Free The Animal

Without citing a bunch of past posts, I've been on a bit of a quest, lately, to investigate some of the Eastern religious traditions. I still am -- but increasingly as a skeptic and less as an honest inquirer. That's inevitable; once you're informed enough to begin making honest judgments, you do. There are still interesting aspects I haven't fleshed out, and this quest is driven by a couple of things. First, I see a lot of things I like from some of the new breed of businesspeople, many of whom cite interest in Eastern traditions, and second, I prefer to focus on what we can actually choose to do and accomplish, rather than on merely what is our right not to have done to us. That may perhaps just be a difference in perspective and attitude, but I think it's a big one. The following is an email out to this author, and concerns discussions over months and years centering on this page and proceeding forward through the chain of eight short pages, which should be read for background.

Paul:

I don't think that he, I, or any of us are "confusing consciousness with quantity." We're just saying -- correctly, I think -- that consciousness is required to make sense of both quantity and quality. Most importantly, it's what integrates the two.

I believe the various dichotomies you propose, though perhaps useful from the standpoint of that very thing -- breaking reality into pieces to be understood -- are but models. It is consciousness that must artificially organize reality into a mass of percepts and then reassemble it all, apprehend it all, and re-integrate it all into a hierarchy of concepts, and it does so in ways that are above and beyond what reality would be without consciousness.

And neither is it "collapsing consciousness into quantity, thereby equating the two." It is integrating everything. It is consciousness, for example, that takes wave, frequency, notes, measures, rhythms, score, key, tone, timing, and integrates all this quantity into a beautiful and exalting qualitative experience we know as a musical composition that moves us deeply and reflects our "soul," our deepest values. There is simply no correct way to look at that, except as an integrated whole. No composer could possibly dis-integrate the quality and the quantity; and if he tried, the result would be an awful horror.

What you seem to propose is that reality is two wholly separate worlds: a material and a spiritual, but with the spiritual guiding the material as the ideal. In terms of an analog, I get that, and can think of ways it's helpful as such. But that's not reality. Reality is metaphysically and physically one thing, and consciousness does what consciousness does in order to break it into pieces to understand it, reassembling into an abstract conceptual hierarchy of integrated pieces of a different and more useful or beneficial configuration. It is by this process that consciousness molds, shapes, and controls reality in a way that is useful and beneficial to man. It is our nature: to control reality to our uses.

It's as if you propose a physical reality where our right and left brains are completely separate, like if they existed in two separate bodies: the left-brain body of quantitative reason and logic, and the right-brain body of qualitative appreciation and reflection. The body of quantity is slave to the body of quality, completely blind to where the body of quality is coming from, what it perceives, knows, understands, or is motivated by. It's just a slave, a workhorse. Mr. Right Brain is the enlightened master.

Now, I think that's a fine analogy, and actually is helpful in some contexts to understand the importance of computing and production skills serving high values and being constrained by moral conscience. But it's also not reality. Mind and body; material and spirit; theory and practice; fact and value, it's all integrated, and breaking them down beyond the desire to simply understand, and instead: culturally, socially, politically, and institutionally cramming mankind physically into one mold or the other (go-nowhere religious mysticism (idealism), on the one hand, or grind-'em-up communism (materialism) on the other) is just wrong.

It's wrong metaphysics, because it rests upon a wished-for model of human psychophysiology that simply does not exist. It is the job of metaphysics to establish first principles as a foundation upon which to build human knowledge of reality and all that comes after. To do that properly, it must take account of human beings as they really are (integrated mind/body; whole beings), not divine a set of principles based upon someone's idea of the "ideal" human model: half mind, half body. The consequence of the later approach -- that gets it all wrong, incidentally -- is that everything that comes after tends to work against human nature rather than for it, and the result is predictable: coercion abounds, in order to mold people as "they should be;" and because "they don't live up," corrosive and chronic guilt eats away at the fabric of relationships all up the entire spectrum of society and politics.

Now, understand this:

The essence of morality is voluntary choice. Where people have no choice, then morality and immorality is inapplicable, not possible. Morality without human free will is a contradiction in terms.

The moral is the voluntary pursuit of values that benefit people, and not some kind of coerced servitude to some idea of spiritualism or goodness that everyone seems loath to specifically define, but that nonetheless embraces -- indeed: pretentiously dictates -- a set of "values" seemingly divined from on high or picked by some elite cadre of the enlightened. The immoral is either the voluntary pursuit of "values" (disvalues, or anti-values) that harm people, or the default of pursuing beneficial values altogether. Two ways to be immoral; one way to be moral: the mathematics of ethics.

