). This being the case, perhaps perception primes us to be self-enclosed “monotheorists,” to approach the world as if “a theory of everything” is valid (thanks paradoxically to the very perception which suggests an alternative to thinking, which also suggests “the problem of dream-equality,” discussed in II.2). To allude to Lotoero’s point again, everything that humans can understand must be “experiential,” which means there is a unifying principle which always applies. Everything we know we experience, and it is this “universality of experience” that might make monotheorism natural. (We think to “return to the world,” perhaps.)

As discussed in “On Thinking and Perceiving” by O.G. Rose, we indeed “perceive” the world as if it was “one,” for experience is “taken in” as unified and singular. But to comprehend what we take in, we must “break it up” into smaller parts by thinking about it. However, in thinking always being “about” the perceived, thinking is still “toward” that which is experienced as “singular,” as if that “singularity” is what thinking “wants.” In this way, thinking and perception relate in a manner that perhaps phenomenologically trains us into “oneness” and monotheorism. In this, we see how a “tragedy” is built into thinking itself: it is “toward” a singularity that to understand it must break that singularity apart, but that doesn’t change the fact that thinking is always “toward” that which is (experientially) “one,” seeking it and even “wanting it.” So primed, it seems easy and natural for thinking to then become “monotheoristic,” for this is a “wish fulfilment” that thinking holds in seeking to overcome “the tragedy” of how it breaks the world into smaller parts to grasp it (“the problem of dream-equality” from II.2, of which “the problem of internally consistent systems” relates). Desire might structure thinking just like it structures us.

Thought is always “toward” something that is “practically unified” in perception (“the world”), and so this suggests that thought, which is often if not always “of” the world, should be “like that” (the way the world “is” suggests also what thought should be like). But thought is that which gains intelligibility by “breaking the world up,” and so if thought tries to be like “unified experience,” it is stuck in a self-feeding irony, trying to be “one” through acts which necessarily divide. Thinking then can become pathological in its Sisyphean failure, and in not wanting to face this fate, thinking can turn to “maps” which deny the dialectical between “the true and the rational” in favor of a self-effacing “autonomous rationality.” But that fate can be hidden behind the “map” which helps thought feel like its efforts are not in vain, that it can gain and become “like the oneness” that characterizes not only perception but some of the most important and meaningful experiences of our lives (beauty, awe, love, etc.). We seem to naturally long for experiences of “oneness” and “unity” (which could be associated with “escaping lack”), and “pure perception” and experience seem to experience just thought — and yet thinking can only ever “break up” and “divide.” “Oneness” seems possible given moments and experiences of love and beauty, and if I can turn off my brain for a moment, it also seems like I can experience it. Why can’t I think it, then? It doesn’t seem fair, and the goal can always seem “right in front of us” — and yet it is always so far away. Faced with this tragic irony, thought can generate a protest — “the map.” And better/worse yet, thought makes that map “indestructible.” We are then locked within “the oneness” of the conspiracy, the ideology, the worldview — thought gets (a likeness of) what it wants (at the cost of self-effacement).

Thought “lacks” unity in its very nature of generating divisions, distinctions, categories, etc., but similarly so does desire, which can seek to escape “lack” with “objects of desire.” Thinking and desire are similar in that both seem to seek a “oneness” that pure perception and experience seem to have access to (not that they technically do, please note — that’s another question), and in thinking and desire seemingly always being “toward” what we perceive and experience, both almost seem arranged to be constantly mocked. Suffering this mockery, desire and thinking (indirectly) work together to generate their protest, “the masterpiece” of both desire and thinking — “the map.” “The map” is perhaps how thinking and desire get back at perception and experience and become “like them,” suggesting even that they are superior to perception and experience in that thought and desire are able to be “toward” what isn’t directly present (the Big Other, for example) — both thus gain “oneness” and validity in seeing through secrecy and beholding “the truth.” Then, thinking and desire make this “map” something perception and experience cannot overturn and deconstruct in making it “indestructible,” and so thinking and desire achieve their victory — but at a heavy cost. We hence sink into anxiety, conspiratorial thinking — self-enclosed, unable to escape, suffering the revenge of thinking and desire against perception and experience…

I am making it sound as if the brain is engaged in a war against itself, with thinking and desire on one side (which for me are always linked as heart/mind), and perception and experience on the other — and indeed, I think there is truth to this schema. If we are to “think dialectically” as I think is required for us (to then “speculatively reason” into The Absolute Choice and the like), we must place thinking and perception in relation with one another, which is to say we keep them from trying to dominate the other. Otherwise, we will end up in “maps” that will prove difficult to escape, precisely because we will see no reason to escape them. After all, we have our “oneness” and “truth” — isn’t this everything we could want? Indeed, thinking engages in many tricks against us, and we must learn many “mental models” to master it so that it does not master us. The hope of O.G. Rose is to provide many of these models, but the question is open on why we should learn these models and for what reason? Ultimately, it will be “to put thinking in its proper bounds” and keep it from trying to be “like perception,” which is to say to keep thinking from seeking a “oneness” and “map” that saves it from incompleteness and “lack.” If we cannot accomplish this goal, thinking will end up eating itself, as it seems so prone and bent on doing. We must think to control thinking so that it hones and relates to perception as a friend, not something to dominate and ignore. “Rationality” needs “nonrationality” as “nonrationality” needs “rationality”; apart, the two will fail, and the world might prove destructively shaped by that failure, falling into totalitarianism, conspiratorial thinking, anxiety, and the like.

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Notes

⁷In his Letters from Prison, Bonhoeffer wrote a disturbing letter. He warned that humans could desire stupidity, and that dictatorships could make themselves “practically invincible” through stupidity. Stupidity could also provide people a “radical freedom” in that they could do whatever they wanted and then claim they didn’t understand why they couldn’t do what they wanted. A stupid person proves free from truth. A stupid person doesn’t have to change and it not be the stupid person’s fault or stubbornness. Stupidity is unstoppable. It is perhaps the ultimate “Dominate Strategy,” which means there is profound incentive to be stupid. Could it prove “nonrational” and help us avoid Nash Equilibria? Maybe, but I think this would be luck and more dangerous than trying to spread Childhood. Stupidity is more dangerous than evil. If a stupid person is destroying the world, the stupid person is not at risk of realizing what he or she does — free, and too stupid to realize he or she isn’t good. (Is this a reason why history repeats?)

⁸We live in a world that needs culture not more content, and map-making can be aligned with content creation; it creates small worlds versus roads to make worlds world.

⁹Bloom, Harold. Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? Riverhead Books. New York, 2004: 87.

¹⁰Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity. Fifth Edition (Second Printing). Brooklyn, NY: Institute of General Semantics, 2000: 45.

¹¹“Maps” still exist in possibility even if many no longer “practically exist” (and note the return to paganism and Noris mythology). In this sense, ideology can be overcome, but it cannot be overcome “within it.” To overcome an apocalyptic ideology, the solution is to keep people from “stepping into it,” to (nonrationally) incentive them to “step out of it,” and/or to somehow lessen the “stickiness” of the map. But how can we accomplish that goal? With a more beautiful, good, and true ideology? But everyone assumedly thinks of their ideology as beautiful, good, and true — somehow, someway. Do we require a “Big Brother” to make sure that no thoughts flourish that will lead people into apocalyptic ideologies? Without a social coordination mechanism, a Liminal Web of some kind, what other choice do we have?

¹²The True Isn’t the Rational has hoped to provide numerous “mind tools” through tackling intellectual problems for making us better thinkers, but even if we are mental geniuses, this would not seem to be enough to solve “the problem of internally consistent systems,” for all these tools would only help us be rational within a worldview, not necessarily between them. Our intellectual genius seems doomed to always be in service to what we believe is true, and on the foundational level, our rationality seems incapable of helping us determine what we should ascribe to as true. Are we doomed? No — the question is where we position ourselves with these tools, if we are “faithfully present,” the condition in which “(re)construction” begins.

¹³Haidt, Jonathan. The Happiness Hypothesis. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2006: 13

¹⁴Veyne, Paul. Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths?. The University of Chicago. 1988, 128.

¹⁵Allusion to “Be Perfect” by Ross Byrd, as can be found here:

Patient Kingdom

Be Perfect

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2 years ago · 34 likes · 10 comments · Ross Byrd

¹⁶Allusion to “Be Perfect” by Ross Byrd, as can be found here:

Patient Kingdom

Be Perfect

Read more

2 years ago · 34 likes · 10 comments · Ross Byrd

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Premise 1: If everyone worked all the time, the economy would collapse, because no one would be out spending.

Premise 2: If no one worked any of the time, the economy would collapse, because no one would be producing and/or have the money to spend.

Conclusion: Between 100% constant working and 100% constant spending, we might consider a curve:

It doesn’t seem like we want an economy in which everyone is working all the time, even though that might be outstanding for productivity, for no one would have any time to translate that productivity into spending to keep productivity financed. Considering this, constant productivity seems impossible. Furthermore, if too many people were working and/or if people were working too often, it would be possible that some productivity would ultimately prove self-defeating, because there wouldn’t be enough spending to translate that productivity into profit. Hence, there needs to be a balance between working and not working—a work life/balance could be good for GDP. If an economy reaches a state where a work/life balance is impossible, the GDP could suffer.

A GDP isn’t simply a reflection of people working: throughout human history, lots of people worked incredibly hard, but that didn’t necessarily translate into wealth. It’s easy to forget that increased productivity doesn’t necessarily translate into a higher GDP, as it’s easy to forget that “hard work” doesn’t pay off if there isn’t someone willing to purchase the good the hard work produced. A GDP is a combination of both productivity and spending: both are necessary. Thus, if all of people’s time is used for productivity, though it could seem like the economy is stronger, it wouldn’t be, but on the other hand if all people did was spend, the economy would also collapse. A productivity/spending dialectic is needed, one like a work/life balance—or is there another, perhaps more problematic direction Capitalism could go in?

I

Points and objections:

1. Does it take the same amount of time to be productive to create $15 as it does to spend $15? No: if I’m working for $7.50 an hour, it takes me 2 hours to make $15, and yet it takes five minutes to purchase a $15 movie at Best Buy. Hence, there is not a 1-to-1 relation in regard to time for productivity and time for spending; rather and generally, it seems that I need much less time to spend than I need to be productive. What exactly is the right ratio? It probably changes between people, depends on industries, and determining it probably transcends what is possible to determine—all I would like to establish here is that it’s possible for increases in productivity to actually lead to decreases in GDP, precisely because the productivity costs the time necessary for the spending required to translate that productivity into value. Is this ever actually a problem? Perhaps not, but the possible tension could nevertheless be relevant to consider.

