The Work of Limits

As Featured in Belonging Again II.2 and II.3. A Critical Function of the Social Coordination Mechanism

Photo by USGS

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.

The Social Coordination Mechanism (Part I)

The Social Coordination Mechanism (Part II)

The Social Coordination Mechanism (Part III)

The Social Coordination Mechanism (Part IV)

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.

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:

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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.”

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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.)

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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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