| So … You’re Skeptical |
| Think of someone you know that seems pretty happy about life. How would you describe their attitude? Are they kidding themselves? Are they ignoring the ugly truth about life that’s right in front of their eyes and pretending that some happy fantasy world that exists only in their heads is real? Well, guess what. That is exactly how every happy person in the world acts. And the really strange thing is that it’s OK. Because the reason that you are unhappy is that you have constructed a fantasy world just as complete and just as removed from the “facts” as the Pollyanna imaginings that you so despise in those happy people. Reality is in fact neither good nor bad, it is a very plastic inkblot sort of thing that can be bent and twisted in many directions depending on your beliefs. WHAT! you say? What about THE TRUTH? Well, that’s a complicated question and it gets into the meaning of life bit that we haven’t gotten to yet, but suffice it to say that what is REALLY going on is so strange, so complex, and so far beyond our everyday understanding, that it bears no relationship to what you think of as “reality”, “truth”, or “reason”. Good and bad, happy and sad, these are notions that you are imposing on the world around you. The answer to unhappiness is both liberating and infuriating, but here it is. Happiness doesn’t depend on anything that has or has not happened in the past, nor does it depend on your future prospects (thank God, eh?). The simple fact is, in order to be happy …You Must Decide to be Happy. @#$% …. Isn’t that aggravating? You can’t blame it on anyone else, and no one else can do a thing for you. You’ve just got to decide to be happy, whether or not your logical mind thinks it is rational to be happy and whether or not your moral sense thinks you deserve to be happy. You absolutely will not be happy for any length of time until you decide to, and if you decide to, you can be happy in the face of the most miserable circumstances. Happy deciding. |
| The Meaning of Life |
| If you want to know the meaning of life because you feel useless and worthless … read on …Well, you are, (useless and worthless) … No, seriously, this is a typical problem in most cultures around the world. People tell their children, ( with words and actions ), that they are no-good, worthless, useless drains on their parents’ happiness, pocketbooks, and patience. Given this scenario, you get a lot of adults who became convinced as children that they were just no good, and they helpfully pass this attitude on to their children. Lovely predicament, eh? Well, thankfully, they were wrong. Let’s take useless first, it’s easier. You cannot be classified as useless, because you aren’t really supposed to have to make yourself useful. Look at the natural world. What is the use of a tree? Well, it has many uses, but it isn’t TRYING to be useful. There’s the difference. It’s just doing what it wants (or so we assume) and in the process of doing that it does its job in the natural order of things. Despite all the ranting of moralists, you are in the same boat. The only way you are ever going to do an ounce of good in the world is to do what you want. Do what makes you happy, or at least what distracts you from your misery. Important Note: If you have an underdeveloped sense of empathy and enjoy doing things that harm others, stop reading now … Ignore this advice and seek some professional help! How, you may ask, does doing what you like do any good? Look around you. Look at people who seem to be trying very hard to be useful. Are they really doing good things for people? Or do they make everyone around them miserable with all their moral “uppidyness” and incessant busy bodying? I suspect it is the latter. The people who really do others some good are the people who are doing what they like and who aren’t very interested in being useful. They are usually interesting to be around, because they are doing things that interest them. They are often fun to be around, because they appreciate fun and know how to laugh and not take anything too seriously. They inspire other people to figure out what it is that they want to do by example, thus causing more people to be interested in life and interesting to be around, fun loving, etc. Out of all the people we meet in life, these people who are doing their own thing are the people who have the most profoundly positive impact on us and thus make our lives richer in the most fundamental, meaningful way. Can you really call that useless? Sure, working in a soup kitchen will feed people, but if you’re being a martyr about it because you don’t really want to be there, everyone around you will see right through you and hate you for being moralistic and insincere, and you will end up doing more harm than good. So, revel in your perfect uselessness. It’s the useful thing to do. What if everyone in the world just did what they wanted? Would it be anarchy? Well, that starts to get into the subject matter for our eventual companion page, “How to Solve All the World’s Problems!” |
| Now for Worthiness |