2. If I was constantly working but someone else wasn’t, that person could theoretically make up for my lack of spending; likewise, as long as there are some people who aren’t working while some are, a balance could be struck. This is indeed so, but if it were the case that the average person’s work hours were increasing, it could be the case that this balance would be more difficult to strike (furthermore, those working might become resentful toward those who have the time to spend). And obviously, if those aren’t working consequently don’t have as much spending power as those who are working, they can’t necessarily make up for other people’s loss of spending: spending will fall beyond productivity, failing to translate it into value. Unless that is through government redistribution, money was moved from those who were working all the time to those who had more time to spend, but again those who were working all the time might resent this and lower their productivity as a result (though this might not necessarily matter, if higher productivity inhibited spending to value it). Also, since it takes more time to produce than to spend, the amount the person not working would have to do to make up for my lack of spending would not have to be equivalent to the number of hours I have worked—that alone could address the problem. But even if so, there is a potential tension here that could direct the market toward resolving this paradox somehow…

3. If between 9 and 5, everyone was at a job, then between 9 and 5, a lot of businesses would be in trouble.

4. If prices increase, it takes less time to spend money: if I have $100 and x costs $20 and a minute to do x, it will take me 4 minutes to spend $100; however, if x is $100, it will only take me one minute. Thus, increased prices could solve problems that might arise from trading “time for employment with time for spending,” but that would be inflationary.

5. The person who spends is productive insomuch as he or she contributes to production: the chef from whom no one buys cannot continue to produce her cakes, and in this way, consumers contribute to production through the chef. Thus, there isn’t a hard line between “production” and “spending,” but what strengthens the distinction is the element of time: every minute I’m working is a minute I’m not spending. Yes, I can perhaps do some online shopping between clients, but I certainly can’t visit Best Buy (hinting at why online shopping might help).

6. There could be more productivity, but without spending, that “higher productivity” might only signify “more hours working” and not an increase in wages or quality of life. Therefore, an increase in the workforce could lead to lower quality of life, unless that is employees are working less hours while maintaining strong and/or increasing wages.

7. Unemployed people tend to have limited income, and thus though they have the time available to spend, it is unlikely they will be able to actually spend in a manner that translates productivity into wealth. Hence, increases in unemployment are unlikely to translate into increases in spending and hence GDP, unless there is in place a strong social safety net that assures the unemployed have spending power—though that “social safety net” could cause businesses to retreat to other countries.

8. It is possible that automation could help us maintain long hours of productivity while preserving time necessary for spending, but if robots increase unemployment, we would have to reconsider how we distribute income and set prices (which might be impossible).

9. Marx argued that under Capitalism people come home from work too tired to engage in culture, and hence that Capitalism contributed to declines in culture. This possibility is explored in “The Tragedy of Us” by O.G Rose; regardless, it’s also possible that the more people work, the more tired they are to spend at all. Yes, people have to eat, so they will always spend on food, and yes, as hours increase, people may spend on what increases their production or on what doesn’t inhibit their production (say music they can listen to while working): I’m not arguing that a society where people work more isn’t a society where people won’t spend at all; rather, I’m arguing that a society with increasingly more work hours is a society where “time-consuming spending” could be eclipsed by “quick and necessary spending,” which entails both fast food and college tuition (seeing as the latter entails spending a whole lot of money quickly).

10. “Trading Wages for Hours” by O.G. Rose argued that at a certain point, trading pay for more hours becomes self-destructive, and that in essence Federal Reserve stimulus methods were such trade-offs. Here, it should be noted that “trading wages for hours” is also problematic in that they take away time necessary to spend increased wages (“well,” at least).

11. Where people are working more hours, their money might be likely to go toward new homes, college education—big, arguably necessary expenses (perhaps that highlight wealth)—precisely because if they have less time to spend, they need to spend a lot when they spend.

12. If in some sense time is money, the use of time on productivity is the loss of money from spending.

II

If everyone was constantly working, no one would be available to purchase clothes, visit restaurants, browse stores, and the like. Therefore, for an economy to prosper, there must be a certain percentage of people who aren’t working some of the time: if too many people aren’t available, the economy might suffer. Yes, employees are also spenders, but for every minute an employee is working, there is one less minute for an employee to be a consumer.

Especially in a service-heavy economy, for growth, people not working are perhaps as important as people working. Perhaps there naturally works out a balance between time employees are on and times that they are off to help keep the market going, but if people are working longer hours, this might not be the case. The less free time people have, even if they are more productive, the less time people have to spend, which ultimately could lead to inefficiencies. Service industries, retail, and business that require people to “be there” will probably suffer, especially if there is an alternative online option that reduces the amount of time it takes to spend $15, per se. (To keep the system going, what if all our “time-saving innovations” are just being used to make (up for) time for spending in light of our lack of time due to working?)

It is not the case that an economy in which people are working more is necessarily a stronger one. It is often spoken about as if full employment is always a good thing, and indeed, without employment, people wouldn’t have money to spend. But if everyone was employed, there would be a lot less time for spending, and this could be a problem. Since there is a finite amount of time, there must be a theoretical point where human productivity couldn’t be increased without decreasing spending. Generally speaking, if humans average around 8 hours of sleep a day, that point could be if everyone was working 16 hours a day. Yes, people might have minutes here and there to do some online shopping, but generally, beyond a 16 hour work day, the GDP would likely suffer. Well, if we’re dealing with humans, and so my main point.

There seems to be a tension between “time needed for productivity” and “time needed for spending,” and humans cannot easily use their time in a way that both produces and spends (certainly not well) at the same time. But businesses and corporations might be able to do this better, and if combining both time-uses was much more efficient, then we should expect Capitalism to increasingly be moved and driven by business expenditure—it’s just more efficient. Oh, and better than that, Artificial Intelligence, which could move around Capital in ways and at speeds we cannot comprehend. And so my point: the tradeoff between spending and producing is an inefficiency of human consumers that can be corrected the more human consumers are replaced by corporate and artificial intelligences.

The most efficient possible Capitalism would be one in which there was a 1-to-1 relationship between productivity and spending, meaning that the time spent doing one was also, at the same time, the time doing the other. This is not possible for human beings, but it would be an ideal, self-feeding system. And so we should expect Capitalism to move itself, by its own tension, away from the human. Could we stop it?

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The mind can be said to often follow a sequence, though not every mind develops identically, and there are easily exceptions. We start with a lack of coherence and correspondence, which is to say that, starting off, our worldview lacks “internal consistency,” and our worldview doesn’t correspond with how reality is actually like. We are just born. We then work to increase coherence and correspondence through school, experience, etc., and, at a certain point, where no more correspondence is possible with much certainty, we might switch to where increasing coherence becomes the focus (perhaps without realizing it). At this point, there can be a move where “coherence” and “correspondence” are “practically conflated,” and this is when “the true” and “the rational” are blurred (which is a category mistake but easy to make), and this is when “autonomous rationality” becomes a deep threat. At this point, we can believe that “increasing coherence” is “increasing correspondence,” when this is not necessarily so. This happens across many people around the world, and so emerges “the problem of internally consistent systems,” Pluralism, tribalism, and the like, problems we can naturally think we can solve by “increasing rationality.” This is because we easily believe “rationality is correspondence,” when really “rationality deals with coherence.” We have blurred “coherence and correspondence” into “coherence = correspondence,” per se, and through this framework, efforts to improve the world can make it worse. And worse. And worse.

The Map Is Indestructible (Amazon)

We each have a map-nature, faced with a geometrical reality of “situation” instead of algebraic “thinghood,” and needing to filter and (un)veil “The Real” to a degree that keeps us growing but not growing too fast that we are self-effaced. Map-making is necessary given that we are finite and cannot handle everything all at once, but this necessity brings a risk: we can choose to identify the map as “what is” (“the territory”) versus “a necessary means of (un)veiling.” It is natural to make this mistake, for it is existentially more stabilizing and requires less energy of us (as Alex Ebert discusses), and there is also incentive to make this mistake with “the loss of givens,” seeing as “maps” can function “practically like givens” to an individual and those who ascent to the same ideology (and what else are we supposed to do when “givens are gone,” needed, and yet there are no valid alternatives available?). Once we make this move of “map-totalization” (A/A), it is then in our interest to map-seal to assure the map isn’t at risk, which can be done through threatening the apocalypse, sanctifying it with martyrs, and/or using dominate strategies in interaction with others (to name a few ways). However, map-sealing could still make the map “visible” (as “a map over/with the territory” (A/B) versus “as the territory” (A/A)), which puts it at risk, meaning the next step of map-vanishing is then easily employed through how evidence is defined, how description is used, how we position ourselves to be “(truly) ignorant” as advantageous to us, and more. And arguably this is all a natural and/or probable continuation of our map-nature as/with map-drive, which we all must have because “reality is situation before the problem of The Real” — the challenge cannot be declined.

Maps follow a logic of achieving map-consistency — no essential contradictions; no “breaks” that unveil “the map isn’t the territory”; etc. — precisely to seem equal to “the situation” of the world. But what is our situation, in which map-situating occurs? Our situation is that “the map isn’t the territory,” that reality is A/B yet must seem A/A so that we are not overwhelmed by “The Real” without any chance of developing ourselves better for it or for handling “otherness,” which means we must be at risk of failing to realize the world is A/B. This natural mistake results in map-totalization, but since “maps” are naturally more individualistic and atomized than “givens,” this map-totalization doesn’t readily manifest as a new global monoculture or something, but instead as a radical multiplication of different worldview options (“Cheap Deleuzianism,” we might say), which is to say that map-totalization leads to map-proliferation. This seems wrong, seeing as “totalization” should mean there isn’t a “proliferation” but a radical unity, but this makes more sense once we realize that “maps” enclosure on themselves quickly and are far less able to incorporate numerous “others” like “givens” could, thanks to the advantage of “thoughtlessness.” “Maps” are thought about, while “givens” are not, but “maps practically function like givens” similarly because they are indestructible (distinct from notions), while “givens” are thoughtless. “What is indestructible” is “practically like” “what isn’t thought about,” in that both are left alone and left to function, but they are still “technically distinct” — and if we are to understand how we might “address” our moment, this technical distinction is important.

Especially with “religious givens,” many “givens” protected by “thoughtlessness” also entailed “a backup plan” of “an indestructible map” (say Christianity), which is to say they entailed a both-ness that has made them particularly powerful as an ideology, but it is not the case from this that “givens are maps”: they can overlap and “practically function” the same, but they are still distinct (we might say there is “Christianity as given(/map)” and now “Christianity as map”). “Maps” are stronger if they are supported with/as “givens,” and so “givens” could address our map-drive; now though, our map-drive is loose and seeking sublation/sublimation (as Cadell Last discusses), which if it cannot find, the consequences can be dire. This “address” is associated in Belonging Again with Nietzschean Childhood, and the map-drive begs the question on if we might “spread Childhood” or not, which is an effort to(ward) (re)construction.

