Further Notes on Theoconceptualism - Towards a New Religion and Philosophy
Theoconceptualism is a new theological philosophy. Today, we shall cover a lot. Later we will need to filter and expand, but today is just about getting some of the notes initially articulated. Hold on to your hats, because this is going to go quickly, and in an order that has not been worked out.
Each person carries within them a value hierarchy. This hierarchy is always adjusting to the context without and the context within, but it is always there. Good and evil is directly related to this value hierarchy. Value creation is good, value destruction is evil. The more values we create the better, the more important those values are the better. The more values that are destroyed the worse, the more important those values are the worse. Seeking to understand Jesus is good, seeking to understand what Jesus sought is better. There is always a hierarchy. The greatest values are sacred. The greatest evils are profane. Viktor Frankl sorted values into three categories: the creative values, the experiential values, and the attitudinal values. There is always a value that can be fulfilled. What may be of the highest value? The potential for growth of the human innate disposition to rational speech, the spirit. What may be the greatest evil? The initiation of the greatest force against the greatest value.
The Nature of Sin
Sin is missing the mark. There are a variety of ways in which we can miss the mark in life, to destroy values or leave them unfulfilled. Some of the greatest sins are resentment, lying, arrogance, deceit, confusion, and boredom. This inner sins, this lack of virtue, leads to the outer actions of sin. What is lacking is both agency and communion. From the domain of chaos we are made to wrest order. But we often miss the mark. There are two different ways to sin, one is the sin of commission and one is the sin of omission. Doing something that we ought not to do, and not doing something that we ought to do. One is being wicked, the other is being weak.
The Nature of Virtue
Virtue, then, is hitting the mark. It is not being either wicked or weak. To have a vision of truth and the courage to confront the obstacles that lay in the path, and the strength to overcome. These are all a part of virtue. Virtue is contained in what is needed for positive iterative interactions. How do we need to act so that we can mutually support the attainment of greater value for all involved across time? Independent thinking, decency, civility, non-conformity, non-tyranny, and agreement. Within context all of these are virtues.
The Nature of Peace and Prosperity
Society is transactional. It is about exchange. Predatory behaviors move us away from society, and away from civilization. Production and distribution can only occur in their optimal states when there is peaceful communication. A product or service must be found to fit the needs and desires of the market and then this solution must be distributed to that market. This can only occur where force and the threat of force do not. The overall peace and prosperity of a society is directly proportional to the voluntary to involuntary transaction ratio. This is Jeff's Razor, and it is the barometer is peace and prosperity in society. For this to occur the individual must be seen as a sacred sovereign.
The Nature of the Knowledge of Ethics
How we interact and how we should interact are emergent. Before we can articulate them we are already doing them. Only later are we able to communicate through words in a conceptual way what we are doing and what we should be doing. Endel Tulving and Jerome Bruner talk about how our behavior is the foundation of our knowledge. This acting out is then turned into episodic memory, images, and symbols. These symbols and then further abstracted to the point where we can talk and write about them using words. Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky talk about how children, and people, interact and only through that interaction over time are they, and we, able to find what works. Over time these codes of interaction are built into us at the most basic levels, Jaak Panksepp has shown how the play, and fair play, mental circuitry even operates in rats. There are two types of reasoning, there is instrumental reasoning, where we are finding out how the world works and how we can make it work. And there is moral reasoning, where we are finding out how we act, and how we should act. Both are discoveries from within looking out. Individual moral progress is emergent, it emerges over time from the confrontation with challenge.
We can ask, "Who am I responsible to?" We may answer conscience, logos, rational speech, rational thought, society, our bonded community, and we would not be wrong. We can ask, "What am I responsible for?" We may answer right action, right speech, right thought, the bonding of community into society, positive energy contribution, the fusion of a positive energon within a positive energon, and we would not be wrong.
The Nature of Religious Text Interpretation (Exegesis)
There are many ways of reading a text, especially a narrative. And, narratives are the most important works showing complex interactions with the world and others across time, they reveal ethics and morality. There are literal, historical, symbolic, allegorical, moral, anagogical, mystical, tropological, typological, aesthetic, dramatic, philosophical, logical, mythological, critical, appreciative, psychological, archetypal, figurative, political, metaphorical, ethical, behavioral, metaphysical, biographical, phenomenological, epistemological, and many more ways of interpreting a text. Each of these has a use, and each of these can be corrupted. We must look at what the greatest benefit can be.
In a written conversation I once explained something that happened to me like this. "I reached for an unusual brass ring, had a misadventure in Africa, and descended into the belly of the whale." In this single sentence we find that I used a symbolic idiom, a literal statement, and an analogy of metaphorical narrative. Exegesis is not simple.
The Nature of Judeo-Christian Narratives
There are many things to be gained from these narratives. We see man as fallen and trying for redemption. We see the example of someone picking up their cross and bearing it voluntarily in their confrontation with mortality. We see the interactions and fallout of Cain and Able, and especially what led to those interactions. We see the actions and interactions of Adam and Eve and Lilith. Within these stories there are lessons that have been found, and there are lessons yet to be found.
The Nature of Greco-Roman Narratives
Narratives reveal the nature of the culture, but all cultures are human cultures, and all narratives reveal some aspect of human culture. We can learn about love, hate, betrayal, and more from Romulus and Remus. Prometheus molded man from clay on orders and then went against orders to deliver fire into his grasp. Zeus was both force against tyranny, and yet a tyrant. The depths of meaning here are an infinite well.
The Nature of Scando-Icelandic-Germanic Narratives
The sagas tell of many things both ancient and new. We think of rule of law for all, elected officials, and powerful assemblies with checks upon officials as modern, yet they are contained in narratives that are not modern. Narratives that should not be ignored or forgotten.
The Nature of the Hero
The hero stands against wrong, against chaos, and against tyranny. A close study of important narratives, such as Harry Potter, will bring to light things which we miss about heroes. There are heroes that stand against, but are there heroes that stand for? Should there be?
The Nature of the Leader
A leader is many things. A leader must have vision, and courage, and must mediate conflict. But, more than this a leader must do two things, they must initiate and organize. This is the essence.