| You see, there are really only two moral beliefs about people, either people are basically good, or they are basically bad. 99.9 percent of the world’s population believes that people are basically bad, and that’s a problem. If it’s true that people are basically bad, then there is no hope for us; democracy is obviously doomed, and a benevolent monarchy is impossible because no basically bad person could stay benevolent once they had all that power. Are people basically bad? Let’s look at the facts. Once again, look at the people around you. Once you get to know them, you realize that Everyone is doing the best they can with what they have. Everyone on the planet is in exactly the same state of moral worth, because we are all doing the best we can with what we have. Poor upbringings cause many people to not have much to do their best with, but hey, that’s life. Criminals believe they are powerless, so breaking the social contract is the only way they think they can get what they need and manage to feel somewhat powerful. People without that hang-up can see that cooperation and respect are really how things get accomplished, but both of these types of people are simply trying to live a fulfilling life using the methods that they think have the best chance of working. So you see, people are basically good. They are all trying to do their best. They often just need some help overcoming inner demons and behaviour patterns that aren’t really working for them. Obviously, you are in the same boat. You are doing the best you can with what you have. You are already living the most moral and correct life you know how to live. There is no more that you can do at this moment to be a better person. You are already a good person. You do not have to strive every moment to be better than it is possible for you to be. Smile at yourself. You’re OK. Now, it should be clear that you can improve. Not by beating yourself over the head for bad things you’ve done; those things couldn’t be helped. You were just doing your best with what you had. What you can do is learn where your blind spots are. Watch others. People who at first glance are just plan old bad people are on further investigation suffering from horrendous misconceptions about how the world works. You also have misconceptions about the best way to get what you want. Find those misconceptions and wake up! But, don’t worry if your progress is slow and unsteady. You will make progress, but after all, you can only do the best you can with what you have … |
| Waiting for ” it ” to happen? … |
| OK … You got this far …. And now you feel the need to start poking holes in all this …. Well check out our answers so that you can “prove” your intellectual prowess … Ahhhhh yes …. the eager young intellectual out to battle the demons of smug fuzzy-headedness here on the net. Well, Homey don’t play that. We aren’t going to argue with you, because we already know what arguments can and cannot be knocked down. As Immanuel Kant pointed out quite a while back now, no metaphysical axiom can be proven to be necessary. Meaning, by its very nature, implies a metaphysical and teleological structure that is rooted in assumptions beyond mere matter. That is to say, you will be able to very easily poke holes in our presentation of the meaning of life, by definition. It wouldn’t be the meaning of life if it were logically unassailable. The only unassailable arguments these days are materialism and pure philosophical agnosticism. If you are dealing with someone who believes that the material world exists, you can win every argument by having the position that all that exists are atoms and molecules bouncing randomly around and that there is no moral or philosophical principle that can be proven to be true, or even to have any meaning. Life is completely pointless on a philosophical level, but if you want to continue filling your belly just for the sheer bloody- mindedness of it, Darwin pointed out the basic game plan and Ayn Rand filled in the egotistical details. If you have someone who is more clever and knows to argue that the material world may not exist, then there are not only no moral or philosophical principles that can be proven to exist, but indeed, there are no scientific principles that can be proven to exist either. You have sunken into solipsism, which of course can’t be proven either, leaving you with no provable statements whatsoever. As before of course, if you wish to continue filling your non-existent belly with insubstantial morsels, there are plenty of other non-existent people who will apparently play that game with what we will for argument’s sake call you, so jolly good luck, if there were such a thing. And something awful happened to you or someone you care about and you don’t understand why bad things happen to good people ….. actually there is a book by the name “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” No one here has read it of course, we don’t need to, because we already know why … There is no such thing as Justice …. It is an illusion. A myth. A fairy tale. Life really isn’t fair. The question is, why do you think it’s supposed to be? Who started that idea? Job? The people who tried to put a good face on beating people up by inventing the Queensbury Rules? We don’t know. Justice sounds like a good idea because it sort of equalizes the pain. I get hurt, so you get hurt in return. Well there’s more ocean than land, more roaches than roach motels, and more salesmen than prophets. Things just aren’t meant to be equal. Suffering and happiness are not weights in some cosmic Martha Stewart food scale, their relative proportion is completely unpredictable … just get over it. Here’s the deal. Tragedy may be unequal, but it isn’t random. Yes, there is a meaning, we’re giving a bit away early here. Bad things usually happen to forcefully slap us out of whatever stupor we are in at the time. We are supposed to start questioning our beliefs. We are supposed to figure out what is and what is not important to us. People usually don’t change unless they feel sufficient pain to overcome their natural resistance to change. Change takes energy. Nothing energizes like tragedy. What suffering is usually supposed to encourage us to do is figure out how to avoid suffering in the future. Find out what happy people do and imitate them. This is not rocket science. If tragedy seems random and cruel now, it isn’t. You’re just not wanting to look at the facts. What facts those