To review the steps:

1. We naturally have a Map-Nature (Part I) because we are A/B but cannot handle A/B directly so need A/A.

2. We then engage in Map-Sealing (Part II) to strengthen our map and keep it defended.

3. We then engage in Map-Vanishing (Part III) to not see our strong map, because the very act of seeing it risks weakening it and making it a cause of anxiety.

4. It is then because of Map-Consistency (Part IV) that maps can stay invisible and ultimately indestructible.

5. This is the case because reality is “situational” (geometric), and consistency makes “a map like the territory” as a Map-Situation (Part V).

6. This then makes it plausible that “the map is the territory” — Map-Totalization (Part VI).

7. Every map though — however analogous to whatever degree — isn’t the territory, and each map then defines itself apart from other maps along “otherness” (which by definition would deconstruct “totalization”), which is vast given the vast amount of differences, and yet every map naturally experiences itself as “everything” and/or total (regardless the amount of disavowal), bringing about Map-Proliferation (Part VII). (This is the natural endpoint of psychosis, but that doesn’t mean a sinthome isn’t possible, though our question is if “the sinthome can spread,” per se.)

8. All of this is instigated, maintained, and multiplied by the human Map-Drive (Part VIII) that we naturally have to avoid anxiety and self-effacement — though this map-drive, when not negated/sublated, can ironically lead to the self-effacement it seeks to avoid. (“Irony is the fabric of reality,” as said in O.G. Rose.)

9. Due to irony latent in human-(be)coming, we must work to (Re)construction (Part IX).

Step 9 is on where we will end Volume II of The True Isn’t the Rational to set the stage for Volume III, where the “break” opened up between “the true” and “the rational” is treated as a space for the cultivation of Attention and Childhood — an essential thrust of Belonging Again (Part II). In this “break,” it is possible to nonrationally move between “indestructible maps” without destroying them, and in this Gödel Point, we can ask phenomenologically, “What are the conditions of possibility necessary for this ‘break’ to exist and for me to experience it?” And to this question, Hegel with “The Absolute Choice” might smile.

As a final point for our opening, it should be noted that it’s hard to listen to a conversation now where someone doesn’t mention that theory has to come back to practice. There is a nervousness about being abstract without getting back to lived experience, and this is an intellectual advancement. However, the question is: what should we ground theory in? Should it be ground in metrics and consequences? Or should it be grounded in anxiety, “breaks,” and contradictions? Might it be that we stress getting “theory back to practice” to avoid discussing “theory getting back to failures”? I would not overly-state this, but perhaps the main difference between Analytical and Continental Philosophy today is the difference between Pragmaticism and Psychoanalysis? Now, I don’t mean to say these categories can’t overlap and don’t relate (this is not a hard binary), but it’s interesting to think that not all things theory “gets back to” are necessarily equal. It can seem like there’s “nothing but the concrete” for the abstract to be grounded in, and in a sense that’s true, but not all expressions of the concrete are the same.

Again, there is emphasis today on “a return to the body” and “not being heads on a stick,” and O.G. Rose has attempted to make clear how necessary this is if we are not to fall into “autonomous rationality” that proves autocannibalistic (notably through David Hume). However, though facing Lacan’s “The Real” entails being in the body and facing practice, it is not the case that emphasizing Pragmaticism will necessarily entail Psychoanalysis; in fact, the exact opposite could be the case. In my view, it is more likely Psychoanalysis entails Pragmaticism than Pragmaticism entails Psychoanalysis (William James in Lacan is more likely than Lacan in James), and we might say that though Pragmaticism well-describes “things to things,” once we start discussing “things to us,” we must incorporate a Psychoanalytical element or be at great risk. Now, since we are “always already” discussing “things to us” even while we try to discuss “things to things,” it could be argued that we are always dealing with something that needs to be considered Psychoanalytically, and this for me is why we should emphasis Psychoanalysis. Ultimately, if we are to avoid the pitfalls of “the indestructible map” which ideology so naturally fall into, we are going to need to emphasis something “nonrational” like experience and the concrete, but which experiences in particular will be critical. And which exactly are for O.G. Rose very Real, which means we must focus on surprise, irony, encounter, and the like. Furthermore, we will have to stay “faithfully present” to those experiences of “The Real.” But why should we do that? Well, it won’t be easy to say until we first “(re)construct A is A” — hence the third book of our trilogy and work on “The Absolute Choice.” But let us finish Volume II.

I

In a conversation with Rahul Sam, Dr. Stijn Vanheule made the point that “psychosis is the human condition,” which is a state in which we realize the “groundlessness of our being.” Humans are “groundless beings,” and in this way, psychosis is not madness but actually in a way more real than a “sanity” which believes “humans are grounded beings.” Alfred Korzybski would not disagree, but he might say that we are “groundless” (in an Algebraic sense) because we are “situational” (Geometric): we are “held up” by and in “networks/relations” (from “the side,” per se), not from “underneath” (Transcendentally). Psychosis is a revelation that “we are not what we are” (perhaps “fallen”), but though it is true that “humans are groundless,” this realization could be potential for a negation/sublation into the realization that “humans are situational.” Unfortunately, psychosis precisely threatens our capacity to relate to others and to establish social intelligibility (a “Cheap Deleuzianism”), so the first step on the road to realizing “humans are situational” is a step that threatens to halt future progress. Life is risk.

Dr. Vanheule beautifully describes how we are all born with instinctual drives that our bodies don’t teach us how to handle (I was also taken by his articulation that “suffering is when we are a problem to ourselves” — stunning). For most of history, “the problem of biological drives” was “outsourced” to “givens,” traditions, and the like: to learn what you should do with food, sex, and the like, Christianity would tell you (which wasn’t “just your parents,” please note, giving it a “higher,” more binding, and more widespread authority). Where “givens” are dissolving though, we still have the problem of biological drives, but no clear notion of how to direct them (we lack a way to be “subject-ed,” “made into subjects”). This means we have more freedom, but it also means we are more confused, putting us at risk of “falling into a psychosis of groundlessness” that actually gets us closer to “the Real of human beings,” but this at the same time risks our sanity (in a way that we don’t experience as losing sanity, please note, for our minds more so “crystalize in on themselves” than “break”) and capacity for relating beyond ourselves. Dr. Vanheule notes that where there is no tradition, there is only invention, which characterizes the state of psychosis: it is constant invention to “fill in the void” of “nonexistent ground.” We must invent, faced with this, for otherwise “The Real” will be too much (Lovecraftian). We will be self-effaced, but what are the chances that we invent something which addresses and sublimates our drives that doesn’t at the same time sacrifice social intelligibility and our capacity to socialize? Low. Problematic tribalism is likely.

Belonging Again spoke extensively of Childhood, Absolute Knowers, and Deleuzian Dividuals, suggesting that our critical question today is if “Childhood can spread” (in the Nietzschean sense). Here, following Dr. Vanheule (whose analysis on the differences between Lacan, Jung, and Peterson is also outstanding), we might also think of James Joyce, who Lacan spoke on, and particularly the point that James Joyce was a psychotic who found a way to sublimate his psychosis through invention in his writing. That said, Finnegans Wake is a great example of how something that sublimates our drives and deals with our “groundlessness” can ultimately at the same time prove difficult to make a basis for social intelligibility (Joyce is incredibly difficult), but still we see a way in Joyce to deal with “The Real” (while his daughter did not so well succeed, tragically). To speak of Childhood then can be associated with speaking of Joyce, and we are asking if we might “spread Joyce” in the sense that we might spread the conditions which increase the probability that average people learn to “sublimate drives amid groundlessness,” but more critically they learn to do so without sacrificing social intelligibility (ergo, the possibility of Global Pluralism). This is the extraordinary challenge of our moment, and where no proper address has been provided, we have had to settle on what is best on offer; mainly, “indestructible maps.” And this is another way to describe “the problem of internally consistent systems” which Volume II of The True Isn’t the Rational has focused on.

Dr. Vanheule stresses that psychosis (“groundlessness”) is “the human condition,” and ultimately responses to this “groundlessness” come down to some kind of invention (even “givens” were at a time “invented,” at least in their implementation, even if they were done in such a way to make the “givens” be experienced as “realized” or else risk being arbitrary and un-authoritative to people).¹ Ross Byrd discusses ‘the problem of unmediated or improperly mediated exposure to God,’ creating a tension between “inclusive” and “holiness” which requires “an art of atonement” (as “covering” and/or “(un)veiling”); similarly, we can think of “invention” as functioning like “atonement/covering,” regarding how humans relate to “The Real.”² Perhaps through different language, mythology, and the like, religions actually dealt with the problem of psychosis, not always simply by denying the Real of “groundlessness,” but instead by providing structures, rituals, and practices of “(un)veiling” that helped people approach “The Real” without being entirely destroyed (a point that brings to mind Richard Boothby’s work on Das Ding). Today, in someone like Joyce or the Child, we see an iteration of this same religious function in the individuated, creative act itself, which is indeed a way to successfully deal with “the problem of groundlessness” and to sublimate drives so that psychosis doesn’t destroy us. But this leads to a problem of atomization and loss of social intelligibility, but to this we have another strategy: the created invention that proves more social is “the map,” but this leads us to “the problem of internally consistent systems.” And so we can describe our movement to the present day as follows:

“The Problem of Groundlessness” (Psychosis)
was dealt with by religions, traditions, etc. until “the loss of givens.”

Now, the problem is dealt with by
Joyce, Childhood, and/or “a map,”
which regardless leaves us with

“The Problem of Internally Consistent Systems”
and that’s where we are
(fragmenting, reversing globalization, failing Pluralism, etc.).