The Nature of the Genius
Eric Weinstein talks about how a genius must be able to cross an adaptive valley that others cannot cross, and to do this they must have an unusual ability to disregard things. They must take a plunge from what we know to what we do not know, from what can be done to what we do not know can be done, and along the way they must risk everything, and question everything. In failure they are cast aside, in success they are sometimes rewarded and praised, and sometimes cast aside. But, geniuses confront what most cannot, and it is only through them that can be won what most cannot conceive of, much less grasp.
The Nature of the Stranger
The modern-day idea of aliens from outer space is just an extension of the archetypal human way of dealing with the stranger. This has always existed. When Cortez conquered the Aztecs the Aztecs had a myth about a white demi-god from across the ocean. This was their narrative for dealing with the stranger. As humans have expanded our knowledge of the world our archetypal strangers have had to adapt, and move, all the way out into space where we cannot yet reach. And, to some extent, they also move into other dimensions, like the fairy worlds. All of these stories show the various ways of interacting with strangers, you can fight and win, fight and lose, run away, cooperate, trade, integrate, coexist, etc.
The Nature of the Monster
The monster is scary and dangerous. Sometimes they are hidden. Often we only know rumors about them. And someone needs to confront the monster.
The Nature of Theology
Theology is the study of the nature of God. How can, and how should, we do this? It can only be done through discussion and communication. There needs to be a diversity of ideas so that we can work to discover the truth, and so that our conceptions can adapt and evolve over time.
The Nature of Philosophy
Philosophy is about all of the known and unknown knowledge. Science came from, and is a part of, philosophy. They both seek after truth, and more importantly workable truth, actable truth.
The Nature of Communication
The semantic triangle, or my preferred semantic square, is an important framework for communication. We have something that we perceive in the world, this is one point. We have a concept of this, an idea. This is another point. Then we work to communicate this through spoken words, written words, pictures, diagrams, symbols, and such. This is the last point of the triangle. Now, the other person has to hear, see, or feel these symbols. They then form their own conceptual idea. Then they can compare this to the world. This forms their own triangle. Together we form a semantic square of communication. Communication can go awry at any point in this process.
There are various ways to teach things, but the best way to teach behavioral patterns is to be exposed to them and to think about them. This is done through narrative and discussion, through parables and commentary.
Compliance and agreement are not the same thing, but they can be in alignment. Imagine a square with four quadrants. There are four different things that can occur between two people: agree and comply, disagree and comply, agree and don't comply, and disagree and don't comply. Each of these occurs on a regular basis in all of our interactions. This Compliance/Agreement Matrix, as I have termed it, allows us to think through both sides of our interactions, and to hopefully work towards greater understanding.
To persuade we can appeal to ethos, pathos, and logos, to the ethical, the passionate, and the logical parts of humans. There are more that are sometimes proposed: kairos, chronos, topos, telos, ritus, mythos, and ontos. The important thing to realize is that outside can be a catalyst, but the change must come on the inside.
The Nature of Concepts
Concepts are formed from impressions that we perceive in the world. We take these perceptions and we abstract them, we eliminate certain measurements. We treat certain specifics as variables. This is where creativity comes from. When we take an abstract concept and make one of those variables concrete again, in a different way, we have then created a new concept. This process of abstraction and concretion is what thinking is all about. All of our knowledge flows up and down through these conceptual hierarchies. Our very perceptions themselves already do quite a bit of abstracting. We do not perceive atoms, much less quarks, we perceive useable objects as tools or obstacles. The ability to abstract and conceptualize is what has allowed humans to expand our awareness to include the universe and the electron. These concepts are real, we act upon them.
The Nature of Religion
Religion is all about how we act. We must collapse the complexity of the world in such a way that we can act rightly in the world. Things can always be more complex. The metaphorical Jeff's Hammer can hit a concept and send it flying to interact with another part of the world. Only our conceptual ability allows us to separate things out from their context. Or, Jeff's Hammer can hit an object and break it into pieces, each of which can be hit and broken into more pieces. Things can always be seen as more complex, because they are. But, we need ways to manage this complexity and still act. This is what religious concepts are for. Religions can be adaptive to the situation or maladaptive. They need to be able to have the ability to update and adjust, while keeping that which is good and right. Jesus was a reformer, the reformation was about adapting, and the primitivist movement was about adapting again. This ability to adjust and change is important, and undervalued. The goal is to make people better. To elicit better behavior patterns through better thought patterns. What has come before isn't bad, we are just seeking better.
The Nature of Miracles
Miracles occur. They are things that we can't explain that are also good. They are like class statistics, it shows that we can observe a gap in our knowledge.
The Nature of Truth
The finding of truth is a process rather than a destination. It is found through conjecture and refutation, as Karl Popper explains. It has to be acted out iteratively over time. This is why Charles Sanders Peirce articulated the original Pragmatism.
The Nature of Heaven and Hell
Heaven and Hell are both real conceptual entities. Heaven is what we are reaching for, and Hell is what we are running from. We reach out into the potential future multiplicity of meanings that are collapsing into present actuality and are stored in the infinite past. These ripples that we leave through time expand forever, and we can either exist in Heaven, Hell, or the place in between where we wonder in vain for meaning. The Ancient Greeks called that place the fields of Asphodel.
The Nature of Magical Thinking
The same ability that allows us to understand great things, and create new things, can lead us astray. Magical thinking is nothing other than a conceptual reality that does not correlate our actions with our potential futures in the way that we want. It is often just false association. But, without the ability for magical thinking we would also not have the ability to think.
The Nature of Angels and Demons
Our angels are messengers, in all of the forms they can take and with all of the potential messages they can bring. Demons are dividers, they tear apart and drive a wedge.
The Nature of Prayer
Prayer does not need to have a direct physical effect upon the world to have a spiritual effect. To change the outside we must first change the inside. Prayer affects first the outside, and through this avenue it then effects the outside. The indirect path is sometimes the best path.