I understand that some people pursue unwholesome values, or don't seem to care, or default entirely. It's in man's nature to act so...because? BECAUSE his will is free. But, this is all precisely none of my business (nor any of yours) until their pursuit of "values," or default on pursuing barely necessary ones, comes up against mine in irreconcilable ways. When that happens, I propose defense, while you propose offense, i.e., the ones with "inferior values" are forced to serve "higher values," as determined by you and others in "authority." I only demand that they leave me in peace to pursue mine, and I'll do likewise.

Capitalism is moral; not because it produces a lot of great stuff so efficiently, but because it reflects and embodies man's moral nature to voluntarily pursue beneficial values for himself and others. When capitalism exists as it really should (which it doesn't), it simply integrates that moral nature of man into a business context: employing division of labor, capital accumulation, and the whole gamut of other things that raise us from farmers to where we have a whole menu of values we may choose to pursue. It literally saves our lives every day. Because it can do that in such awesome and wonderful abundance, it is the most moral. Moreover, because it is responsive to producing the values everyone wants and discarding or leaving behind those values not wanted or not wanted any longer -- which is what makes it grow -- it has its own self-correcting mechanisms. This is unlike democracy, or any other political system, where everyone pays, but no one gets what they really value. Everything is either crammed down throats, or a poor compromise.

You see capitalism as the problem, but it's not. Force and coercion are the problem, and yes, much of that is encouraged, sanctioned, and perpetrated by so-called "capitalists" themselves, employing the power of the State to coerce for their benefit.

The problem, Paul, is neither the Church (as you seem to ascribe to me) or capitalism (as you explicitly claim). It is the State. It was the State when the Church used it to force its ways upon people, creating such misery and havoc; and today, it's the Sate, when mega-corporations use it to force its ways upon people, also paving the way for them to profit by diverting costs to externalities, such as environmental destruction (which they would be loath to do on their own private property).

This is the next step you need to take. All of the lamentable problems you list in your book are not the result of people freely pursuing the values they wish to pursue, because if it were, then the real underlying "problem" you're identifying is free will itself. All of the problems are caused by the failure to value  freedom, and the corrosiveness of coercion, with its myriad effects that kick off a chain reaction throughout society, culture, and the geopolitic.

It's not people trying to pursue their values that's causing all the problems, Paul, its that there are levels upon levels and institutions upon institutions trying to impose their values upon everyone else; all while forcing them to pay for the "pleasure."

As a friend of mine calls it: "Cannibal Pot Hysteria." Life and practical politics, today, is all about who goes into the pot, and who gets to feast. It's not "selfish," in the negative sense of the word, to not wish one's values to be used, by force, to support or exalt that which one does not value, or that which one despises. And neither you, nor anyone, has the moral right to compel others to sacrifice their values to yours or some force-backed divined set of "higher values."

If ideas shape man, cultures, societies, politics, then there's only one proper idea to begin with: freedom. If that's not the inviolable foundation -- and I mean: real freedom -- for social and political interaction, then individual morality largely does not exist beyond that fact -- is not even individually possible for large swaths of values, because those values are coerced rather than freely embraced. Only immorality exists from beyond the abrogation or destruction of freedom. Everyone is merely either a slave to some "higher values" religious-idealist "nirvana," or they're a slave to some "collective values" dialectical-materialist commune (You want the dichotomies? There you have 'em, in all their meat-grinder glory).

I'll give you this much, though: if the dichotomies were psychophysiologically real, rather than merely artificial, I would be 100% on board with you. Given only two alternatives, and no possibility of integration (only "balance"), then, of course, the material is slave to the spiritual, and you strive to define or divine the spiritual in ways that benefit the most as best you can.

It's so very fortunate that we don't live in such a reality. We have the potential to do and be so much more, through the integrating power of consciousness to control reality into realms we have proven ourselves, throughout history, to be scarcely able to even imagine.

Get this: it is not the physiological nature of humans to want to produce, and to produce more, that created all of our material well-being, (and will run completely amok and destroy mankind if not bridled by Mr. Right Brain), any more than ants and bees are going to take over the world due their physiology. But if ants or bees could integrate spiritual purpose with their ability to produce? We might have problems. Imagine what they could and would build, if, rather than being programmed to create anthills and bee hives, they could create anything within their physical power to create: guided by a sense of wonder, possibility, imagination, splendor?

What we're doing? ...creating, producing, as humans beings? It is being driven by our sense of spiritual awe.

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