A question of Belonging Again (Part II) is if “maps” are the best we can hope for to deal with “the loss of givens,” or if there might be more (which I also think is necessary for us to avoid “The End of True History”). Despite their pitfalls (and nothing is perfect), “maps” are indeed a way to deal with all of this, though: “maps” are like “givens” and so help us avoid encountering “The Real” too much. But “maps” do not extend socially like do “givens”: they are “smaller” and more limited, we might say. “Maps” can help us with sanity, as writing helped Joyce, but both “maps” and “creative projects” run into the problem of scale and spread (critical concerns of Part 2). Lacan describes Joyce as finding a “sinthome” for himself, which we can think of as an enjoyment in his symptom, and this indeed addresses “groundlessness” (and notice how “creative acts” in their very making generate an “(un)veiling”: we see the goal but then aren’t entirely at the goal, and even when it’s done can feel we failed, perhaps like Faulkner, and so on). Might it be possible for “A Global Pluralism of the Sinthome”? A world that moves from desire to (a sublimated) drive, a world of “intrinsic motivation” that at the same time can handle Otherness? If the answer is no, then Belonging Again might fail, and we seem doomed to repeat what Ross Byrd describes in the Bible, even after Jesus (‘the veiled unveiling’): ‘They wanted a version of atonement without apocalypse, the covering of the law without the proper uncovering which leads to true union.’³

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II

Gödel moves incompleteness from outside of maps to within them, which seems like it would destroy maps, but actually it can make them indestructible. “Incompleteness” before Gödel could more easily function as evidence that a map was wrong (because it would have shown us, before we knew about “the map/territory distinction,” that what we thought was the territory wasn’t); now, it just shows that a map is a map, which we already know. After the reading of Gödel leading to nihilism or Postmodern relativism, “a crisis of faith” is easily harder now, for in a sense we’ve already gone through that crisis and come out the other side. What can save us now? What can we experience that would make us doubt that our map is the territory when we already know it isn’t and yet that very fact is part of our map? Is this a development we should celebrate, seeing as it seems to deal with “the loss of givens” and help existentially stabilize us again? The method sacrifices Global Pluralism and encloses us all in crystallized structures (“locked within,” alluding to Lewis). Psychosis as life, at the price of social intelligibility. But perhaps this is the best we can hope for? Perhaps, but I think Brandon Griggs (January 2025 on IDW) put it very well, speaking of O.G. Rose, when he wrote: ‘culture, community, and ethics require givens, yet global optimization is the universal acid that dissolves any given that enforces difference. Without givens, the algorithm always wins.’⁴ (Land waits.)

The Map Is Indestructible is the second book in The True Isn’t the Rational trilogy, but it has also been released amid the publication of Belonging Again, precisely because “maps” are what we can turn to with the collapse of “givens.” If we do not understand “maps” and all of their methods of pulling us into them, then whatever “address” we might generate to respond to Belonging Again will likely fail. An “address” that ultimately proves manipulated and vulnerable to map-dynamics will prove fragile and likely temporary at best, and though ultimately we cannot escape “maps” entirely, it doesn’t follow that all living and operating inside of “maps” is equal. There are real differences between how Absolute Knowers relate to “maps” versus say people who are not Children, and the ability to exercise and live that difference is necessary if any “address” is to be possible. For this reason, an exploration of “maps” felt appropriate to accompany Belonging Again.

Faith dies by the congregation, not so much the individual, or so it was said in “The Truth Is Veiled in Blood,” which is to say we need to socially believe to believe at all. Where “givens” are gone though, this is a problem, for how do we find social conditions in which our beliefs could be “socialized into existence,” per se? “Maps” — we can turn to “internally consistent systems,” and better yet invest “blood” into them (“the unthinkable” can help us bear reality, alluding to Eliot). The capacity of “maps” to continue existing and even grow after the loss of “givens” is only possible if rationality is not “autonomous,” for if nothing is “given,” rationality shouldn’t be possible if rationality was in the business of “correspondence.” But rationality can operate to itself without “givens,” even though this technically isn’t substantive and in a sense “real” — rationality easily deludes itself.

There have always been “maps,” and “maps” arose with “givens” to help organize activity relative to those “givens.” Now that “givens” have collapsed, “maps” have multiplied and spread to cover that loss, for they are not bound to a need to correspond with “givens” — rationality is freer to relate to rationality, creatively and unbound. But in this very multiplication, “maps” have helped unveil the true nature of rationality, which is to say rationality is always “situated” (think Leibniz) within a (nonrational) truth. “Autonomous rationality” doesn’t exist, for if it did, we would expect to see “maps” bound in their existence by the very rationality which organizes them. But “maps” are not so bound, meaning rationality doesn’t in itself need to “correspond” with reality in order to be rational. Rationality is only coherence, and though coherence matters, the genius and the madman both have coherence in common (they are isomorphic, which brings Alex Ebert on the “drunk or monk” to mind).

“Maps” existed with “givens,” but they were “practically identical” in function, while now “maps” remain after “the loss of givens” and function to conceal “groundlessness” with an “indestructible system” that we “cannot fall through,” per se (we arguably want “maps” to spread and “take over,” even as we disavowal them). Unfortunately, without “givens,” the creation of maps is no longer bound: as discussed in “Coda I,” we are dealing presently with a radical multiplication of “maps,” because now “maps” only have to relate to themselves (there is unleashed “coherence,” no longer bound by the (virtual) “correspondence of givens”). “Givens” might have contained the spread of “internally consistent systems,” but now that spread seems infinite. On a positive side, this means that everyone could indeed be a Joyce, but on a negative side, this means social intelligibility could be totally lost. The stakes are high.

Why shouldn’t we hope to just “go back” though? Is there anything gained at all in this “move to maps”? The Conflict of Mind by O.G. Rose described a “conflict of mind”-situation as one where “epistemic responsibility” came in conflict with “epistemic possibility,” and once that situation arises, trying to untangle the Gordian knot is a Pynchon Risk, which is to say it is a situation we will never totally come out of, and one that we might contribute to and make worse by venturing into (say like in a Kafka novel). Belonging Again has suggested that “givens,” traditionally established by religions, could be located at points where “conflicts of mind” were located, meaning we could avoid those “Pynchon Risks” by not thinking about them (“thoughtlessness”). However, where there are “givens,” there can be “the banality of evil” which Hannah Arendt described, and that means the assurance there is no “banality of evil” requires removing “givens” which protected us from “conflict of mind”-situations.⁵ Now, the “givens” are gone, and that means we feel compelled to take “Pynchon Risks.” Faced with this, we might turn to totalitarianism to escape, or at least map-totalization (not that these options exclude one another).

“The loss of givens” is arguably a moral advancement, opening us to Pluralism, fighting bigotry in “norms,” and helping us avoid horrors like Nazism. However, this advancement is contingent on if we can sustain it, and “maps” can function perhaps as a transition from “givens” to say Childhood, but “indestructible maps” shouldn’t be treated as an end (or so is the hope of our “new address”) — the world will fragment apart, leading to devolution and possible war. Unfortunately, this mistake seems likely, for based on what we have explored in this book, Volume II, we do have reason to think that “Liberal Democracy” is unlikely (at least without a proper address of “the problem of internally consistent systems”).⁶ However, if we realize there is a “conflict of mind” and that “the map is indestructible,” there is hope: we can negate/sublate ourselves for “faithful presence” and encounter — matters we will unpack.

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Notes

¹Associable with Love(Craft), Ross Byrd’s thinking on “The (Un)veiling of God” could be associated with this isomorphic, sociological problem; as Byrd describes in his piece, “Why God Hides”: ‘the Bible can be seen as the story of two opposite flowing streams, holiness (“setting apart”) and inclusion (“bringing in”), which ultimately flow together in Christ and his church. Applying this framework can help us to see things in Scripture which we might have otherwise missed or misunderstood. I’d like to propose another framework here, which can similarly help us to see the pattern of God’s redemptive project from Genesis to Revelation more clearly. In short, the Bible is the story of two seemingly opposite movements: atonement (‘covering’) and apocalypse (‘uncovering’),’ precisely because if we experience God’s Holiness all at once, we will be destroyed. Similarly, if we experience “Real groundlessness” too much too soon, we will similarly be self-effaced.

²See “Why God Hides” by Ross Byrd, as can be found here:

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2 years ago · 15 likes · 8 comments · Ross Byrd

³See “Why God Hides” by Ross Byrd, as can be found here:

Patient Kingdom

Why God Hides

Nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. (Mark 4:22…

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2 years ago · 15 likes · 8 comments · Ross Byrd

⁴To continue from Griggs: ‘Yes, some of us get how arbitrary givens are. We are the deleuzian dividuals, absolute knowers, nietzschean children who delightfully play with meaning and narrative to defy optimization. But without givens everyone else gets optimized into conformity. / [This state] has the added advantage of requiring no deception. Just a commitment to epistemic non-interference — to stop insisting on dissolving every possible given. To stop being enlightenment prigs. / […] The absolute knowers become the philosopher kings who wink at the tribes while developing the protocols for fractal and hierarchical membranic coordination. Anyone can join this priestly class […]’

⁵Again, religions could locate “givens” at places where epistemic responsibility conflicted with epistemic possibility, shielding and protecting us from that conflict, but at risk of say causing a “banality of evil.” Avoiding a “conflict of mind” that contributes to racism and slavery is an immoral act; at the same time, we’re also not made to handle perpetual psychological and existential uncertainty (and it is arguably also immoral to deny people a society in which they can find “belonging”). When we do, we quickly become exhausted, and that’s when we are easy to manipulate and control. It is possible that government and dictators know this, and that now they use “conflict of mind”-situations that we can no longer avoid (the “givens” being gone and religions weakened) in order to “exhaust” us and make us no longer a threat. That, or perhaps the State presents us with “conflict of mind”-situations so that we fall into them, spend all our intellectual-energy on them, and never escape to oppose the State. Either way, the removal of “givens” could easily be used in service of State power, even though the power of “givens” served the powerful as well.

Considering this, though effacing “givens” seems to increase individual freedom from the State, and it certainly does increase freedom in some regard, it’s not clear that we are “free from the State,” for it seems the State now just controls us with “conflict of mind”-situations. They are like landmines spread across the culture landscape, and where before they were covered by “givens,” now they are not. The State doesn’t “force us” to land on one of these, but they might realize it’s only a matter of time before we do and thus cease to be a concern to them. We also might be paralyzed by fear, knowing the “landmines” are out there and not wanting to touch any.

⁶Why? As an example: if Game Theory would have most conversations fail, due to Nash Equilibriums, that alone will help us understand why Democracy is unlikely and power wins the day. (“The Game Theory on Why Most Conversations Are Bad and Democracy Is Doomed”). Also, if “the map is indestructible,” even if we overcome Nash Equilibriums in conversations, we will still not be able to “break the tie” through rationality, unless that is the conversation can unveil a certain position as not being “internally consistent.” Then, a winner will be determined due to a failure of other parities to achieve “coherence,” assuming the “coherence” view is found to entail some degree of “correspondence” with reality. It is debatable if a “winner” is determined in a discussion between conspiracy theorists who hold no views which correspond with reality, even if one theorist ultimately proves to be more “coherent” than all the others.

If all players involved in a discussion are found to be “equally coherent,” the next step will be to determine which players hold views which “correspond” with reality. If only one player is found to correspond and be coherent, that player will win. “Correspondence” with reality requires a shared belief that “the external world is real and matters,” which also means there must be an agreement on which data points, facts, etc. apply to the conversation. This is not an easy step and brings us to the issues of “Ludwig and the Authority Circle,” though I do think it’s possible (the guidelines for going about this hopefully being suggested in those works and others by Rose).