The Nature of Human Bonding
Human ethology studies this phenomenon, and others. We form bonds in various way, but some of the most important are our shared interests, our shared purposes, our shared perspectives. We need fellowship and communion, and are enhanced by it in a multitude of way.
The Nature of Helping
We can help people directly, but great change in someone's life can only be enacted by them, because they are the only ones that can exert the needed amount of influence over their own behavioral patterns over time. The best way to help this process is often the helping relationship that Carl Rogers talks about, the one where we listen and allow the other person to try to formulate and work out their conceptual issues with us as a sounding board.
The Nature of Mythology
Mythology is the projection of imagistic archetypes from potentiality into actuality. It's the creation of symbols in the world from the symbols that are already within us. Myths communicate important truths. They are a hyperreality, where behavioral patterns and consequences are distilled to their essence. These patterns are emergent, they are revealed first through procedure and behavior, then put into images and episode, and only then used on a semantic and purely abstract symbolic level. The truth is contained at all levels, but through abstraction some is lost on each step.
The Nature of Fiction
Fiction is an extension of play. Play is about preparation. It's preparation and rehearsal for acting in the world. Games and sports are embodied fiction. Fiction is a conceptual game. The game, the fiction, is distilled truth, a hyperreality, an essence. We conceptualize behavioral patterns in fiction and we embody fictive behavioral patterns in life.
The Nature of Conflict and Resolution
We all have a tendency to form ingroups and outgroups. We do this quickly and subconsciously. It's all too dangerous for these groups to fall into disagreement. And, it's all too easy for civil disagreement to fall down Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement and go from talking about the central point to simple insults. Beyond this we have violence, which has its own way of escalating and de-escalating. One important key to all of these conflicts is to find common ground. Start there and seek to expand the common ground. And, when there is no more common ground, seek to agree to respect the difference.
The Nature of Light and Darkness
Darkness is everywhere, it is everything, until light is shined upon it. Only though illumination do we find clarity and the ability to see the way forward, and what came before. Darkness exists without light, light only exists within the darkness, where darkness is revealed as simply an absence of light.
The Nature of Man
The Ancient Greeks saw man as unique in his ability for rational speech. This is true. Man can be seen as a fallen angel or a risen beast. Either necessitates that he climb. Man is a whole, conceptually we can break him down into his pieces and parts, but he is only man when he is seen as a whole. This view is best expressed by Viktor Frankl in his Dimensional Ontology. Man, and life, has as part of its essence the ability to err. And thus must seek to not err, and to correct errors. There is a piece of man that sits separate and observes, it watches and records, it evaluates and judges, and it has the authority then to direct and choose action for the future. This observer, recorder, evaluator, and director is at the heart of life itself. Truly, to err is human, to err is life. Erro, ergo sum, I err, therefore I am. And therefore I correct and redeem.
The Nature of Political Participation
Humans are social. This means that we must do two things, we have to negotiate about our individual disparate goods, and we must deliberate about our common goods. This deliberation is what politics is about. Hans Hass talks about how living things are defined by their ability to create local positive energy flows. Erwin Schrodinger calls living things anti-entropic in the same vein. A social organization, like an individual, can have a positive, neutral, or negative energy output. Some will grow, the others will fade. To determine the best path forward and best solutions there has to be access and intellectual freedom. Thought is made of symbols. The restriction of the free exchange of these symbols limits the ability to think, and the ability to move forward, as individuals and as a society.
The Nature of the Soul
Within humans is this sacred innate disposition to rational speech and thought. God is sacred order, and the soul allows this correspondence between reality and consciousness. There is a sacred order without and a sacred order within. This innate disposition to rational speech is the divine spark. It is embodied logos. Logos acted out in the world. It's embodied transcendence. It's not asking what you can expect of life and of God, it's asking what life and God can expect of you.
In the beginning was the word and the word became flesh. But, the word was logos. Logos is more than words, much more. It is meaning and this unique innate disposition to rational speech that reflects the world. So, logos became flesh. And flesh is embodied. So, the innate disposition to rational speech became embodied. Let us not forget that the innate disposition is only developed in a social setting. Just as the individual is a unit that needs the community to develop, so society needs humanity to develop.
The Nature of Justice
It is just when someone gets what they deserve. That is, they receive in proportion to their contribution. This goes for both the positive and the negative. The end is to limit harm. The consequences are what we are looking at, but consequences must travel through intention. Intention is important because the intentions will determine the final consequences over a series of interactions. Justice must occur across time. When harm is done then reconciliation must be sought. If the harmed and the harming party can come to terms in what must be done to remedy the situation then justice is restored, and this approach is called restorative justice.
The Nature of Corrective Mechanisms
In some ways living systems are feedback mechanisms, they incorporate a lot of feedback mechanisms. Many of these mechanisms are corrective, they are negative, when something goes too far they are there to signal that and get it back on course. This is what the great social and religious reformers do for society. John the Baptist, Jesus, Martin Luther, and many others were seeking to reform, to correct, the path.
The Nature of Axioms
There must be a solid foundation where questioning and doubt stop and ideas can begin to grow. In math there are axioms, truths that cannot be questioned, and in life there must be as well. Objectivism has shown three axioms necessary for dealing with reality: existence exists, consciousness perceives existence, an existent is itself. Logotherapy has shown three axioms necessary for the pursuit of meaning: life is intrinsically meaningful, we are capable of discovering opportunities for meaningful action, we are motivated to make our lives meaningful and purposeful.
The Nature of Revelation
The truth of behavioral patterns, morality, and ethics emerges from behavioral actions, through images, and finally to abstract symbols. These truths are encoded in our stories. This revealing, storing, and communicating process is revelation itself.
The Nature of Complementarity
There is a God without, in the rational, understandable, and intelligible order of the universe. And there is a God within, in the innate disposition to rational speech and this ability to understand the intelligible order. The soul is the reflection of God, and the experience of God is the meeting place.
The Nature of Tragedy and Malevolence
Tragedy and malevolence are different. Bad things happen, this is tragedy. When bad things happen intentionally, on purpose, this is malevolence. Both tragedy and malevolence must be confronted. Malevolence is a much greater evil.