are exactly will be addressed later … Of course, if people don’t get the hint and continue to imitate deer staring into the headlights of destiny, well, that’s their lookout. Do not get mad at God/the universe/insert your cosmic principle here. Do what you’re supposed to do, pick your ass up off the ground and try again. Nobody likes a crybaby. You can’t get out of it by going limp and giving up. That usually makes it worse. Athletes must tolerate a certain level of pain to reach their goals. You are no different. As for the injustice of loved ones getting killed, etc., that has its own purpose. Don’t ask unanswerable questions about other people; you’ve got enough to worry about with your own situation. If you get tragically killed, then you’ll understand. Until then, forget it. We have been criticized about the callous nature of this page. For people who have recently lost family members, etc., this little diatribe can sting. However, the message is still true even for them. Life is very unfair, but like chemotherapy, it does the job. How about … I would like to help the world but most of the rest of the world seems completely insane, Yes, it always appears that you are in a minority of sane people (or perhaps you are the ONLY sane person) in a sea of completely confused crackpots. The reason that so many other people seem completely confused and wrongheaded is that they use different symbols and metaphors to view the world. It is impossible to discuss important issues such as politics, families, violence, justice, etc. without resorting to symbolism. Anything that does not directly refer to something that can be physically sensed, such as justice or one’s concept of God must be referred to by metaphor and symbol. If you and another use different symbols, you will be unable to communicate effectively. Some of the main metaphors in use today are: Conventional religion, Science, Power, that is, dominance and submission, Artistic and aesthetic worth, Traditional political categories, Material wealth and security, Romanticism and relationships, Honor, valor, and courage, Bigotry, racism, and exclusivity, Depth psychology (Freud, Jung, etc.), Humanism and “new age” psychology, Traditional philosophy. Chances are that your views and beliefs about the world center around one or several of these metaphors. For example, if you see the world in terms of moral worth and submission to a higher law, you are conventionally religious. If you see the world in terms of cause and effect and experimenting to find the right solutions, you are oriented toward science. People who share one or more basic metaphors will find that they can communicate effectively with one another and work together constructively. People who do not share any metaphors will usually be unable to regard one another with anything beyond fear, hostility, and contempt. Because of this lack of communication between groups, most discussions of important issues in the public arena quickly degenerate into grandstanding and name calling, because in the absence of real understanding between the disagreeing parties, only mob psychology is left to sway public opinion. In all of this you may be left frustrated and unable to act, because you have not yet realized that . |
| The World Doesn’t Want to be Saved |
| The world is a teeming mishmash of cultures with a bewildering array of values and ideologies engaged in their own version of the good life. People are generally not interested in changing the metaphors through which they view the world, so real understanding between groups with conflicting viewpoints is not achievable in the short term. The good news is, that’s OK, because the world isn’t supposed to be saved on a global scale. It must be saved at the level of the individual. And despite the fact that the level of the individual appears to be statistically insignificant, it is in fact the most significant, because it is only at the level of the individual that a creative synthesis of conflicting metaphors can occur. Once a connection is made at the individual level, the process of spreading successful new metaphors throughout society is essential automatic if the society is ready for them. If the society is not ready, the new metaphors will not be accepted under any circumstances. So don’t beat you head on a rock. Solve your own interpersonal communication problems. If the world is ready to benefit from your solutions, you will not be able to stop it from using them. |
| Our Society so Violent! |
| There is one thing that makes people feel enough rage to commit violence, and that is a feeling of powerlessness. If people feel that they have no control over their destiny and environment, if they feel that they cannot act effectively, then they can reach a point where they believe that nothing short of violence can change their situation Acting effectively requires you to influence other people and to control your environment. To influence other people, they must respect you and be willing to listen to what you have to say. To control your environment, you must understand it, have the skills to affect it, and be permitted to act on it. It should be clear that these conditions are not met very often in our society. Many people in our society are alienated from one another and have few opportunities to exert any real influence on one another. Many poor and uneducated people do not have any control over their environment whatsoever. However, powerlessness is not the only ingredient in violence. The real question is not why people are violent, but why so many men are violent. Although women are just as capable of violence as men, crime statistics show that it is not women who are turning our urban environments into war zones. Both men and women must abide by certain