The Ways of Being

The Spirit takes different orientations in its relationship with the world:

• Being-towards-beauty: the experience in art, music and nature
• Being-towards-creation: creating art, music, philosophy or other structures
• Being-towards-learning: being open to spheres of knowledge that enter the consciousness in the form of information
• Being-in-a-dream: the experience of “the nonsensical”, typically in the nighttime
• Being-toward-death: awareness of mortality and the fragile nature of human existence
  
• Being-towards-authority: the everyday experience in a political or religious community
• Being-towards-the-absurd: facing the world through irony,  sarcasm and satire, or dealing with bureaucracy

These categories are, of course, somewhat arbitrary, because the orientations are not that separate. Creation is actually applying the lessons learned, and humor (the absurd) can be understood as crooked beauty.

On Talent, Hegel and the Day of Finnishness

I’m often faced with phrases such as:

It is easy for you to say, you’re so talented.

I’m not intelligent enough company for you, you have to find someone to argue against you.

Well, you are a good person but most people are not.

I don’t understand you and that makes me feel stupid.

There are a couple of aspects to pay attention to here:

• Separation of You and Me
• Dichotomy of talent – no talent, intelligence – no intelligence, good – not good, easy – hard

I’m currently reading a book titled Introduction to Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit (in Finnish). The back cover states:

According to Hegel, the source and objective of philosophical thinking is humane, historical experience and no abstract world of ideas. That is why philosophy includes all aspects of reality: life and death, knowledge and error, science and art, religion and politics. To reach absolute knowledge one must follow the path of doubt and despair and experience all the different forms of human knowledge. The Phenomenology of Spirit is a description of this path, a rich presentation of the different elements of human experience.

In the Hegelian framework, what kind of awareness do the above phrases reflect?

First off, they reflect the feeling of separation. When a less conscious I faces a more conscious You, it creates an explanation: I’m less conscious because I’m less intelligent. It is my own fault that I don’t understand, now I feel angry and frustrated.

Separation causes the mind to create external explanations. Philosophy, rather than springing from experience that is common to all human existence, is a sign of brilliance that can only be reached by those with “talent”. Also understanding such things is reserved for the talented few. Thus the Spirit states: “You should find more intelligent company to argue with.”

This brings us to the Great Man theory, “according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of “great men”, or heroes: highly influential individuals who, due to either their personal charisma, intelligence, wisdom, or Machiavellianism utilized their power in a way that had a decisive historical impact.”

Herbert Spencer‘s criticism is enough to refute the theory:

“[Y]ou must admit that the genesis of a great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown…. Before he can remake his society, his society must make him.”

However, history is still implicitly approached through this theory – that is, national heroes are celebrated every year. This has to do with the narrative needs of the society: history is written and read so that it supports and creates legitimacy for the existing social structure and institutions.

In practical life this can be seen in national holidays, celebrations and events. For example in Finland being proud of being Finnish (no value statement here) has been in the last couple of years slowly linked to the True Finns party that is critical towards immigration and political establishment. This has caused somewhat negative connotations in celebrating the Day of Finnishness (which actually is today, May 12th) and Independence Day (December 6th). The political establishment has actually become increasingly more “pro-European Union” which creates an interesting tension in the Finnish political climate. (At the same time we have started to celebrate the Europe day on May 9th.) Depending on the current events, also such celebrations can start to feel “weird” – celebrating the EU in the midst of a European Union economic crisis creates lots of cognitive dissonance.

So to sum up this rather meandering path of thought: consciousness likes to claim that it is separate from others and that intelligence and wisdom is something to be reserved for the few in order to protect itself; in the social context this is linked to the theory of Great Men; this theory is actually the basis of the nation state, which uses great men to create narratives of a common ancestry and shared experiences and values.

Perhaps we should ask: If intelligence and wisdom is part of the human experience and in the reach of everyone, what happens to the narratives of nations and their heroes?

On Jesus, Marx and Evolution

I have long been wondering: what function does the character of Jesus serve in the cultural evolution? I may have asked this before, but it’s time to reconsider it.

This question is, of course, extremely focused on the so-called Western countries, in which Christianity has dominated the religious scene for a couple of hundred years. Nonetheless, I will continue to explore this question.

Karl Marx wrote famously:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Judging by this quote alone Marx seems overly cynical, and religion is something to be abolished altogether rather than praised. But could religion be approached as an adaptation to an evolutionary pressure?