But what if all players are found to be equally “coherent” and “correspondent” (as much as practically possible, at least, considering certainty is impossible) — what should happen then? Well, this is when Dr. Hunter’s “substantive democracy,” as described in both “The Conflict of Mind” (mainly Section VIII) and “Belonging Again,” seems utterly necessary, which is basically the ability to find “middle grounds” between “first principles” and ideologies which don’t make both parities feel compromised and existentially destabilized. But this is incredibly difficult and may always feel like a “betrayal” to those involved — the likelihood we will be able to handle this is low. Furthermore, it is indeed possible that “substantive democracy” could be used to maintain bigotry, injustice, and worse.¹

¹If “truth organizes values,” then a situation where no player can be determined “the winner” is a situation where it is not clear which truth should be ascribed to, and thus which values we should follow. In this circumstance, the categories of “good” and “bad” will not easily be applied, and it suggests some players will have to live with other players doing what they think is “bad,” which will feel like “passivity” and an “enabling of immorality.” This will not be easy to stomach, and, as described in “Belonging Again,” make totalitarianism tempting.

How do we avoid this? Well, it would seem very critical that everyone ascribes to a truth which is ultimately “incomplete” and yet still feels complete enough to make us able to operate. The goal of The True Isn’t the Rational has been to argue that ultimately all worldviews cannot be rendered “axiomatic,” a point aided by the work of Kurt Gödel, an argument which gives us the “incomplete”-part we need for our equation, but not the “complete”-part (which in sum will give us a feeling of “(in)completeness”). Historically, that “complete-part” could be provided by “martyrs” (“The Truth Is Veiled In Blood”) (and it’s not by chance “martyrs” are deeply associated with religion, which often entail “finding completeness in fundamental incompleteness”). Who are the martyrs today? The victims of censorship? Inclusion?

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The Map Is Indestructible (Amazon)

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An online, decentralized movement of communities has arisen and multiplied, and at this point it’s so vast we couldn’t name all the groups involved. They are referenced throughout Belonging Again, a work which would be impossible without them. To speak generally and leave much out, these groups are focused on relationships, thinking, speaking, reading, teaching, research, design, creativity, and explorations into philosophy, theory, sociology, negativity, complexity, personhood, one another, and much more. We might call them “philosophical communities,” but that description is limited: even though philosophical or say abstract discourse is often incorporated, the online space is not just “about” philosophy — that’s often just the language best at hand for the subjects considered, which are considered because it has been accepted in these spaces that the topics matter not for specialized or abstract niches but for living a better life. It might seem like Heidegger and Hegel are impractical, for example, but ever-more people are concluding that they are very practical indeed.

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I’ve started to think of what is happening online as a “Bildung-20 Movement,” not because it entirely started in 2020 (many people involved have been working for decades longer), but because I think Covid-19 lead to a great acceleration and proliferation of the movement as of 2020. What is Bildung? According to NordicBildung.org:

‘Bildung is a German word for education, cultivation, personal formation and character, emotional and moral development, and maturation combined. Definitions abound, and we will never be done with exploring and defining them.’

“Bildung” has a long history in German Idealism, and it is more expansive than the traditional school curriculum (for a tremendous elaboration, see “Microcollege Podcast, E50: The Nordic Secret with Lene Rachel Andersen”) — we’ll unpack the concept more when we discuss “The Nordic Secret.” Alternatively, another terminological option that I’ve often used is “The Liminal Web,” and the inventor of the phrase, Joe Lightfoot, describes the online movement as:

‘Somewhere along the way I seem to have unofficially joined a subculture or memetic ecosystem that I’ve come to think of as The Liminal Web. While there aren’t any hard and fast edges to this international constellation of thinkers and theorists it becomes pretty clear you’ve joined the fray when at least thirty percent of all the intellectual media you consume tends to emerge from this particular noospheric relay […]

‘The Liminal Web is a collection of thinkers, writers, theorists, podcasters, videographers and community builders who all share a high crossover in their collection of perspectives on the world. It not only includes creators of content but also the people and communities who resonate with the constellation of ideas such creators put forward.

‘I settled on the name Liminal because one definition of the word is ‘to occupy a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold’ which for me speaks perfectly to the idea that everyone in the space is in their own unique way attempting to mid-wife a new kind of regenerative culture whilst simultaneously hospicing the old. Jeremy Johnson offers a beautiful interpretation of why the word Liminal is so fitting for our times in this piece from his magazine of the same name. I use the term here lightly with the expectation that the scene will of course continue to evolve, shift and change over time along with the names we use to describe it. That’s what scenes do after all, run one after another in a much larger play.’¹

So, it’s a podcast ecosystem? A bit, but also more. Since Trump’s reelection in 2024, the power and influence of decentralized, online podcasting has been increasingly acknowledged, and some have come to call the space “New Media.” Is New Media a good thing? In “Konstantin Kisin is Wrong about Joe Rogan and New Media,” Emily Jashinsky of Undercurrents gave a strong defense of New Media in April 2025 (see “Konstantin Kisin is Wrong about Joe Rogan and New Media”), responding to the concerns Kisin has come to feel about “Podcastistan” (as he called it). Kisin sees podcasts now not in the business of truth-seeking but entertainment, leading to a convergence on material people want versus material people might need. This point acknowledged, Jashinsky gave strong reasons why the world is better with New Media to challenge Legacy Media—even Legacy Media is better for it—and she also made a good point that people today don’t just watch a single news-source: they hear something on Breaking Points, then check out Young Turks, then check out CNN, and then jump down a wiki-rabbit-hole. Jashinsky stressed that people don’t have a source but sources, and citizens compare and judge more, which makes us all better (I am a fan of training judgment, as hopefully this book makes clear). It’s true New Media has downsides, but those are better than a Legacy Media without competition. I agree with Jashinsky, but I also agree with Kisin: fortunately, the Liminal Web isn’t just Podcastistan, and even if part of New Media, as I understand it, it is distinct as a Social Coordination Mechanism which ultimately inspires people not just to consume but meet in real life, to not just be entertained but to cultivate themselves to experience “flow” in Dialogos before “the strike of beauty”—and more. Still, concerns of “The Liminal Web” are warranted, and my hope and belief is that the parts of it that are more “Podcastistan”-ish than SCM will be “naturally selected out” with time.

Over the years, I think parts of “The Early Liminal Web” have evolved and changed increasingly away from “Podcastistan” into something more like “A Participatory Web,” which focuses on relationships over content, where we are trying to make the movement of “the human” as fast as the movement of Capital, or else no dialectic can form between them which could afford “an extension of humanity” versus our replacement. That said, to actually defend podcasts a bit, in my view, there is something educational about the hunger for podcasts, suggesting that people want to learn more than we’ve often assumed. Yes, Podcastistan can become about consumption and entertainment, but even then, I think it still must be more on the side of educating than many movies or shows. No, it’s not perfect, but even in the podcasts most bent on building an audience (“Attentionalism”), they still must provide something interesting, informative, insightful, relational—in that, for me, is the hope. Perhaps what is discussed is ill-informed, propaganda, manipulative, and wrong, but the point is that, in the high number of podcasts, the audience must feel they gained something out of listening, which is to say they feel like they learned something. My point is that there is something fundamentally “educational” at the core of podcasts, and I think the better we can bring out and refine that core, the more we can unlock a critical potential, as suggested by Owen’s work on Plato and education.

“Owen in the Agon” released a course in 2025 titled “Plato’s Elite Pedagogy,” and in it he makes the profound point that philosophy was birthed out of the struggle to figure out what education “is,” which is to say philosophy was founded in a social and political struggle over the meaning of education itself. I would argue this struggle has not been “addressed” at the origin of philosophy that we might see Socrates as the personification of, and in many regards our inquiry into “spreading Childhood” is related precisely to this question. I don’t want to say the SCM is just about education (it depends on what we mean), but “the question of what education is” is at the heart of it, which Owen in the Agon points out is a question that threatens power. Why? How? Owen’s class is about precisely that question, and we will focus more on education directly in II.3; for now, it suffices to note that philosophy requires a certain state to be possible, and yet philosophy is about gaining that certain state, which poises a problem. As Owen put it, what philosophy inquires into is that which we need for inquiry itself. Are we stuck? It would seem that way, but fortunately Sociology, design, architecture, and the like is partly in the business of dealing with such paradoxes.

Plato's Elite Pedagogy (Course)

Owen wants us to really asks about what it means that Socrates “corrupted the youth,” and to see this as an educational concern. He was educating them in a problematic way, but how exactly? This has to be expanded on, but perhaps we might think of Socrates as teaching kids today to pursue a study of the humanities that “won’t get them a job” against the wishes of their parents (think the Dead Poets Society, which is easy to applaud when it’s not our kid involved). Isn’t Socrates setting these kids up for financial ruin? Suggesting they should get a college degree that will put them in major debt with little prospects of employment? How can we allow this influence, this manipulation, even? If we really loved our children, we’d stop Socrates, wouldn’t we? And how would society function if everyone studied art and philosophy? There are pressing and practical concerns we must address; if not, the social order could collapse. Indeed — I hope this example makes the point, which is one I think many people actually do struggle with today. And yet what if it was the case that if we didn’t risk “corrupting the youth,” we could be self-effaced before our AI-Causer? That is basically my claim, while at the same time acknowledging that Socrates really is dangerous, for he threatens social “givens” without which we can be overwhelmed and destroyed by anxiety (Part I), making room for Capital. It is not wrong to be worried about Socrates, but the time is up when we could put off the challenge of his pedagogy, which Owen and I also discussed can be thought as the pedagogy needed for transitions between Fourth Turnings and (new) First Turnings, alluding to Strauss and Howe. It will require elaboration in II.3, but the claim is that we’ve never addressed the educational challenge of Socrates and instead just tried alternatives, which were perhaps fine enough for Fourth to First transitions until now, before our AI-Causer. For the sake of this address, perhaps philosophy must be a risk of “corrupting the youth” to be itself, but if the youth can’t be misguided, they are already too far gone to be guided well at all.

Life Itself with host Jacob Kishere as host released a number of conversations leading up to a May 2025 conference at Harvard focused on the question of education for our day and age, and I have strong resonance with Zak Stein’s emphasis that our main problem today is fundamentally an educational one. Though I’ve admittedly used the terms interchangeably in the past, Stein claims that beneath “The Poly-Crisis” — or the multitude of problems facing us regarding Climate, Financial, Geopolitical, etc. — is a “Meta-Crisis” that is a “core problem” (think Illich and Nietzsche) which is generating the Poly-Crisis, and that the Meta-Crisis requires educational transformation— “a return to the problem of Socrates,” we might say, in light of Owen’s work. I personally see the Meta-Crisis in these terms as the need to negate/sublate A/A into A/B (Childhood), and I agree that certain conditions, infrastructure, etc. must be spread which incubate a mode of subjectivity that is able to operate beyond an autonomous logic of Capital. This change is educational, enabling the possibility of “opening the eye of value” and for society to then be able to handle “non-arbitrary discussions about value.” Bonnita Roy also stresses education, but in a way that stresses a facilitation that enables “insight” (which we can associate with Jan Zwicky), versus memorization and technical proficiency. We need to create spaces where people can realize insight for themselves versus be told what to think and do, and my hope is that the SCM can indeed so function in alignment with the work of both Stein and Roy.