expectations. Even though people have few instincts and all of our adult behavior is learned, we labor under the misconception that men and women are biologically destined to behave completely differently. Women are supposed to be yielding, they are not expected to forcefully express their own wants and needs. Men are supposed to be dominant and commanding, and are regarded as weak if they express any tendencies to yield or to behave in a “feminine” way. As psychologists have discovered, however, the most mentally healthy people express emotional and behavioral characteristics traditionally assigned to both sexes. The fully functioning human can be either forceful or gentle, commanding or submissive, strong or yielding, as the situation requires. Unfortunately, the acceptable range of emotions for men is rather narrow, and what happens is that men must express all of their emotional energy through the few emotions available to them. This leads to rather exaggerated expressions of strength and virility. Now, couple this self-image men have of strength and domination with the feelings of powerlessness rife in our society, and you have a recipe for disaster. Men must express their exaggerated sense of dominance, but they are rendered impotent by their inability to act with any effectiveness. To these men, violence seems to be the only way to affect their environment. This will continue to be a problem until men are raised differently |
| Yeah, yeah … Meaning and the mind … get to the point …. So what’s the connection? |
| Before we can tackle meaning, we’ve got to know what meaning is. Meaning is an intention, aim, or design. When we say we want to know what life means, we are really saying we want to know what it’s for. What purpose does it serve? Well, the primary feature of life is intelligence. By intelligence we mean purposeful activity. We make decisions and do things. Paramecium’s make decisions and do things. Rocks do not make decisions, although they can chip a tooth. If we knew why we have intelligence, we would be a great deal closer to understanding why we do anything, including exist. To understand intelligence, we must understand the mind. Science has given us many answers, but the one thing that science is still completely silent about is the nature of consciousness. Of course, there is more and more information every day about the connection between consciousness and the brain. Scientists, both mad and sane, are undertaking detailed research on how our minds and behaviour are affected when parts of our brain are stimulated, removed, and even added. These things affect our memories, feelings, and our thought processes. However, such research still doesn’t answer the question of what consciousness is. If you built a robot that had no real understanding but did have a vast store of stock responses and some clever rules about building sentences, it might fool many people into thinking it had intelligence. Because you programmed it, however, you would know that there were no “mental images” floating around inside the circuits of that machine. It simply took input, processed it according to specific rules, and generated output. The question is, why do we have these mental images and feelings? Why aren’t we biological “machines” that simply processes signals and automatically generate responses with no awareness of what’s going on? Why do we have consciousness, and where did it come from? Consciousness is something completely different from other characteristics of matter such as mass, charge, structure, etc. While our consciousness seems to depend on the matter in our brains, we cannot detect anything unusual about our brains that would indicate why consciousness is attached to it. If we agree that consciousness is in the brain as a whole, is it in a single neuron? A single atom? A single electron? Assuming that nothing exists except for interacting particles, somehow within every particle there is something that provides the basis for consciousness. Complex conscious activity may require highly complex structures such as our brains to occur, but the basis of consciousness must be present in matter itself. Our minds are simply one manifestation of a universal phenomena. People are examples of one way to organize the consciousness in matter. Are there other ways? How can we know which types of organizations of matter yield high-level consciousness like ours, and which do not? Are there structures which support levels of consciousness higher than ours? Are doorknobs conscious? Well, this page is supposed to answer questions, not ask them, so here is the answer: Not only is consciousness a universal property of matter, it is the primary property of matter. In fact, it’s the other way around, matter is a property of consciousness! Yes, consciousness is primary. Matter sprang from consciousness. We can’t help it if this is starting to sound like Genesis, it’s just the way it is. In the beginning was the word, and the word was pinging around the inside some sort of Mind, and it generated the physical universe. How’s that for pat? So, to summarize, the meaning of life is linked to the workings of the mind from which the universe sprang. What does that mind want, anyway? Read on … |
| A Short Story on the Beginning of Everything … |