The Nature of Life
All things are always falling apart, this is entropy. But living things work against this general natural tendency. This is why Erwin Schrodinger talks about life as an anti-entropic force. This local positive energy balance that is self-sustaining is what Hans Hass talks about when he talks about energons. Life is a dialogue with the world, an ongoing interaction.
The Nature of Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism is often fanatic, intolerant, literal, and impersonal. To work against this we need a more understanding view with a wider perspective, to reach for the limits of tolerance, to connect symbolically what cannot be connected literally, and a religion that is personal.
The Nature of Story
The greatest story is triumph over tragedy. The second greatest story is triumph over malevolence. This is because tragedy is part of the existential nature of reality and life, while malevolence is only possible because of the existential nature of tragedy. Stories are trial and error by proxy.
The Nature of History
History is always different, but there are patterns. It is the study of these patterns on an individual level and on a societal level that can inform our actions for the future. This is what the study of history is for.
The Nature of the World
Our conceptual understanding of the world is always seeking to be whole and to perceive and conceptualize the whole, the gestalt. In religion, philosophy, and narratives we find wholes. You must go through all of the parts to understand the whole, but you cannot truly understand the parts until you understand the whole. This is like a movie. You must watch each scene to understand the meaning, but the meaning is only revealed at the end. This is like life.
List of works and people to reference. This list can only ever be partial.
Benjamin Franklin
- A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain
- Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion
Richard Feynman
- The Meaning of It All
Oskar Pfister
- The Illusion of a Future
Erwin Schrodinger
- What is Life?
- Mind and Matter
Jerome Bruner
- Actual Minds, Possible Worlds
Lev Vygotsky
- Mind in Society
Viktor Frankl
- Man's Search for Meaning
- The Will to Meaning
- Psychotherapy and Existentialism
- Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning
- Recollections
- The Unconscious God
C. S. Lewis
- The Abolition of Man
- The Chronicles of Narnia
Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt
- Love and Hate
- Human Ethology
Andrew W. Notier
- Erro, Ergo Sum: An Evolutionary Map for Consciousness, Cognition and Free Will
Hans Hass
Endel Tulving
Jean Piaget
Jaak Panksepp
Albert Bandura
Carl Jung
- The Undiscovered Self
Jordan Peterson
- Maps of Meaning
Eric Weinstein
Ayn Rand
- An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
Alfred Korzybski
- Science and Sanity
Karl Popper
- Unended Quest
Charles Sanders Peirce
- The Reality of God
Carl Rogers
George Eisen
- Children and Play in the Holocaust
Desmond Morris
- The Naked Ape
- The Human Zoo
- The Artistic Ape
Charles Darwin
Paul Graham
Ludwig von Mises
- Human Action
- Memoirs
Carl Menger
Alfred Adler
Gordon Allport
- The Individual and His Religion
James Gibson
- The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems
- The Ecological Approach to Visual Systems
Scott McCloud
- Understanding Comics
Ernest Becker
- The Birth and Death of Meaning
J. K. Rowling
- Harry Potter
J. R. R. Tolkien
- The Lord of the Rings
George R. R. Martin
- A Song of Ice and Fire
- Fevre Dream
Patrick Rothfuss
- The Kingkiller Chronicle
David Gemmell
- Legend
Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Earthsea Cycle
Johanna Wolfgang von Goethe
- The Sorrows of Young Werther
Terry Pratchett
- Going Postal
Joseph Conrad
- Heart of Darkness
Voltaire
- Candide
Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Ken Grimwood
- Replay
This is only a beginning. All of these ideas and concepts have to be worked out, clarified, refined, and expanded. But, this is a good set of notes to start with.
I've written three fictional pieces that I like so far.
"The City of Peace" - A future history science fiction utopia/dystopia action adventure in a framed story of a father telling his son a story about the child's grandfather. That was a crazy sentence.
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/08/the-xprize-writing-contest-part-5-of-5.html
"The Birth of Hanniba'al" - A dark, somewhat alternative, historical origin story for the Carthage General Hannibal.
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/11/write-michigan-short-story-contest-part_30.html
"Matt's Eyes" - Don't read this if you don't like horror stories.
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2018/11/a-flash-of-horror-part-4-of-4.html
Here are three of my most popular posts.
"The Making of a Great First Line in Fiction"
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/12/the-making-of-great-first-line-in.html
"A Letter to My Niece in 2034"
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/12/a-letter-to-my-niece-in-2034.html
"The Most Important Question in Philosophy - Part 4 of 4"
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/11/the-most-important-question-in.html
You can find more of what I'm doing here: http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com
You can support this page at https://www.patreon.com/JeffreyAlexanderMartin
The Nature of God
God is a conceptual reality. Rather than placing God under metaphysics, God comes under the study of epistemology, and then that effects ethics. Rather than material, God is spiritual. A good way to understand this truth might be to think of dragons and/or monsters. Dragons are real. They are real conceptual entities. They are the ultimate small mammal predator. The great mouth and head of a reptilian snake/alligator, that breathes fire, with the wings of a great bird of prey, and the claws of a great predatory cat. This concept is a real concept. We have pictures and toys of dragons. We know how dragons act, and we know how to act when we encounter a dragon. And, we do. There are dragons to confront in life. This is the same idea with God. God is a conceptual reality.
We could also explain the conceptual reality of God with math. Zero, unity (or one), and infinity are all things that you cannot find materially in the world. Search all you want, they aren't there. You may think you find one, but you won't. Your one is a conceptual reality, yes, but not a material reality. The fact that one is called unity is interesting because our very perceptions abstract. They take all of these atoms, and sub-atomic particles too, and completely ignore them. We perceive at the level that is useful to us for tools and obstacles. Conceptual entities are extremely important, we need them to function, we need them to live, but they are not to be confused with material things.
Now, there are a number of issues that we will need to resolve in unique ways, such as whether God is immanent in the world or transcendent outside of the world. In addition to that there is dualism, monism, trinitarianism, and hierarchism. Unique ways of conceptually solving these problems would be God as an immanent multiplicity, or a transcendent singularity, or both. You will notice that these are metaphysical problems, they are problems about the material reality rather than the true focus and true nature of God as a conceptual reality. Thus, we don't need to worry ourselves too much about this at this time. These concepts can even be fluid over a lifetime.