Anyway, to return to focusing on “The Liminal Web” (“LW”), in a conversation on SENSESPACE with Jacob Kishere, Tim Adalin, Layman Pascal, and myself (“What Is the Liminal Web?”), we discussed the pros and cons of the name, “The Liminal Web,” and why also the space did not start out as a “Social Coordination Mechanism” in the way I like to describe it. Tim Adalin was eloquent in his admonishments, and I understand that people word different things in different ways: when I discuss “The Liminal Web,” I am admittedly, right or wrong, discussing what it is to me. There are also arguments to be made that the Liminal Web could consist of people who made careers “explaining” the problems of the world, leaving the next generation to “address” the problems, but the next generation might lack resources to do so, resources the older generation might garner by explaining and speaking about our challengers. If “explanations” are easier to make sustainable careers and platforms on compared to “addresses,” this could lead to generational resentment.

Cadell Last in his class on “Christian Atheism” describes the dangerous, psychoanalytical dynamic where the Father doesn’t help the Son replace him, while at the same time the Son could disown or resent the Father—neither of these routes are sustainable. There are shortcomings of what we might call “The Early Liminal Web,” but I also don’t want to resent the Father or fail to acknowledge the possibilities it opened up. I also personally have never like naming “things” or “movements,” but this is a reason to force myself to discuss “The Liminal Web”: facing negativity is important. If the Father doesn’t help the Son advance say through resources, and/or if the Son rejects and resents the Father, the Social seems doomed. What Cadell taught on can help us avoid this fate, but it is not easy to be “Real” in ourselves.

I personally have no problem with other terms being use than “The Liminal Web” to describe what is emerging online, and perhaps that will keep an overly-rigged understanding and construct from forming, in a way similar to how the myriad of images, names, and metaphors used for “pointing to” God in religions can help a balance be struct between the apophatic and cataphatic (so that God isn’t too knowable or too unknowable), a balance without which idolatry and failure are likely. A multitude of languages can keep the structure from being too “enclosed” and more “dis-enclosed” (as I spoke with Cleo Kearns about, #218): where our understanding of something is ever-destabilized “just enough” — a “mean” that perhaps only language versus structural variation can strike — our subject can be kept alive, dynamic, and inviting.

Also, what is happening online might at this point be less an “official thing” than something more like pickleball, to drop in a comparison from Greg Dember at Philosophy Portal (May 5, 2025). After Cadell spoke of the on-line movement as a “Para-Academic Network” (a fantastic title), Dember invited us to think of pickleball, which is rapidly growing in popularity. Dember noted that an individual’s enjoyment of pickleball isn’t contingent on pickleball spreading, and the individual also enjoys the game as an end in itself, but at the same time people playing pickleball can know they are part of a growing movement. Their chances of meeting other people who play pickleball is rising, which also means there’s a better chance they’ll find something in common with others, and also if they travel, they’re more likely to find logistics and infrastructure provided for which they can play pickleball. This can also help them form new relationships with greater ease, gain social capital, and overall feel connected to something new and “happening.” I think this is a wonderful comparison of Dember, and I think it captures well the disposition of how people can think about the online spaces of the SCM. Also, this particular “social unfolding” might be unique to communities which orbit an activity like a sport, for then the community is not based on say ideological identification but more on an experience and activity. This is why it’s important that the SCM is not primarily about teaching and believing certain ideas (not that this doesn’t matter at all), but more so an experience. The experience of the conversation in terms of flow, quality, self-forgetfulness, emergence—all of this is critical in providing a quality that moves the SCM to where a comparison with pickleball is valid.

I see the SCM as part of our “address” and possibly facilitating what Cadell Last calls in Global Brain Singularity a “metasystem transition,” which for me can be associated with a change in “the dialectic between energy and creativity” (II.1), and of which can afford entirely different kinds of social, pollical, and economic ways of organizing — as today seems necessary before our AI-Causer. Alluding to Badiou, Layman Pascal suggested that the subject is formed by taking a gamble and that the LW was a good gamble to take. We don’t know how things will end up, which I think is necessary if we are to find healing, as Kishere stresses, for there is a connection between “healing” and “courage,” for there is a connection between “courage” and “being human,” perhaps because ‘the meaning of life is courage,’ as Alex Ebert has said.

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A great honor of mine throughout 2025 has been a series of discussions with and : we’ve explored “authentic resonance,” Gestalt Theory, “the problem of forgiveness,” the primacy of Geometry, and much more. In our first November conversation, we discussed “The Drift,” which I often think about, where people gradually stop speaking to one another, attending things together, checking in, etc. There isn’t necessarily a big moment where everyone starts fighting and things collapse in rage, but rather someone says something that someone doesn’t like, and then next time there is a chance to speak, the person hesitates and decides to do it tomorrow. And then tomorrow. And then the person waits another day, and then a year. The break isn’t dramatic. There’s no clear point where we can say it happened. It just does. People stop speaking with one another. And that is when we enclose in ourselves and crystalize in our separation. Not with a bang, as Eliot put it, but with a whimper.

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Aspasia offered an eloquent description of how people can “drift” in order to “save energy,” and how that becomes a “reasonable and effective strategy” which people are habituated into and then trained to use throughout their lives, leading to further isolation and separation, relationship by relationship. We discussed how we are exhausted today and lack energy, and if relationships drain us of energy, it becomes a survival mechanism to avoid them. We discussed how we find ourselves in life having to “save energy” or “spend energy,” and how for many people relationships “spend energy.” In a world where energy is limited and we need more energy than we have, it only makes sense then that we’d reduce our relationships. What choice do we have? And so we drift…

We “drift” and cease interacting because we are exhausted and trying to “save energy” in a world where timenergy is rare (as Dave McKerracher discusses), and once people have proven difficult, hurled us into hard conversations, or the like, we can feel great anxiety in interacting with them again. It feels like it requires a lot of energy of us, and we just don’t have that energy left after work, bills, obligations…we’ll talk to them next week. And then next week we find ourselves exhausted again and not wanting to use the energy. And so we don’t…And here’s the thing: we really do “save energy” in avoiding the person. And in a world where energy is limited, this is a rational decision — unfortunately “rational” and “best” are not similes. But what else can we do?

Aspasia described how we make small decisions “not to reach out” today, to wait until “they reach out first,” and one small decision after another, we drift away and isolate. In this, we also deny ourselves any chance to receive information to counter our story of the other person, and so we have no reason to doubt our story, and that story easily gets stronger and bigger and more terrible. It begins to crystalize. We begin to feel more confident in our assessment. And it really does “spend energy” to interact with that person, and we really do feel ourselves “having more energy” to avoid them. On what rational basis would we choose to engage with them? We’re not sure, so we wait another day. And in fact, we should let them speak first, because that would be evidence that they are willing to change, and what’s the point of interacting with them if they haven’t at least made that step? It would be wise to wait. And wait we do. And since this does save us energy, we gain a “effective strategy” we can employ in other relationships: if a person gets to a point where they hurt us, we know what to do. Withdraw. Don’t interact. “Save energy.” (Savior mentality?) We withdraw, feeling exhausted, and then we feel our energy not being trained, and so our strategy feels effective. And so we do it again. And again. And Global Hikikomorism spreads. “For good reason.”

I often reference C.S. Lewis and his notion that “hell is locked from the inside,” and here I would stress that this means staying in hell comes to be “a good idea.” Hell feels like “the right move.” It saves energy. Yes, but it also doesn’t create it, and so we are stuck in a gradual and entropic decline. “Dying unto death.” Not with a bang, but with a whimper. We discussed how the choice is not only between “saving energy” and “spending energy” — there is also the possibility of “creating energy” (which brings to mind Voicecraft and the overall arch of “the address” of Belonging Again). “Saving energy” is like “creating energy,” for both make us “have energy,” but the first is entropic while the second is negentropic, and that difference is everything — a people incapable of negentropy is doomed. It will “die unto death.”

If we never have the experience of “creating energy” in relationship, then our choices are basically between “spending energy” and “saving energy” — what we experience determines what can be considered rational; it is not what is rational that determines what we (nonrationally) experience — and between those two options, it can easily be “best and rational” to avoid difficult people to “save energy” in this world where energy is rare. And this is especially the case if when we interact with the person, all that happens is conflict, the person getting personally offended, and the like — why in the world would we keep giving that person our energy? It’s a bad return on investment. It makes no sense. And so we “drift” and stop talking, “for good reason.” And again, this really does save energy, and so we come to learn that this is a reasonable response to people who drain our energy. And so when conflict happens again, as is likely and especially likely under Global Pluralism, we’ve already been trained to know what to do: we separate and “save energy.” We won’t make that bad investment again. We’ve learned. We’ve learned the hard way.

In a world where we never experience “creating energy,” we are trapped making decisions between “saving energy” and “spending energy,” and caught between those options, it is probable we will isolate ever-more through time and as we age. In this way, the lack of experiences of “creating energy” is incredibly practical, for it limits the scope of possibilities afforded to us in our interactions, relationships, and lives. A hope of “The Social Coordination Mechanism” here online is that it will model and show people the possibility of “creating energy” between people, and if people were to see on video people doing just that, they could come to wonder if that might be possible for them as well. And it certainly could be: we just need the mental models, skills, emotional intelligence, and the like — all matters which the SCM strives to incubate and spread and that an educational reform could assist. Critically though, experiences in which we “create energy” are on the other side of anxiety and facing it, which means we must “face negativity.” But what do we mean by “negativity”?

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It was claimed in our talk that “the right move is always facing negativity,” for that is what “creates energy,” but what do I mean by “negativity”? Is this “discomfort”? Yes and no, for indeed “discomfort” can entail negativity and energy-use, but it is not just any kind of discomfort. If I plan to go to the gym, this causes me discomfort that makes me stronger, and though this can help prepare me for negativity, it is not exactly the same. This is because I planned this discomfort, and furthermore it is one that is generally accepted by the society and seen as “a good and reasonable use of time.” Yes, this discomfort is arguably better than nothing and can be an invaluable stepping stone, but it’s also not the same as what I mean by “negativity” (which is indebted to Hegel). Yes, I have used the term “negativity” and “discomfort” interchangeability and together here and there, so I have not always helped with this nuance, but here I’ll draw more attention to it.