| The beginning of the physical universe is a question that is really outside the boundaries of human understanding, but here is a story, a metaphor, that can answer that question on a symbolic level. In other words, this is a traditional religious document, it attempts to set down in words events that are larger than words allow. This section owes a lot to several sources, including Alan Watts and Jane Roberts. Before the beginning of time, there was a single consciousness. In fact, there may have been a bunch of other stuff, but that’s way outside our scope here. That consciousness thought and dreamed an infinity of thoughts, feelings, landscapes, and worlds, an infinity of possible creations. These mental creations thought their own thoughts, and these secondary thoughts also created their own inner worlds. The original consciousness observed and interacted with these inner beings as they interacted with one another, and that original consciousness begin to provide the environments required for its creations to grow and develop. All of the entities within the mind of the first longed to exist independently and grow and create as they had been created. The first consciousness, in order to allow its progeny full freedom of expression, began to imagine the conditions that would be required for the release of these inner worlds into objective existence. As it did so, all of space, time, and matter, including our universe, exploded into being. On the highest level, this physical existence contains an infinite number of dimensions and environments that match the infinite variety of possibilities that had formed in the mind of the original consciousness. This process continues as the progeny of that first mind grow and create new thoughts and new worlds. We are a result of that process, and our purpose is ultimately the same: to grow, to develop, and to create, in order to express all of the potentialities within ourselves. We are still in contact with the original mind because we are made of it, we sprang from it, and because time has no meaning outside of the physical universe, our past, present, and future exist together as an infinite variety of possibilities within that larger moment. What does that mean, an infinite variety of possibilities? We are starting to get some concrete answers to that question from our friends the physicists. Some people may know this already, but a big hole has developed in the last century in our understanding of how the physical world works. Newton invited us to a world of billiard balls bouncing off of one another with perfect mathematical precision. Einstein, Plank, Heisenberg, Bohr, and other very smart people have destroyed this comforting notion of matter with the most confusing and yet by far the most proven and completely verified theory of all time, quantum mechanics. We cannot predict what individual particles are going to do. We cannot even know exactly where they are and how fast they are going. There is an absolute, concrete limit to the amount of information we can have about matter. This limit is stronger than the speed of light, it is stronger than time and space, it is absolute. An individual particle is fundamentally unknowable. It is also not a particle, but let’s stay focused. What this means is, particles are unpredictable. They do their own thing. We have no way of knowing what they are going to “decide” to do. Bunches of particles, on the other hand, are very predictable. Even if we can only say that 51% of the time a particle will go this way and 49% of the time it will go that way, when you have a trillion particles stuck together, as a group they will go the 51% direction every single time. That sounds like it solves the problem, right? Well no. Our brains don’t always react to big bunches of particles. Our brains, delicate instruments that they are, are sensitive to the action of single particles. One electron can jump higher or lower, and this change can be magnified through our nervous system and cause a completely different physical response. Only with the advent of chaos theory has it become so obvious that tiny changes in complex systems can totally change the system’s behavior. So, our brains act like those anarchist particles. They are fundamentally unpredictable. Here is where the leap of faith comes in. There is absolutely no scientific way to prove that the non-physical mind determines which probable action a particular particle in our brains will perform. In scientific terms, the mind doesn’t exist at all. However, we are telling you here and now that this is exactly how the mind and the brain work together. The brain is an amplifier for the mind. It turns minute subatomic decisions into mental activity and physical actions. When our understanding of matter and of the brain has advanced farther, this connection will be clearer. Even today, Roger Penrose among others has made some rather intriguing guesses along these lines in his new book, Shadows of the Mind. You might think that this is the end of the discussion on physics. After all, we have shown how the ghost in the machine (that’s us) pulls the strings to operating our bodies and manoeuvre in the physical world. Well, that’s not the half of it. Quantum mechanics has not only ripped a hole in predictability, it has also torn logic asunder. Another big missing piece, aside from the whole probability problem, is knowing when and how quantum decisions are made. We know a particle will eventually show up either here or there, showing which decision was made. However, the theory doesn’t force the particle to make the decision. In quantum mechanics, particles can be in two places at once. As we mentioned, the theory is extremely well proven, and it is a source of serious head scratching among people who worry about this sort of thing when they try to understand why we only see the particle in one place. One good way to look at it is to say that it really is in two places. We observe it in one place, while in another quantum world other observers see it in the other place. Every quantum decision that has been made since the beginning of time has occurred in an infinite number of alternate universes, some of which resemble ours rather closely while others are completely alien. Physicists