Let us examine an excerpt from the lyrics of the famous spiritual, Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen:

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Nobody knows but Jesus
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Glory, Hallelujah

Sometimes I’m up
And sometimes I’m down
Yes, Lord, you know sometimes I’m almost to the ground
Oh, yes, Lord, still

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Nobody knows but Jesus
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Glory, Hallelujah

Here it becomes evident that the character of Jesus is actually a mental adaptation in a society in which life is a constant challenge. To use Hegelian language: the narrative of Jesus emerges in the historical phase in which the Spirit is conscious that it needs the opiate of religion – thus it creates a Messianic figure in the mind to easen the cognitive pain -, while being not yet fully conscious that the need for this opiate is actually dictated by evolutionary pressure for adaptation.

Marx calls this society in which cognitive pain is ever present a Capitalist one, but I would rather think of it as a society that is still approaching self-awareness. At the Omega Point one historical process can be thought to end – then the various historical movements and phenomena all start to be seen as evolutionary adaptations.

It could even be thought that Jesus himself was aware of his own role in the human cognition. Think of the quote from Matthew 5:44–45:

I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

In other words: Instead of fighting, adapt. Without this wisdom the human race would have already become extinct thousands of years ago, so from this perspective Jesus was the Savior – while being an evolutionary necessity.

The Problem and the Paradox

At present, mankind is faced with an almost explosive rate of increase of the sort of difficulties that arise out of the attempt to treat the disorder in his own thinking and feeling as if this were a problem. Thus, it is now more urgent than ever that we give attention not only to this outward state of affairs, but also to the inward dullness and non-perceptiveness which allows us to go on failing to notice the paradox in thinking and feeling in which the outward confusion has its deep origin. Each human being has to see that the very feelings and ideas which he is inclined to identify with his “innermost self” are involved in paradox, through and through. A mind caught in such paradox will inevitably fall into self-deception, aimed at the creation of illusions that appear to relieve the pain resulting from the attempt to go on with self-contradiction. Such a mind cannot possibly see the relationships of the individual and of society as they really are. And thus, the attempt to “solve one’s own problems” and “to solve the problems of society” will in fact be found to propagate the existing confusion, rather than to help bring it to an end.

Of course, this does not mean that all working toward the establishment of order in the life of the individual and of society should now be dropped, in favor on concentration on the disorder in the mind that prevents the ending of our general difficulties. Rather, the inward work and the outward work go hand in hand. But it has to be kept in mind that through centuries of habit and conditioning, our prevailing tendency is now to suppose that “basically we ourselves are all right” and that our difficulties generally have outward causes, which can be treated as problems. And even when we do see that we are not in order inwardly, our habit is to suppose that we can point fairly definitely to what is wrong or lacking in ourselves, as if this were something different from or independent of the activity of thinking in which we formulate the “problem” of correcting what is in error.

As has been seen, however, the very process of thought with which we consider our personal and social “problems” is conditioned and controlled by the content which it seems to be considering so that, generally speaking, this thought can neither be free nor even really honest. What is called for, then, is a deep and intense awareness, going beyond the imagery and intellectual analysis of our confused process of thought, and capable of penetrating to the contradictory presuppositions and states of feeling in which the confusion originates. Such awareness implies that we be ready to apprehend the many paradoxes that reveal themselves in our daily lives, in our larger-scale social relationships, and ultimately in the thinking and feeling that appear to constitute the “innermost self” in each one of us.

In essence, therefore, what is needed is to go on with life in its wholeness and entirety, but with sustained, serious, careful attention to the fact that the mind, through centuries of conditioning, tends, for the most part, to be caught in paradoxes, and to mistake the resulting difficulties for problems.

David Bohm: The Problem and the Paradox.

On the Omega Point

Omega Point is a term coined by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) to describe a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving.

In this theory, developed by Teilhard in The Future of Man (1950), the universe is constantly developing towards higher levels of material complexity and consciousness, a theory of evolution that Teilhard called the Law of Complexity/Consciousness. For Teilhard, the universe can only move in the direction of more complexity and consciousness if it is being drawn by a supreme point of complexity and consciousness.

Thus Teilhard postulates the Omega Point as this supreme point of complexity and consciousness, which in his view is the actual cause for the universe to grow in complexity and consciousness. In other words, the Omega Point exists as supremely complex and conscious, transcendent and independent of the evolving universe.

We can think of the Omega Point as the ideal that drives everything forward. However, our understanding of it is limited by our understanding of time. We typically think of the end as a point in history that is still coming, but another way to think about it is to consider it as the present: in a way we are constantly living at the end of a process and functioning inside it. Here’s a picture where I have tried to clarify this:

In this model the amount of complexity follows the path of the exponential function y=e^x, while the amount of consciousness is y=e^0.5x. To a point consciousness can be ignorant, after that it becomes confused. Confusion is followed by a paradigm shift that takes place near the point of enlightenment (where complexity and consciousness are furthest away from each other). After the paradigm shift learning and fitting things to the new paradigm takes place.