For Hegel, “negativity” is tied to the realization that there exists “otherness” which is distinct from myself (“I”). It is necessarily surprising and that which I cannot readily integrate or “stich” into my “map” or understanding of the world: it is a radical experience of “otherness.” It makes me deeply experience that “I am not everything,” which in a way is to experience “I am not God,” which is, at least at first, a hard experience to undergo. It means I am not totally in control. When I plan to go the gym and do, though this is hard, it is something I scheduled and did; hence, I am in control, and the world is the world I make. I do not in this plan experience radical “otherness”; when I am at a job I hate and know I hate it, then nothing surprising happens: the world that causes me discomfort is not “other.” This is why “negativity” and “discomfort” overlap but are not identical: I can plan and even want discomfort, and when so the experiences are not radical experiences of “otherness.” And what we are stressing here is that “the radical experience of otherness” is the key to the fullness of the human being.

We are I/Other in Hegel (just not naturally “realizing” this), and so we are not ourselves unless we encounter “otherness” and look to integrate with it versus resist it (if we resist it, we “split ourselves” as an I/Other-subject, as a (gestalt of) Gestalt). But that means we are “ourselves” on the other side of negativity, which the experience of anxiety is a unique emotional response to “an approach of otherness.” Anxiety is an existential emotion, and it is “existential” for it is a feeling that suggests something is coming that experiencing could change “the nature of existence’ (from say A/A to A/B). It is an emotion that arises with the approach of an existent-ial experience that could impact “how others see us” and/or “how we see ourselves,” and in that sense “impact how we ‘are’ in existence” — again, anxiety as “an existential emotion” means it is a feeling that “what could happen could change everything.” And yes, that is true, but we as naturally experiencing ourselves as an individual (“I-without-otherness,” a self-effacing nonreality) need to change existence to ourselves (to I/Other, A/B); if we do not, we are stuck between “spending energy” and “saving energy” — doomed to fail. Considering this, it is a good thing that we experience anxiety: it means that there is hope for us to transcend spending and saving energy to creating it.

Negativity is not something we can really look for and seek: it must surprise us. Hence, we don’t need to “plan for discomfort” in our lives, only prove prepared for the unexpected when it arises. We simply need to spend our days preparing and increasing our capacity for negativity, which is tied to increasing our virtue and conditioning ourselves for beauty (as Thomas Jockin discusses). To use a distinction I gained from Ivan Illich, instead of “planning discomfort,” we need to “prepare for negativity,” which entailing “making plans to do the uncomfortable,” but it is also more than that in critical ways. “Planning discomfort” is necessary but not sufficient: we must also put ourselves in places where there are chances for surprise (as we’ll discuss).

I am of the view that reality has a way of presenting to us negativity at a rate we can handle, whereas if we “plan discomfort,” we might not discern proportions right. There can be talk of positive thinking “attracting” success to us, and regardless how one feels about that, I do think it is true that the world is such in its finitude that we will inevitably have “negativity brought to us,” which if this paper is correct are opportunities for “success” and development. In that sense reality can perhaps “send success to us” if we “put ourselves out there,” but we might not have the eyes to see it. We might be looking to feel good, when that is on the other side of the negativity, in the place where “creating energy” is possible.

I have talked much with Aspasia and Seth about “authentic resonance,” which we here can associate with “a sense and intuition of what is most ‘fitting’ to do,” and unless there is “otherness” and/or an external world that “I am not,” there is no place for resonance: there is simply what is rational to me. As also discussed by Jacob Kishere, “resonance” arises because there is more than me out there that I can resonate with (that is ultimately a gestalt, yes, but with otherness), but it is not enough simply to intellectually know this; I have to practically live and act like it, and there’s only one way to do this: face negativity. If I am not everything, there is that which I am not and so can resonate with, which if “the whole” is I/Other, then this resonating is also alignment with “the whole of being” that “I am (not)” (A/B). But this must be practiced, not just known, and that is “the practice of facing negativity.”

“Authentic resonance” is possible in and through negativity; if we don’t face negativity, it is a notion that will have no role for us in our lives, as won’t “creating energy” for those stuck between spending and saving time. “Authentic resonance” and “creating energy” are deeply connected, which for me is also a participation in timespace and the Gödel Gestalt that is the metageometry of reality. But all of this will be elaborated on at another time (though “The Net (148)” and (154) gets at it).

The more we face negativity and “create energy,” the more we can have memories of this occurring, and so the easier it can be to do in the future (which also means we’re ready for “more difficult negativity,” please note, and hence “greater energy creation”). But if we don’t do this and have memories of this really “saving us energy,” then our memories can be used in service of grater enclosure and entrapment. It really does matter what experiences we have, for that determines what “evidence” is at hand to us of how it is best to live. And there is “evidence” that enclosing ourselves is best. “For good reason.”

III

Generally, as a practical point, we tend to use our free time to make plans and avoid negativity, but the suggestion here is that we should use our free time to put ourselves in places where we can encounter it. This is our we can train our capacities to handle negativity, which if we do not do, we will likely be overwhelmed by Global Pluralism and prove unable to handle it. But again, negativity cannot be planned: it must surprise us and be an “encounter,” which means if we want “to make a point to face negativity,” we have a paradox: we are trying to arrange our day around that which we cannot plan. How do we do that? The best we can do is put ourselves in social and public places where we can encounter people we did not expect to encounter (for example). It is not that we need to look for negativity, but instead we need to put ourselves in places where it can happen. And again, by “negativity” here I do not necessarily mean “bad things,” but instead a feeling that “I am not everything,” that “there is a world I do not control,” that “there are unknowns.” The initial experience of this is necessarily “negative,” because again I realize “I am not everything,” but with time we can come to gain energy and look forward to this “negativity,” because on the other side we can “create energy”—a new horizon opens up distinct from “saving energy” and/or “spending energy.”

We could suggest here a difference between “free time” and “leisure,” and say that most people simply have “free time” because they use their open hours to avoid anxiety, which means they never learn how to “create energy,” whereas “leisure” is an experience of time in which energy is created, our attention is trained, magnified, and focused, and our relationship to time changes. “Leisure” is thanks to “facing negativity,” whereas “free time” avoids it and ultimately just “spends energy” as a result. For those in relationships, this would suggest that we shouldn’t simply give those we love our “free time,” which is to say we only “spend time/energy” on them; instead, we need to learn to be a creator of “leisure,” which is a sacred space of Festival (to allude to Josef Pieper).

Michelle has spoken on “how rest is energy creation” (see “Rest-Connect”), and basically here we are saying that “leisure” is precisely a state of “rest-connection that energy-creates.” But the energy of which can be generated in connection that feels resultful (hence, “energy creates”) is correlated with the amount of negativity which is faced and integrated with in that connection—we don’t simply gain rest-energy because we are speaking with someone and in proximity with them; rather, we “create energy” because we do something hard. But then on the other side of that difficulty, we can find “the burden is light”—we can start to experience the mystery of what it means that we must “take up a cross” to live in joy.

It helps me to think of “negativity as energy creation” like a cold-shower or forcing yourself to undergo cold temperatures: oddly, this can “wake you up” and cause a surge of energy. I’m no expert on the science, but it can seem like taking a “cold shower” can be better for you than running five miles. How? Well, perhaps it is because “facing the shock” to the nervous system is ultimately better for our health than gaining lung capacity (which would make sense if Thomas Jockin’s understanding of “health” is correct); likewise, “facing negativity” in a social interaction can be better for us socially then hanging out with people “according to plan” for five hours—and yet we tend to stress “running” for health and “spending time with people” for social development. Sure, running and “hanging out” can help prepare us for “cold showers” and “facing negativity,” but they are the same thing, and if we miss the “negativity,” we will prove stuck between “saving energy” and “spending energy” forever. And then “being rational” will not avoid self-effacement.

Negativity is an invitation to “create energy,” just like a cold shower, and facing it will ultimately require a certain commitment to step into spaces where “we don’t know what’s going to happen” and “not knowing why” we’re doing it, really. All of this is nonrational, and as stressed in O.G. Rose, without nonrationality, we eventually end up stuck in “rational impasses” (and don’t even know it). And so we need to make part of our day being in places where what we do not plan can occur, where we can encounter people we do not expect to encounter (people are a unique source of “negativity”). We should enter conversations where we don’t know what will be discussed (a key practice of the SCM), for that too requires facing anxiety that can uniquely “create energy,” opening thoughts, inspirations, and orientations that otherwise would be impossible (and hence “rational to avoid,” the logic of entrapment…).

Also, there is a suggestion in this section that “time” and “energy” are two-sides of the same coin, that time seemingly is energy, and so in a mysterious way if we can “create energy,” we can also “create (a kind of) time.” No, we don’t quantitatively make more time, but qualitatively we do “make something of time” that is not reducible to the ticking of a clock. We forget time. We become fully present in it. Time ceases to be something we worry about running out of, and instead we experience it as a Creative Unfolding, which points to Whitehead and notions of Eternity that might do us moderns today good to consider. But this is all a metaphysical argument for another time, say The Absolute Choice—but the fact we can have these experiences is evidence that the universe contains “the conditions of possibility” for these experiences, and what must the universe be like for that to be the case? Timespace instead of spacetime, perhaps? A Gödel Gestalt? Metageometry? In fact, timenergy more than timespace (space is just energy)? Perhaps.

IV

Why does anxiety accompany negativity? To elaborate, anxiety is an existential feeling that suggests “a possible change in our existence,” and this is where our memories of what happened when we felt anxiety profoundly impacts what we believe is a “rational move” when we feel anxiety. If throughout our life a person always was upset when we spoke with them, then we naturally develop anxiety whenever we approach that person, and that functions as a useful reminder that this person can use up a lot of our energy. Hence, anxiety can be evidence that we “rationally shouldn’t” engage with this person, and if all we ever experience anxiety as ultimately doing is helping us sense a person we should avoid, it might never occur to us that we should choose to interpret anxiety a different way. As we discussed, anxiety is a sign of a negativity that we need to face, which doing can help us “create energy” — but this seems entirely false (almost empirically) if experiences of anxiety only ever cause us to spend energy in our lives. What do we mean that anxiety can help us “create energy”? The opposite seems the case. (Is this why we need faith, courage, “eyes on the unseen”…?)

Going to the gym can make us stronger; likewise, facing anxiety can train us to hold and create more energy. Yes, this is done through an exhausting of our energy, but so similarly our muscles grow through a use and exhaustion of them. But if we keep going to the gym, we can come to want and look forward to the workout, so we can come to “look forward to” facing the anxiety, knowing what is possible on the other side of it. Yet even if we look forward to the gym, that doesn’t mean we don’t feel hesitancy before picking up the dumbbells or jumping in the pool, and so it goes with facing anxiety, yet nevertheless we can develop a willingness and eagerness that we before did not possess. And this is invaluable for us to “face anxiety” and “choose negativity” — it provides a “nudge” that helps us take the first step. But to get that “nudge,” we do have to start by taking the first steps ourselves. And because the “other” forces us to decide on that “fire step,” especially if we have declined in the past, we can choose to avoid the other — the relation between “encounter the other” and “being forced to choose and/or reflect on choices” cannot be overstated, and it is a prime reason for “The Drift.”