sometimes refer to this as the Everett, Wheeler, and Graham theory. Another way to look at it is to say that it is our conscious perception that makes the decision. We choose which version of the particle to see, thus choosing how “our” reality is going to look. Physicists do not dignify this theory with anyone’s name, it’s too mystical for them. Yet another way to look at it is to say that hidden factors that are outside of the physical reality that we can know make the decision. Again, this is a rather mystical notion. Outside of these physical theories, there is the idea that the world is a shared dream, that physical reality has no more fundamental validity than a passing thought. Through the power of our shared concentration, the world holds its shape and time seems to flow from the past to the future through the present. In this scheme, our reality is truly the result of a global trance in which we all participate. There is no physical reality, there is only the idea of physical reality. Well, all of these are true. Relating it back to our little story of the beginning, in order to actualize all of the possibilities inherent in matter, all choices are explored. So there are multiple universes, each trying out different decisions and even operating with different physical laws. No possibility goes unexpressed. Anything you choose here is chosen differently by another “you” elsewhere. Not only that, but it isn’t just people who do the deciding. Every choice of every particle (whether anyone’s watching it or not) is explored in some alternate world. And ultimately, it is the power of those decisions which generate the sensations we experience. It is our mind that chooses which reality it will participate in. In fact, it is our mind, which is “hidden” from the instruments of science, that determines everything about our experience. This is a very important point: |
| You create your own reality. |
| Not metaphorically, not symbolically, but in every minute of every day, we, along with the rest of the world, create the world. Another more pragmatic way to express this thought is: You get what you concentrate on. So What you say? … We have been given the freedom to create the reality we experience because we are supposed to learn from it. Life is a school. We are in a protected environment. This reality is a metaphor for larger realities in which we are to eventually take part. While what we do here does not have permanent consequences, it is vital for our learning that we take it somewhat seriously. Just as school work requires serious effort but isn’t supposed to be performed perfectly, we are expected to make mistakes as we try to create the world from the model that we see dimly in our minds. The mistakes we make in life, the cruel and thoughtless things we do, are really the foibles of children. Your errors do not weight eternally against your soul, and they are not put on your permanent record. Their only purpose is to teach you to improve. Feeling guilty is worthless unless it compels you to correct the error that you have committed and reminds you to not make the same mistake again in the future. Those are the only purposes of guilt. Guilt is not to be used to berate yourself uselessly after you have done all you can do to compensate for your action. Remember, the people you hurt chose to experience that reality, although they are not usually aware of that fact. When it comes to individuals, there are as many purposes as there are people in the world. While you may be part of larger groups and ultimately part of the entire human race and part of life on this planet, you chose this reality for specific reasons. To determine these reasons, the first places to look are at the basic facts of your life. You are rich or poor, smart, dim, clumsy, athletic, ugly or good looking for a reason. The reason is because living life under those circumstances points you in the directions you are supposed to be going. You are not supposed to be perfectly well rounded, it is usually quite helpful to be lopsided. It is that lopsidedness that provides the direction and impetus for your individual development. Disadvantages can provide challenges for you to battle, but another very important function of disadvantages is to provide natural barriers that prompt you to put your energies in other directions. People who are physically weak compensate by concentrating on their mental life. People who are not intellectual may be highly perceptive and “intelligent” on an emotional level, but this talent is not often recognized as valuable by others. Whatever your circumstances, they have been designed to give you the experience and impetus required to accomplish the tasks you have set for yourself here. Some people have given themselves major problems in order to learn hard lessons quickly. Others take life in measured doses as they slowly work their way toward an understanding of the true meaning of manhood or womanhood, creativity or stagnation, friendship or hatred, independence or dependence. When you have recognized the major circumstances and factors which are directing your life, you can begin to understand what trials or adventures will complete your training. Aside from your physical situation, you have a set of metaphors which you use to interpret the world. There are many different type of metaphors used by people as described in the Why does the world seem completely insane discussion. These metaphors serve to hide some areas of life and emphasize others. The question is, are your metaphors positive, expansive and flexible, providing you with creative challenges? Or are they negative, fearful, and claustrophobic, stifling your creative impulses and smothering you with fearful dogma? Let’s look at the characteristics of these two types of systems: |