Great thinkers often have a unique view of God and religion. Here are a few examples. "To be religious is to have found an answer to the question, What is the meaning of life?" - Albert Einstein. "To believe in God is to see that life has a meaning." - Ludwig Wittgenstein. "God is how we imaginatively and collectively represent the existence of an action of consciousness across time; as the most real aspects of existence manifest themselves across the longest of time-frames but are not necessarily apprehensible as objects in the here and now." - Jordan Peterson. "God is the partner of our most intimate soliloquies. That is to say, whenever you are talking to yourself in utmost sincerity and ultimate solitude - he to whom you are addressing yourself may justifiably be called God." - Viktor Frankl.
The Nature of Suffering
Life is filled with both avoidable and unavoidable suffering. Pain, fear, loss, death, and guilt are all things that we each must encounter in our journey. We must devise ways of alleviating these as much as possible, but we must also find ways of confronting them when they are unavoidable. I have written another post on just these five things and will not delve into them here. But, it is important to point out that life necessitates, and could even be seen as synonymous, with the ability to err. All of these things are feedback signals for error. They also don't devoid meaning from life, they actually add to it. The question of the meaning of life is specific to the person, the task, and the context. The meaning of death is easier to articulate. The transient nature of life is what limits and adds meaning to life.
The Nature of Salvation
Historically there has been a great divide between salvation through works and salvation through faith. They are both only parts, means and effects, of the third and often forgotten path, salvation through knowledge. This knowledge could be called gnosis, as it is a unique type of knowledge, but it is knowledge nevertheless. Faith is the means to knowledge and works are the effects. But, the primary axle around which both faith and works turns is knowledge, is gnosis. Knowledge can grow out of a community, and it has to develop in a social setting with some teaching others, but in the end knowledge is held in an individual mind. This is why there can only ever be a truly universal priesthood. This responsibility can be ignored, but it cannot be overcome, because knowledge is either within the individual or it is nowhere.
The Nature of Good and Evil
Each person carries within them a value hierarchy. This hierarchy is always adjusting to the context without and the context within, but it is always there. Good and evil is directly related to this value hierarchy. Value creation is good, value destruction is evil. The more values we create the better, the more important those values are the better. The more values that are destroyed the worse, the more important those values are the worse. Seeking to understand Jesus is good, seeking to understand what Jesus sought is better. There is always a hierarchy. The greatest values are sacred. The greatest evils are profane. Viktor Frankl sorted values into three categories: the creative values, the experiential values, and the attitudinal values. There is always a value that can be fulfilled. What may be of the highest value? The potential for growth of the human innate disposition to rational speech, the spirit. What may be the greatest evil? The initiation of the greatest force against the greatest value.
The Nature of Sin
Sin is missing the mark. There are a variety of ways in which we can miss the mark in life, to destroy values or leave them unfulfilled. Some of the greatest sins are resentment, lying, arrogance, deceit, confusion, and boredom. This inner sins, this lack of virtue, leads to the outer actions of sin. What is lacking is both agency and communion. From the domain of chaos we are made to wrest order. But we often miss the mark. There are two different ways to sin, one is the sin of commission and one is the sin of omission. Doing something that we ought not to do, and not doing something that we ought to do. One is being wicked, the other is being weak.
The Nature of Virtue
Virtue, then, is hitting the mark. It is not being either wicked or weak. To have a vision of truth and the courage to confront the obstacles that lay in the path, and the strength to overcome. These are all a part of virtue. Virtue is contained in what is needed for positive iterative interactions. How do we need to act so that we can mutually support the attainment of greater value for all involved across time? Independent thinking, decency, civility, non-conformity, non-tyranny, and agreement. Within context all of these are virtues.
The Nature of Peace and Prosperity
Society is transactional. It is about exchange. Predatory behaviors move us away from society, and away from civilization. Production and distribution can only occur in their optimal states when there is peaceful communication. A product or service must be found to fit the needs and desires of the market and then this solution must be distributed to that market. This can only occur where force and the threat of force do not. The overall peace and prosperity of a society is directly proportional to the voluntary to involuntary transaction ratio. This is Jeff's Razor, and it is the barometer is peace and prosperity in society. For this to occur the individual must be seen as a sacred sovereign.
The Nature of the Knowledge of Ethics
How we interact and how we should interact are emergent. Before we can articulate them we are already doing them. Only later are we able to communicate through words in a conceptual way what we are doing and what we should be doing. Endel Tulving and Jerome Bruner talk about how our behavior is the foundation of our knowledge. This acting out is then turned into episodic memory, images, and symbols. These symbols and then further abstracted to the point where we can talk and write about them using words. Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky talk about how children, and people, interact and only through that interaction over time are they, and we, able to find what works. Over time these codes of interaction are built into us at the most basic levels, Jaak Panksepp has shown how the play, and fair play, mental circuitry even operates in rats. There are two types of reasoning, there is instrumental reasoning, where we are finding out how the world works and how we can make it work. And there is moral reasoning, where we are finding out how we act, and how we should act. Both are discoveries from within looking out. Individual moral progress is emergent, it emerges over time from the confrontation with challenge.
We can ask, "Who am I responsible to?" We may answer conscience, logos, rational speech, rational thought, society, our bonded community, and we would not be wrong. We can ask, "What am I responsible for?" We may answer right action, right speech, right thought, the bonding of community into society, positive energy contribution, the fusion of a positive energon within a positive energon, and we would not be wrong.
The Nature of Religious Text Interpretation (Exegesis)
There are many ways of reading a text, especially a narrative. And, narratives are the most important works showing complex interactions with the world and others across time, they reveal ethics and morality. There are literal, historical, symbolic, allegorical, moral, anagogical, mystical, tropological, typological, aesthetic, dramatic, philosophical, logical, mythological, critical, appreciative, psychological, archetypal, figurative, political, metaphorical, ethical, behavioral, metaphysical, biographical, phenomenological, epistemological, and many more ways of interpreting a text. Each of these has a use, and each of these can be corrupted. We must look at what the greatest benefit can be.