Aspasia offered another incredible point when she stressed that another reason we can suffer “The Drift” is because the other makes us “existentially reflect” back on all of our decisions and reminds us that we had doubts about them, which can shatter our whole world and make us anxious and miserable. Aspasia discussed how “spaces of creating energy” requires people to face one another as equals, which usually isn’t possible because people incorporate power hierarchies that make people feel “beneath” one another, and furthermore I think people can turn to power when they experience a difference and “otherness” that makes them reflect back on themselves — and they don’t like it. Where we are all equal, we can equally make one another reflect on ourselves existentially, but if I don’t like that, I can use my money and status (for example) to put up a wall and stop the reflection. And why wouldn’t I if all I have in memory are experiences where anxiety was a warning about something bad about to happen? And so for “good reason,” we never experience “creating energy.”

V

Relevant to the topic of how the other can make us reflect back on ourselves, Aspasia stressed something profoundly critical: there is no such thing as “a solid decision,” which we can think about as meaning “there is no such thing as a decision that cannot be doubted.: If I choose to send my children to public school, I can experience that as making “the right decision” versus just “a decision,” and so when I encounter someone who decided to homeschool his or her kids, I can face a problem. If I believe I made “the right decision,” mustn’t I think this person made “the wrong decision” (and in this way don’t I create a hierarchy and fail to meet the person as an equal)? We do seem to naturally make choices that we experience as “the right decision,” but this sets up a problem for when we encounter people that make different decisions from us. And suddenly in their presence we can reflect back on our decisions and remember we had doubts about them, and suddenly we’re not so sure that we made “the right decision,” and this can existentially overwhelm us—best just to avoid that person who made “the wrong decision.” Yes, that would be wise…

Aspasia stressed that if we think there is “a right decision,” we will go into decisions looking to make “the right decision,” and although there are decisions which are better and worse than others, the more we move from our immediacy in front of us (“What do I need to do to make dinner?”) to more abstract and complex decisions (“Where should I send my child to college?”), the more we move away from where a “right decision” is more possible (as determinable by the immediate feedback given by the material reality we are working with) to where only “a decision” is possible. But please note that when making decisions about our immediacy, it’s not so much that we make a “right decision” (in some moralistic sense), but instead we made “a decision that worked”—we did that which was “fitting,” given our particular circumstances.

The more we are dealing with a decision that transcends our immediacy and “such-ness,” the more it is problematic to think in terms of “making the right decision” and important to simply think in terms of “making a decision,” otherwise we are setting ourselves up to be unable to handle “otherness” and those who made different decisions from us. Gesturing toward “Dialectical Ethics” by O.G. Rose, we could visualize the point as following:

The more we move from such-ness to something less immediate and more abstract, the more the consequences for thinking in terms of “making the right decision” become pronounced. And as Aspasia highlighted, a common consequence is that people avoid others who made different decisions, because their very presence is a reminder that my supposed “right decision” was full of doubt. And what if that means I made “the wrong decision”? Then I’m trapped forever in a world that I cannot reverse. I’m stuck with the consequences. If only I would have been more rational. If only I had been smarter…And this existential anxiety is too much to take, and so “The Drift” begins.

A theme in Aspasia’s thought was that we need to accept greater complexity: there is no one, “right decision,” because of everything entails tradeoffs, contingencies, and surprises, especially as we move from immediacy to the less immediate, the particular to the abstract, and so on. Likewise, we rarely feel a single emotion: we can feel toward our partner a mixture of love, anger, and respect all at once. If we think of ourselves as “feeling one thing” or decisions as matters of “making the right decision” versus managing complexity and unknowns, then we are likely to suffer mentally and emotionally. We will never come to terms with ourselves, and if we do, it will actually just be a strategy of repression and avoidance. But does it work? Is everyone finally happy? Is all the fighting done? Then we it was “a rational move,” yes? And so enclosure…

Ah, well, if all we experience in our lives is “fighting” or “avoiding conflict,” then what’s most rational is “avoiding conflict” (just like “saving energy” can be the most rational if our only choices are “saving energy” and “spending energy”). Thus, the profound importance of experiencing captivation and engagement in relationships, not just “the absence of conflict” (which isn’t peace, please note): as there is the third of “creating energy,” so there is the third of “captivation” vs “conflict or avoiding conflict.” Likewise, if there is only “the wrong decision” or “the right decision,” we will easily only ever know “feeling anxious” regarding decision, and so a repressive strategy of making ourselves genuinely believe we made “the right decision” is rational and best given our options. But if there is a third option that follows from coming to terms with our complexity, where we can make “a confident decision” (aware of the impossibility of certainty), then we can have a very different relationship with our decisions, one that much better enables us to be “open to otherness” (as necessary for Global Pluralism).

Anxiety “spends energy,” and if we never develop the proper relationship with our decision-making, decisions will radically “spend energy” in a world where energy is profoundly lacking. As Aspasia stresses, those who can sit with their own complexity and accept it, who realize “things aren’t just one thing” (a Hegelian realization), are those who are more likely to handle Global Pluralism. For if I come to accept myself as more complex, I am more likely to see others as also complex, and that enables an empathy and commonality that helps us see one another in light of “the right way of living” and “the right decisions,” which automatically creates a hierarchy (that we will naturally be atop), and hence disables “energy creation.”

If we do not “sit with complexity” (which I personally think literature can help with, for literature can make it plausible that “people are complex), we almost by definition must experience otherness as wrong, for there is a deep sense in which “otherness is complexity.” If we aren’t complex (say because reality is “an Algebraic either/or” versus “a Geometric situation”), then otherness is false, and so Global Pluralism is something to be corrected not managed. Diversity becomes a problem; separation and isolation, wise. It also becomes more likely that we take things personally, for “our person” is less complex and so fragile, lacking the resources needed to develop Taleb’s “antifragility” by which we might benefit and grow from encounters with otherness. And in response to our fragility, we might seek “robustness” (as Taleb also describes), which is a repressive strategy that can lead to pathologies (oppression, isolation, fascism, etc.): if our choices are only “fragility” or “robustness,” the later becomes rational, and so we crystalize from one another…

It is not good to believe in the possibility of “the right decision”: if contained to our immediacy, that can “contain” the consequences of this mistake, but it’s inevitable we will eventually seek “the right decision” regarding uncontained circumstances, and that will lead to anxiety and pathologies against otherness. There is ultimately no such thing as “a solid decision,” but that means we are freed from having to worry about “being solid in our decision making.” We are not a failure if our decisions aren’t certain. We’re human, a possible source of “time/energy creation.”

VI

Alright, but what justifies us to not be concerned about “the right decision” and instead to understand that we must just make “a decision”? It’s because we are finite, undergoing limits, and school starts in a week (for example), and if we don’t sign our kids up by tomorrow afternoon, public school will be off the table. University applications aren’t accepted after the first of next month. Bellies use up the food in them and need more. Events have to be arranged. In other words, there is a concrete reality that humans must coordinate effectively across vast numbers of people, and that requires us to set deadlines. And if we don’t meet those deadlines, decisions are made for us all the same, and in that sense, we can’t avoid decisions (even if we isolate ourselves from society, that is a decision the very existence of society forces us to consider and make).

We have suggested in O.G. Rose that limits enable ever-creative unfolding, but we have also discussed the reality of limits due to social conventions, which is a Hegelian contradiction that can only be addressed by “creating time/energy,” which we cannot do if we are stuck moving between “spending time/energy” and “saving time/energy.” There is a reality to “time is limited,” but this is all the more reason why we need to create time, and we precisely won’t do that if we believe “in the possibility of a doubtless choice” and this then contributes to us avoiding others who we need for “facing negativity” and hence “creating energy.” And then it really will feel like “time is limited” (because it will be), and so we’ll find ourselves making more choices and decisions, faced with the clock, which we’ll then repress more to avoid doubting and feeling anxiety over, and so we’ll be more likely to avoid others who we need for rest-connection, and then we’ll only further “spend time” and feel time as limited…ever-enclosing, “for good reason”…

Clock-time is necessarily limited, but clock-time is a social convention. Yes, that means it is real and something we have to live with, but if we over-reify clock-time as “the time,” then we are likely going to be further stuck between “spending time” and “saving time” (for clock-time lends itself to economic metaphors, and arguably was created precisely for coordinating Capital-Nation-State activities). But there is more to time than just running out of it: time affords us a possibility of “dwelling” and “a mode of being” in which we are of a different quality energetically. That “energetic shift” is a gift of time, but it is on the other side of negativity, available to those who accept that “they are not everything” and that “otherness exists and I should relate with it.” Time is a gestalt that cannot be itself in its “fullness” without all that is (I/Other, A/B), and so if we do not “relate with otherness (through negativity),” we live “as if” reality is something that it is not (in its fullness) (just “I,” A/A), and so time must also be something that it is not (in its fullness). Yes, time is something that passes, but that is also only “part of it”: like/as energy, time is also something that creates more of itself as it passes (the negativity creates, as “lack excesses” and loss generates). If we act as if “we are all there is,” we treat a part of time as the whole, and so are toward “nonexistence” and hence undergo self-effacement.

Time is limited, but in Hegel a limit we know is hence a limit we (can) overcome, and the limit of time makes possible the negativity that can “create time,” which means the limit is an “(un)limited cause” of creation. The limit that seems to verify that time and energy are running out is precisely the means of their creation. We misinterpret the limit, and so end up stuck between “spending energy” and “saving energy”; we misinterpret anxiety as evidence we need to withdraw and so end up isolated in an exhaustion that seems to confirm we made the right decision, when it is that isolation that assures our time and energy run out. “The Absolute Choice” is to what much comes to: “is lack nothing” or “is lack not nothing”? Is there nothing beyond the limit or something beyond the limit that is possible because of the limit? Every time we face the negativity of otherness, we get to make a choice of what kind of universe we believe we are in. Our decisions are always a testament to the world. The earth only speaks of heaven.

In closing, every possible human interaction can be inhibited by power dynamics and anxiety, keeping us from meeting as equals and feeling free to just express ourselves, which is necessary if we are to “create energy” versus just feel like we are following a script and “spending energy.” Where there were “givens,” power dynamics and anxiety could be externally managed without us doing the work of that management ourselves, but now “givens” are gone and our world is one of Global Pluralism. We must do “the work of otherness” ourselves, and we will fail where we cannot “create time/energy,” which requires us to accept complexity. If we do though, we can be freed from the tyranny of right decisions: we can simply decide and prove prepared for the Determinations that come our way — “being prepared for surprise” counts more than (complexity-denying) “right decisions.”

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