| Open Systems |
| Base moral judgments on the actual helpfulness or harmfulness of someone’s behavior Leave large areas of behavior morally neutral, so that you have room to find compromises with others who see things differently. Encourage you to listen to and understand people who are different from you. Define standards of moral behavior but allow that thoughts and feelings are not controllable and are exempt from “moral” judgments. Expect your natural inclinations to lead you into creative endeavors that will help you to find your place in the world and meet your need to act effectively. |
| Closed Systems |
| Base moral judgments on unquestionable “lists” of what is good or bad behavior. Encourage you to only associate with people with your beliefs and background. Define thoughts and feelings as being good or bad, bad thoughts or feelings should be fought. Expect you natural inclinations to be toward lazy or immoral behaviour, requiring you to ignore your natural impulses and focus on ideas and activities given to you by others. You may need to alter your metaphors before you can deal with your challenges effectively. |
| The Purpose of Groups |
| There are millions of different social groups in the world, political, economic, religious, philosophical, and cultural. These groups are all trying to bring their particular vision into focus and build a life that is related to the central principles of the group. Each of these groups is an experiment in progress. As time passes, the ideas that are developed within these groups either spread to the society as a whole or are abandoned as unworkable. This is a Darwinian process that develops better ideas in the same way that evolution is supposed to develop better animals. Even groups that you personally dislike are working in your behalf, attempting to build visions of the world that might allow you to interact with the world more creatively and successfully. Groups also serve as symbols in the social world. Groups with different beliefs than your group provide you with viewpoints you wouldn’t have otherwise considered. They also represent parts of your own mind that you are not focusing on. However, if you fear those parts of your mind, this representation can degenerate into projection, which is a bad thing. |
| The Race as a Whole |
| The entire human race is a grand experiment in strengthening and focusing reflective thought and analytical intelligence to a far higher pitch than it has been expressed in other species on the planet. Humans are the only animals that can look at themselves and their world objectively, detached from immediate physical concerns. They have separated themselves from the business of physical survival in several ways. They have developed powerful methods of communication such as language and music, they have created cultural rituals and complex worlds of ideas, and they have changed their environment and built fantastic tools and toys. Unlike animals, humans create most of their environment themselves. The main focus of most people’s lives is not on the business of survival, it is on the business of building and maintaining their civilization. Our energies are dedicated to the development, communication, and expression of ideas; to cooperative effort with others on common tasks; and to using tools to change our environment to reflect our vision. Our main attention has been turned away from the natural world for several thousand years. The development of global economies and the resulting global environmental issues are pushing us back toward an appreciation of and involvement with our natural heritage. The development of technology and the resulting alienation of ourselves from the physical world and from each other have resulted in an increasing interest in spiritual questions (such as the meaning of life). These spiritual questions are pushing us back toward a more integrated understanding of our place in the universe. This isn’t supposed to be a turning back of the clock however. The intense objectivity and reflection developed by humanity is supposed to bring a new awareness to the task. We are not to simply take our place as natural creatures as we once did. Nor are we to attempt to subjugate the environment and our own natures as we have been doing. The forces of nature around us and within us are living, conscious things. We must learn from these forces. We must form a partnership, a symbiosis. We are to continue to try and bring our vision of life out into the physical world, but we must form and implement that vision cooperatively. We cannot force new patterns onto the natural and psychological forces that created us and that give us our physical and mental lives. Instead, we must understand the patterns already within the world and our minds and work within them and build upon them. We must become co-creators of our world. That is the challenge for the next millennium. It’s the only game worth playing. |
| So What? |
| What does this have to do with the meaning of your life? Trying to speak about reality is like trying to send a kiss by a messenger. Indeed, it is as foolish as trying to use a lamp to find an honest man, which is what we were really trying to demonstrate back in ancient Greece. Meaning cannot be communicated to you through an intermediate. You’ve got to experience it directly. You also cannot depend on others or on a “system” to identify truth. You have to know what truth feels like so that you can identify it for yourself. It is frustrating, but the most others can do is give you clues about what meaning and truth will look like so that you can recognize them … YOU need to experience it yourself to truly understand … and how do you experience it? … Just do it! … There’s nothing to it! |