In a written conversation I once explained something that happened to me like this. "I reached for an unusual brass ring, had a misadventure in Africa, and descended into the belly of the whale." In this single sentence we find that I used a symbolic idiom, a literal statement, and an analogy of metaphorical narrative. Exegesis is not simple.
The Nature of Judeo-Christian Narratives
There are many things to be gained from these narratives. We see man as fallen and trying for redemption. We see the example of someone picking up their cross and bearing it voluntarily in their confrontation with mortality. We see the interactions and fallout of Cain and Able, and especially what led to those interactions. We see the actions and interactions of Adam and Eve and Lilith. Within these stories there are lessons that have been found, and there are lessons yet to be found.
The Nature of Greco-Roman Narratives
Narratives reveal the nature of the culture, but all cultures are human cultures, and all narratives reveal some aspect of human culture. We can learn about love, hate, betrayal, and more from Romulus and Remus. Prometheus molded man from clay on orders and then went against orders to deliver fire into his grasp. Zeus was both force against tyranny, and yet a tyrant. The depths of meaning here are an infinite well.
The Nature of Scando-Icelandic-Germanic Narratives
The sagas tell of many things both ancient and new. We think of rule of law for all, elected officials, and powerful assemblies with checks upon officials as modern, yet they are contained in narratives that are not modern. Narratives that should not be ignored or forgotten.
The Nature of the Hero
The hero stands against wrong, against chaos, and against tyranny. A close study of important narratives, such as Harry Potter, will bring to light things which we miss about heroes. There are heroes that stand against, but are there heroes that stand for? Should there be?
The Nature of the Leader
A leader is many things. A leader must have vision, and courage, and must mediate conflict. But, more than this a leader must do two things, they must initiate and organize. This is the essence.
The Nature of the Genius
Eric Weinstein talks about how a genius must be able to cross an adaptive valley that others cannot cross, and to do this they must have an unusual ability to disregard things. They must take a plunge from what we know to what we do not know, from what can be done to what we do not know can be done, and along the way they must risk everything, and question everything. In failure they are cast aside, in success they are sometimes rewarded and praised, and sometimes cast aside. But, geniuses confront what most cannot, and it is only through them that can be won what most cannot conceive of, much less grasp.
The Nature of the Stranger
The modern-day idea of aliens from outer space is just an extension of the archetypal human way of dealing with the stranger. This has always existed. When Cortez conquered the Aztecs the Aztecs had a myth about a white demi-god from across the ocean. This was their narrative for dealing with the stranger. As humans have expanded our knowledge of the world our archetypal strangers have had to adapt, and move, all the way out into space where we cannot yet reach. And, to some extent, they also move into other dimensions, like the fairy worlds. All of these stories show the various ways of interacting with strangers, you can fight and win, fight and lose, run away, cooperate, trade, integrate, coexist, etc.
The Nature of the Monster
The monster is scary and dangerous. Sometimes they are hidden. Often we only know rumors about them. And someone needs to confront the monster.
The Nature of Theology
Theology is the study of the nature of God. How can, and how should, we do this? It can only be done through discussion and communication. There needs to be a diversity of ideas so that we can work to discover the truth, and so that our conceptions can adapt and evolve over time.
The Nature of Philosophy
Philosophy is about all of the known and unknown knowledge. Science came from, and is a part of, philosophy. They both seek after truth, and more importantly workable truth, actable truth.
The Nature of Communication
The semantic triangle, or my preferred semantic square, is an important framework for communication. We have something that we perceive in the world, this is one point. We have a concept of this, an idea. This is another point. Then we work to communicate this through spoken words, written words, pictures, diagrams, symbols, and such. This is the last point of the triangle. Now, the other person has to hear, see, or feel these symbols. They then form their own conceptual idea. Then they can compare this to the world. This forms their own triangle. Together we form a semantic square of communication. Communication can go awry at any point in this process.
There are various ways to teach things, but the best way to teach behavioral patterns is to be exposed to them and to think about them. This is done through narrative and discussion, through parables and commentary.
Compliance and agreement are not the same thing, but they can be in alignment. Imagine a square with four quadrants. There are four different things that can occur between two people: agree and comply, disagree and comply, agree and don't comply, and disagree and don't comply. Each of these occurs on a regular basis in all of our interactions. This Compliance/Agreement Matrix, as I have termed it, allows us to think through both sides of our interactions, and to hopefully work towards greater understanding.
To persuade we can appeal to ethos, pathos, and logos, to the ethical, the passionate, and the logical parts of humans. There are more that are sometimes proposed: kairos, chronos, topos, telos, ritus, mythos, and ontos. The important thing to realize is that outside can be a catalyst, but the change must come on the inside.
The Nature of Concepts
Concepts are formed from impressions that we perceive in the world. We take these perceptions and we abstract them, we eliminate certain measurements. We treat certain specifics as variables. This is where creativity comes from. When we take an abstract concept and make one of those variables concrete again, in a different way, we have then created a new concept. This process of abstraction and concretion is what thinking is all about. All of our knowledge flows up and down through these conceptual hierarchies. Our very perceptions themselves already do quite a bit of abstracting. We do not perceive atoms, much less quarks, we perceive useable objects as tools or obstacles. The ability to abstract and conceptualize is what has allowed humans to expand our awareness to include the universe and the electron. These concepts are real, we act upon them.
The Nature of Religion
Religion is all about how we act. We must collapse the complexity of the world in such a way that we can act rightly in the world. Things can always be more complex. The metaphorical Jeff's Hammer can hit a concept and send it flying to interact with another part of the world. Only our conceptual ability allows us to separate things out from their context. Or, Jeff's Hammer can hit an object and break it into pieces, each of which can be hit and broken into more pieces. Things can always be seen as more complex, because they are. But, we need ways to manage this complexity and still act. This is what religious concepts are for. Religions can be adaptive to the situation or maladaptive. They need to be able to have the ability to update and adjust, while keeping that which is good and right. Jesus was a reformer, the reformation was about adapting, and the primitivist movement was about adapting again. This ability to adjust and change is important, and undervalued. The goal is to make people better. To elicit better behavior patterns through better thought patterns. What has come before isn't bad, we are just seeking better.
