Metaphysician by calling
It is necessary to have a better understanding of how creation
occurs. All creation is in response to a need. The saying that necessity is the
mother of invention is an astute observation. As any need becomes more fully
defined it begins to serve as a mold for its solution. But, unless necessity is
the driver, the solution must first be imagined. Our future is limited only by
our imagination. The process of trial and error is the process of weeding out
imagined solutions that do not optimally satisfy the need. This is Darwinian
evolution in its truest sense. It is not survival of the fittest, but survival
of that which works until something better can be imagined.
There is an inherent directionality and meaning contained it
within that needs to be made explicit. The direction of travel if from the
origin outward. Attempts to avoid the travails of the present by returning to
the past are counterproductive. The past is more primitive than the present. It
is not the idealized state imagined, from which we somehow devolved rather than
evolved. Accordingly, the present is less advanced than the future can be. It
is in realizing this that meaning can be found. Our goal is to reduce nescience
by exploring the infinite potential we all possess as dissociated aspects of
the all-inclusive whole. Dissociation need not imply a reduction in the functionality of the mind. From the perspective of the Whole the goal is to
maximize its expression, not by being all it can be, for this is a zero-sum
situation where everything is balanced by its opposite—despite the infinity of
numbers it contains, the sum of the numbers on the real number line is zero.
Rather, the goal is to be the best it can be, a Whole that is the greatest sum
of its parts.
This last point, a Whole that is the greatest sum of its parts,
needs to be considered more fully. As a goal this is not implicitly apparent to
the Whole. It would have to be discovered. Because it has not been explicit in
the past, past development would not have adhered to it despite evolving toward
it through the process of trial and error and learning from mistakes made. For
those that assign goodness to the Divine, that is a hope rather than an
observation. The evidence supports the conclusion that all life is suffering. Every
problem we face was initially a solution to a prior problem. Humanity attempts
to do good and the existing system not only does not cooperate, it actively
subverts the efforts. Murphy’s Law rules.
As heuristic going forward the following is offered:
- Seek to know and understand all that is and can be;
- Seek to do what is best for all concerned;
- Seek fullest expression of your uniquity accordingly.
The following possibility offers insights into how this could be
facilitated. If the creative mind had the option of enabling all choices to be
fully informed prior to being made, and the option of holding the chooser fully
accountable for the results of their choices in real time, that help to
alleviate suffering.
It is a commonly reported component of Near-Death-Experiences (NDEs) that the subject undergoes a life review in which their whole life passes before them. But they see it not just from their perspective at the time, but from the perspective of all those effected by it as well. Those who return after this experience are radically transformed by it and lead far better lives, by their accounting.
If that can happen in the transcendent beyond, why can't it be
incorporated into human consciousness for the living?
Imagine a world where we have to fully experience the effects we
have on others, what they experience as a result of our actions. If we bring
joy to others, we too feel that joy. If we cause suffering for others, we too
have to feel the suffering the same as they do.
When I imagine it, I see a radically different world as a
consequence of this one minor change in human consciousness, for which the
model already exists in the transcendent and would seem to be within the
purview of the creating mind, if not ours.
The need to reduce suffering is a given. The heuristic offered
above is an absolute standard for living that best serves the desire of the Whole
to be the greatest possible sum of its parts (if that is in fact its objective at this point).
And the experiences of the NDE life review process shows that the means to
implement it are known and available.
The section below, slightly edited, is taken from the Wikipedia
entry for The Perennial Philosophy:
The Perennial Philosophy was first published in 1945 immediately after the Second World. The jacket text of the British first edition explains:
The Perennial Philosophy is an attempt to present this Highest Common Factor of all theologies by assembling passages from the writings of those saints and prophets who have approached a direct spiritual knowledge of the Divine...
The book offers readers, who are assumed to be familiar with the Christian religion and the Bible, a fresh approach employing Eastern and Western mysticism:
Mr. Huxley quotes from the Chinese Taoist philosophers, from followers of Buddha and Mohammed, from the Brahmin scriptures and from Christian mystics ranging from St John of the Cross to William Law, giving preference to those whose writings, often illuminated by genius, are unfamiliar to the modern reader.