Both of the functions meet at (0,1) which in this framework represents the Omega Point; we could think it as the point where consciousness becomes aware of complexity and is able to deal with it.

Two Dimensions of Communities

Thinking communities in the dimensions of complexity and consciousness guides us to think them in the following way:

We could think of the axis of consciousness in this way: it is the amount of conscious effort one must pust into the relationship to feel a sense of belonging to the community. It also correlates with the level of meaningfulness the participants feel in the community, and thus the focus of action becomes sharper as consciousness increases; less conscious communities focus on being-in-the-world, as consciousness creates a sense of doing-in-the-world.

The level of complexity refers to the theoretical level on which the interactions in the community happens, how much different media (such as newspapers, forums, events and seminars) are involved. Also, it becomes more difficult to understand a complex community as a single, coherent system.

Ideological community refers to a community binded together by a theoretical worldview such as religion or other belief system (atheism, communism, nationalism). Bureaucratic community is constituted by professional bureaucrats such as politicians and officials, but also by all the employees in a corporation or an organization.

The next step is to think what happens when these communities are seen together:

• ideological community (nation state) + family = royal family in a democratic country
• bureaucratic community + family = royal/ruling family in a non-democratic country
• bureaucratic community + friendships = oligarchy
• bureaucratic community + colleagues = bureaucratic elite (e.g. EU)

I’m thinking: how can networks of experts and professionals be promoted both inside the bureaucratic and scientific communities and between them? They would surely create considerable benefits in efficiency of bureaucracy and research as coordination can be enhanced, overlapping efforts reduced and intellectual cross-pollination increased.

Thinking of the Logic of Truth

1. In language and thought, there are two types of statements: statements of truth and statements of belief.

2. Statements of belief emerge into being-in-the-language from the state of consciousness in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true. The opposite is true for statements of disbelief.

3. Regular language only handles statements of belief. That is, also sentences like “that is true” refer to the harmony between the statement and the individual consciousness, and “that is false” refers to the conflict between them.

4. Statements of truth emerge from the state of consciousness being in accord with reality. This requires understanding that has been reached through a dialogic process, either with reality or with other people.

5. From these follows that statements of truth are true (in accord with reality) regardless of whether they are supported by statements of belief or attacked by statements of disbelief.

This brings me to the idea that is constantly repeating in my head:

P: If Q is true, then it must be true irrespective of whether it is believed to be true or false.

Let’s say someone attacked this with some kind of argument R that said:

R: P is false because Q can only be true when it is believed by everyone to be true. Truth is a social construction.

What R actually says is that truth doesn’t exist outside the social context. This is a valid point that doesn’t really contradict the original proposition but complements it. We should also be aware of the fact that this very debate takes place inside the social context, and we’re actually discussing the truth right here and now. Also, the statement doesn’t say anything about Q actually being true; there is the structure of if-then. This structure opens the way for the social process of dialogue that seeks to find the truth. However, such common understanding can only be found when participants actively seek cognitive harmony.

The Tree of Consciousness

It seemed like Gurdjieff’s typology missed the obvious side of subjective consciousness. Here I have tried to add it to a model that looks like a tree:

Four States of Consciousness

The concept of false consciousness should be abandoned because it values consciousness as not-true based on some framework of truth, typically on the Marxist concept of history. Consciousness is always true to the subject. Perhaps unfortunately, this often means that mental representations are considered ultimate and unquestionable.

This being said, some distinctions should be made because not all consciousness is the same. George Gurdjieff created the following typology of four states of consciousness:

1. Sleep: “a passive state in which man spends a third and very often a half of his life”
2. Waking state: “The state in which men spend the other part of their lives, in which they walk the streets, write books, talk on lofty subjects, take part in politics, kill one another, which they regard as active and call ‘clear consciousness’ or the ‘waking state of consciousness.’”
3. Self-consciousness: Awareness of one’s thoughts and being and how they affect the manifest reality. “It is usual to consider that we have this state of consciousness or that we can have it if we want it. — It can be said without any exaggeration that at the present time the third state of consciousness occurs in man only in the form of very rare flashes and that it can be made more or less permanent in him only by means of special training.”
4. Objective consciousness: “In this state a man can see things as they are. The only right way to objective consciousness is through the development of self-consciousness.”

Gurdjieff writes:

For most people, even for educated and thinking people, the chief obstacle in the way of acquiring self-consciousness consists in the fact that they think they possess it, that is, that they possess self-consciousness and everything connected with it; individuality in the sense of a permanent and unchangeable I, will, ability to do, and so on. It is evident that a man will not be interested if you tell him that he can acquire by long and difficult work something which, in his opinion, he already has. On the contrary he will think either that you are mad or that you want to deceive him with a view to personal gain.

G. I. Gurdjieff in 1949