The Nature of Miracles
Miracles occur. They are things that we can't explain that are also good. They are like class statistics, it shows that we can observe a gap in our knowledge.
The Nature of Truth
The finding of truth is a process rather than a destination. It is found through conjecture and refutation, as Karl Popper explains. It has to be acted out iteratively over time. This is why Charles Sanders Peirce articulated the original Pragmatism.
The Nature of Heaven and Hell
The Nature of Magical Thinking
The same ability that allows us to understand great things, and create new things, can lead us astray. Magical thinking is nothing other than a conceptual reality that does not correlate our actions with our potential futures in the way that we want. It is often just false association. But, without the ability for magical thinking we would also not have the ability to think.
The Nature of Angels and Demons
Our angels are messengers, in all of the forms they can take and with all of the potential messages they can bring. Demons are dividers, they tear apart and drive a wedge.
The Nature of Prayer
Prayer does not need to have a direct physical effect upon the world to have a spiritual effect. To change the outside we must first change the inside. Prayer affects first the outside, and through this avenue it then effects the outside. The indirect path is sometimes the best path.
The Nature of Human Bonding
Human ethology studies this phenomenon, and others. We form bonds in various way, but some of the most important are our shared interests, our shared purposes, our shared perspectives. We need fellowship and communion, and are enhanced by it in a multitude of way.
The Nature of Helping
We can help people directly, but great change in someone's life can only be enacted by them, because they are the only ones that can exert the needed amount of influence over their own behavioral patterns over time. The best way to help this process is often the helping relationship that Carl Rogers talks about, the one where we listen and allow the other person to try to formulate and work out their conceptual issues with us as a sounding board.
The Nature of Mythology
Mythology is the projection of imagistic archetypes from potentiality into actuality. It's the creation of symbols in the world from the symbols that are already within us. Myths communicate important truths. They are a hyperreality, where behavioral patterns and consequences are distilled to their essence. These patterns are emergent, they are revealed first through procedure and behavior, then put into images and episode, and only then used on a semantic and purely abstract symbolic level. The truth is contained at all levels, but through abstraction some is lost on each step.
The Nature of Fiction
Fiction is an extension of play. Play is about preparation. It's preparation and rehearsal for acting in the world. Games and sports are embodied fiction. Fiction is a conceptual game. The game, the fiction, is distilled truth, a hyperreality, an essence. We conceptualize behavioral patterns in fiction and we embody fictive behavioral patterns in life.
The Nature of Conflict and Resolution
We all have a tendency to form ingroups and outgroups. We do this quickly and subconsciously. It's all too dangerous for these groups to fall into disagreement. And, it's all too easy for civil disagreement to fall down Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement and go from talking about the central point to simple insults. Beyond this we have violence, which has its own way of escalating and de-escalating. One important key to all of these conflicts is to find common ground. Start there and seek to expand the common ground. And, when there is no more common ground, seek to agree to respect the difference.
The Nature of Light and Darkness
Darkness is everywhere, it is everything, until light is shined upon it. Only though illumination do we find clarity and the ability to see the way forward, and what came before. Darkness exists without light, light only exists within the darkness, where darkness is revealed as simply an absence of light.
The Nature of Man
The Ancient Greeks saw man as unique in his ability for rational speech. This is true. Man can be seen as a fallen angel or a risen beast. Either necessitates that he climb. Man is a whole, conceptually we can break him down into his pieces and parts, but he is only man when he is seen as a whole. This view is best expressed by Viktor Frankl in his Dimensional Ontology. Man, and life, has as part of its essence the ability to err. And thus must seek to not err, and to correct errors. There is a piece of man that sits separate and observes, it watches and records, it evaluates and judges, and it has the authority then to direct and choose action for the future. This observer, recorder, evaluator, and director is at the heart of life itself. Truly, to err is human, to err is life. Erro, ergo sum, I err, therefore I am. And therefore I correct and redeem.
The Nature of Political Participation
Humans are social. This means that we must do two things, we have to negotiate about our individual disparate goods, and we must deliberate about our common goods. This deliberation is what politics is about. Hans Hass talks about how living things are defined by their ability to create local positive energy flows. Erwin Schrodinger calls living things anti-entropic in the same vein. A social organization, like an individual, can have a positive, neutral, or negative energy output. Some will grow, the others will fade. To determine the best path forward and best solutions there has to be access and intellectual freedom. Thought is made of symbols. The restriction of the free exchange of these symbols limits the ability to think, and the ability to move forward, as individuals and as a society.
The Nature of the Soul
Within humans is this sacred innate disposition to rational speech and thought. God is sacred order, and the soul allows this correspondence between reality and consciousness. There is a sacred order without and a sacred order within. This innate disposition to rational speech is the divine spark. It is embodied logos. Logos acted out in the world. It's embodied transcendence. It's not asking what you can expect of life and of God, it's asking what life and God can expect of you.
In the beginning was the word and the word became flesh. But, the word was logos. Logos is more than words, much more. It is meaning and this unique innate disposition to rational speech that reflects the world. So, logos became flesh. And flesh is embodied. So, the innate disposition to rational speech became embodied. Let us not forget that the innate disposition is only developed in a social setting. Just as the individual is a unit that needs the community to develop, so society needs humanity to develop.
The Nature of Justice
It is just when someone gets what they deserve. That is, they receive in proportion to their contribution. This goes for both the positive and the negative. The end is to limit harm. The consequences are what we are looking at, but consequences must travel through intention. Intention is important because the intentions will determine the final consequences over a series of interactions. Justice must occur across time. When harm is done then reconciliation must be sought. If the harmed and the harming party can come to terms in what must be done to remedy the situation then justice is restored, and this approach is called restorative justice.