The final paragraph of the jacket text states:
In this profoundly important work, Mr. Huxley has made no attempt to 'found a new religion'; but in analyzing the Natural Theology of the Saints, as he has described it, he provides us with an absolute standard of faith by which we can judge both our moral depravity as individuals and the insane and often criminal behaviour of the national societies we have created.
While Aldous Huxley is offering an absolute standard of faith, he fails to provide a means to achieve it. The net effect of this is to increase rather than decrease human suffering. Humanity is left holding itself to a standard that it lacks the means to achieve. If this is in fact what both the divine and humanity want, then why not implement the available means to accomplish it while we are living rather than waiting until we are dead to show us how we failed?
Given the unanswered problem of theodicy, an attempt to answer the
question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil (Wikipedia), and
here given an actual instance where good could be maximized and evil minimized,
inference to best explanation would conclude that the divine is malevolent rather
than benevolent. If the intent was to create a world where suffering was
maximized, this world would accomplish that goal well. And the beauty of the
system is that not just is the role of the divine completely opaque in its
operation, we hold ourselves accountable for the results that it has designed
the system to produce.
There might be those that wish to avoid holding the divine accountable
by claiming that we are given freewill and have the power to choose, so it's
still all our fault. But if in making choices we are not given all of the
necessary information needed to make the right choice, and not held fully accountable
for the suffering caused by wrong choices, then it would appear that the system
is rigged to produce wrong choices.
At this point I will shift from the abstract to the concrete. One
day as I was wandering in the woods, I was thinking that while my knowledge
might be limited, the knowledge of the Greater Whole was not. So, what I needed
was a heuristic of sorts to assist me in making choices that were guided by
that greater knowing. I still trusted in its benevolence. The thought I had was
that in making any choice I was less concerned with a particular outcome than
with achieving what would be best for all concerned (which included me). Once
the thought was in my mind, I immediately understood the power of it. Did I
want to make one choice and leave everything else to the Greater Whole or did I
want to make many ill-informed choices and suffer the consequences of them. For
me the choice was easy.
Upon further reflection, I realized that it is an absolute
standard for exercising freewill–no better standard was possible. At that
moment I felt as if I had reached enlightenment.
I went to sleep that night with a deep sense of inner peace. Later
I awoke from a dream in which I was engaged in mortal combat, kill or be
killed. My sense of inner peace was shattered. I was
at war with something that I did not understand and could not confront. My
trust in the benevolence of the Greater Whole was broken. I now knew from
experience that it was not so. And every dream since then has shown that the
source of my dreams is actively opposed to my implementing the absolute
standard I found.
This marked a radical change in my thinking. It was from this
perspective that I went on to develop an idealist metaphysics built upon the
evolution of consciousness/mind. It is implicit in that process that trial and
error occur, and learning is required to advance. Also implicit is the
possibility that those who dissociated earlier in the process will be more
primitive and unable to fully understand later developments. When later
developments challenge their position in the hierarchy resulting from the order
of appearance, it is likely that they will act to preserve their status by all
means available to them. My experience leads me to believe that the creator of
this world fits within that category and this resolves the problem of theodicy.
God is not good because he has not undergone the experiences within physicality
that would enable him to learn goodness. How would a god know what it means to
suffer if it had never undergone the experience of suffering? If, as Christianity attempts to portray the act of human sacrifice use by God to test the righteousness of Jesus, God as part of the Trinity also experiences the suffering, what changes have occurred in the world to show he learned anything? Jesus thought that the changes would occur within the lifetimes of those who heard him. The faithful are still waiting and believing that it is immanent, the apocalypse is within sight. Again inference to best explanation would conclude that hope remains just that, and that the evidence is against the premise assumed.
If we want thing to be different, then we must be different. We
must actively oppose anything that resists our efforts to do so, even if it
means radically changing the our understanding of the divine and how the world
has worked in the past.
Again, this requires the construction of a new paradigm.
- Consistent with such, your well considered thoughts, criticisms, suggestions are welcomed.
- Half-assed, incoherent, habitual responses left over from the old paradigm not so much.
- Nor what you think others, likely long dead, might have meant when they said something from within the old paradigm. If what they said remains true for you, own it.