The Nature of Corrective Mechanisms
In some ways living systems are feedback mechanisms, they incorporate a lot of feedback mechanisms. Many of these mechanisms are corrective, they are negative, when something goes too far they are there to signal that and get it back on course. This is what the great social and religious reformers do for society. John the Baptist, Jesus, Martin Luther, and many others were seeking to reform, to correct, the path.
The Nature of Axioms
There must be a solid foundation where questioning and doubt stop and ideas can begin to grow. In math there are axioms, truths that cannot be questioned, and in life there must be as well. Objectivism has shown three axioms necessary for dealing with reality: existence exists, consciousness perceives existence, an existent is itself. Logotherapy has shown three axioms necessary for the pursuit of meaning: life is intrinsically meaningful, we are capable of discovering opportunities for meaningful action, we are motivated to make our lives meaningful and purposeful.
The Nature of Revelation
The truth of behavioral patterns, morality, and ethics emerges from behavioral actions, through images, and finally to abstract symbols. These truths are encoded in our stories. This revealing, storing, and communicating process is revelation itself.
The Nature of Complementarity
There is a God without, in the rational, understandable, and intelligible order of the universe. And there is a God within, in the innate disposition to rational speech and this ability to understand the intelligible order. The soul is the reflection of God, and the experience of God is the meeting place.
The Nature of Tragedy and Malevolence
Tragedy and malevolence are different. Bad things happen, this is tragedy. When bad things happen intentionally, on purpose, this is malevolence. Both tragedy and malevolence must be confronted. Malevolence is a much greater evil.
The Nature of Life
All things are always falling apart, this is entropy. But living things work against this general natural tendency. This is why Erwin Schrodinger talks about life as an anti-entropic force. This local positive energy balance that is self-sustaining is what Hans Hass talks about when he talks about energons. Life is a dialogue with the world, an ongoing interaction.
The Nature of Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism is often fanatic, intolerant, literal, and impersonal. To work against this we need a more understanding view with a wider perspective, to reach for the limits of tolerance, to connect symbolically what cannot be connected literally, and a religion that is personal.
The Nature of Story
The greatest story is triumph over tragedy. The second greatest story is triumph over malevolence. This is because tragedy is part of the existential nature of reality and life, while malevolence is only possible because of the existential nature of tragedy. Stories are trial and error by proxy.
The Nature of History
History is always different, but there are patterns. It is the study of these patterns on an individual level and on a societal level that can inform our actions for the future. This is what the study of history is for.
The Nature of the World
Our conceptual understanding of the world is always seeking to be whole and to perceive and conceptualize the whole, the gestalt. In religion, philosophy, and narratives we find wholes. You must go through all of the parts to understand the whole, but you cannot truly understand the parts until you understand the whole. This is like a movie. You must watch each scene to understand the meaning, but the meaning is only revealed at the end. This is like life.
List of works and people to reference. This list can only ever be partial.
Benjamin Franklin
- A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain
- Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion
Richard Feynman
- The Meaning of It All
Oskar Pfister
- The Illusion of a Future
Erwin Schrodinger
- What is Life?
- Mind and Matter
Jerome Bruner
- Actual Minds, Possible Worlds
Lev Vygotsky
- Mind in Society
Viktor Frankl
- Man's Search for Meaning
- The Will to Meaning
- Psychotherapy and Existentialism
- Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning
- Recollections
- The Unconscious God
C. S. Lewis
- The Abolition of Man
- The Chronicles of Narnia
Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt
- Love and Hate
- Human Ethology
Andrew W. Notier
- Erro, Ergo Sum: An Evolutionary Map for Consciousness, Cognition and Free Will
Hans Hass
Endel Tulving
Jean Piaget
Jaak Panksepp
Albert Bandura
Carl Jung
- The Undiscovered Self
Jordan Peterson
- Maps of Meaning
Eric Weinstein
Ayn Rand
- An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
Alfred Korzybski
- Science and Sanity
Karl Popper
- Unended Quest
Charles Sanders Peirce
- The Reality of God
Carl Rogers
George Eisen
- Children and Play in the Holocaust
Desmond Morris
- The Naked Ape
- The Human Zoo
- The Artistic Ape
Charles Darwin
Paul Graham
Ludwig von Mises
- Human Action
- Memoirs
Carl Menger
Alfred Adler
Gordon Allport
- The Individual and His Religion
James Gibson
- The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems
- The Ecological Approach to Visual Systems
Scott McCloud
- Understanding Comics
Ernest Becker
- The Birth and Death of Meaning
J. K. Rowling
- Harry Potter
J. R. R. Tolkien
- The Lord of the Rings
George R. R. Martin
- A Song of Ice and Fire
- Fevre Dream
Patrick Rothfuss
- The Kingkiller Chronicle
David Gemmell
- Legend
Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Earthsea Cycle
Johanna Wolfgang von Goethe
- The Sorrows of Young Werther
Terry Pratchett
- Going Postal
Joseph Conrad
- Heart of Darkness
Voltaire
- Candide
Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Ken Grimwood
- Replay
This is only a beginning. All of these ideas and concepts have to be worked out, clarified, refined, and expanded. But, this is a good set of notes to start with.
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I've written three fictional pieces that I like so far.
"The City of Peace" - A future history science fiction utopia/dystopia action adventure in a framed story of a father telling his son a story about the child's grandfather. That was a crazy sentence.
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/08/the-xprize-writing-contest-part-5-of-5.html
"The Birth of Hanniba'al" - A dark, somewhat alternative, historical origin story for the Carthage General Hannibal.
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/11/write-michigan-short-story-contest-part_30.html
"Matt's Eyes" - Don't read this if you don't like horror stories.
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2018/11/a-flash-of-horror-part-4-of-4.html
Here are three of my most popular posts.
"The Making of a Great First Line in Fiction"
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/12/the-making-of-great-first-line-in.html
"A Letter to My Niece in 2034"
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/12/a-letter-to-my-niece-in-2034.html
"The Most Important Question in Philosophy - Part 4 of 4"
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/11/the-most-important-question-in.html
You can find more of what I'm doing here: http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com
You can support this page at https://www.patreon.com/JeffreyAlexanderMartin
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