Vichara 1: Introduction
I will begin by laying my cards face-up.
The purpose of this project is to develop a conception of (ultimate, objective) value and a vision for what the world would look like if oriented around (ultimate, objective) value. This will involve a reworking of an array of philosophical ideas, such as beauty, vitality, the subject, the Absolute, etc. as well as a properly philosophical elaboration and formalization of concepts not hitherto within the commonplace canon of philosophical materials, such as building, passion and others.
My wager is that all such ideas can be reworked and/or newly formalized in a manner that is not only true (which would be big, if, well, actually true) but that a philosophical system that gets at the truth of all there is, or what there really is, is one that can only exist with a conception of objective value as a core part of it. Or in other words, that there can be no knowledge of Truth without an articulation of the Good, or more precisely, that there can be no experience of Truth without an existence in fidelity to the Good. But I am already getting ahead of myself.
We may not know that we know it, but we know that there exists genuine value. I won't go into it in depth until we've unpacked certain terms, but there are manifestations of reality that make us go, "Yes!" in some or the other formulation, affirming something as being so amazing, cool, or great that it is of ultimate or intrinsic value.
What is to be emphasized here is that we find there to be value, quality or merit that is so objectively. It's not that we simply like something, as a matter of preference; rather, we consider it to be truly, actually good. It's not that it's good because we like it; rather we like things because they are good. And that's what we really care about, both for what our own existence comes to and for what comes in and of the world.
Take this tidbit of an interview of Elon Musk. What does it mean to be "optimistic about the future?" What is the criterion of that? What makes for one state of reality to be better than another? And what's with this sentiment of "wanting civilization to last" (for at least a while until there's a "catastrophic event")? What's nice about the world not ending? What's nice about the world's existence?
This clip expresses sentiments at least whose basic terms may resound with many of us, but we have seldom looked into the foundational avowals latent in them: We want the world to not end, because we find there to be some objective merit or value about it or about what can come in and of it. It shows that we find it salient to think in terms of objective value, i.e., not as a matter of opinion, existing relative to some things or some state of affairs, but truly so, no matter how we feel about it.
Or do we actually find it salient? I believe it is both our natural state, and the state in which we exist in (communion with) truth, to believe some manifestations of reality to be objectively valuable. However, when put so forthrightly, some may recognize that it's not very much in vogue to believe that. The cornerstone of the dominant ideology of the reigning global order is that there is no such thing as objective good, but that instead everyone is or should be equally free to do as they like.
Indeed, maybe the most relevant divide in society today is between believing (and ordering the world in accordance with the belief) that there are or can be certain configurations of reality that are truly, objectively good on one hand, and believing (and ordering—or disordering—the world in accordance with the belief) that value is just a matter of individual preference or liking, that "it's all just, like, relative man."
To maintain the spirit of commencing with my cards face-up: It is also my wager that the main role of a system such as that which is being laid forth here is to provide a foundation for an alternative sovereign order for civilization/s oriented around and for genuine value. This would necessarily be in transcendence of the liberal internationalist order, whose institutions and norms of economy, governance and culture proceed upon the idea that there isn't actually any good greater than each of us, but that we should optimize the world to allow human organisms, regarded as atomized individuals, to pursue their utility as they define for themselves. (Note that when I use the term "liberal" or "liberalism" here, I'm not referring to left-of-center politics, which is what the term is associated with in the US and some other parts of the world, but to the broader philosophy, encompassing mainstream left and right of the US, emergent of the so-called "Enlightenment" of early modern Europe, marked by an emphasis on human well-being as the structuring project of society and politico-ethical ideals such as freedom, rights and equity as the means to accomplish that project.)
An optimum level of personal freedom is necessary if individuals are to actualize the value latent within and unique to them, and as the vehicle that led us to take personal freedom seriously, liberalism has played an important role in the unfurling of the good. However, when the ideology of a society says that the point of personal freedom isn't to actualize genuine value but just to have a good time, as is the case of contemporary liberalism, then that ideology, if it is indeed dominant, becomes the chief obstacle to there being that which there should, objectively, be.
As such, right now, the principal antagonist of civilization and the human spirit is not "evil" per se, by which I mean things like unsavory actions that hurt people and cause suffering. I have things to say about conventional evil, but the tragedy of our times most inimical to the realization of what there truly should be isn't conventional evil, at least in wings of global society sufficiently "modern." It is rather the lack of belief in there being anything intrinsically good or there being objective merit to various possible states or versions of reality, and the mediocrity and wantonness that thereby prevails from such lack of belief. It is, in other words, nihilism. While recognizing that evil qua evil requires its own treatment, this exchange from The Big Lebowski, then, arguably captures the political spirit of this project at its purest better than any cultural expression.
There are already currents and superorganisms in the world that bear a disposition that goes beyond the utilitarian, liberal worldview, and that affirm, implicitly or explicitly, that there is a greater good that we are here to get at. In the West, specifically, they are centered at or adjacent to much of the tech sphere. As such, the ideas I will publish are meant also to serve as tools for the most intense and efficacious self-understanding for those agents, of various scales, already inclined toward commitments for realizing the Ultimate, whether through its creation, care or consecration.
Insofar as value is objective, there are some configurations of reality and some kinds of existence that commune with value, and some that don't. As we will see, I am interested in weaving together a philosophical basis and an elaboration for a personal or "individual" existence of excellence, and a world of greatness.
What do these look like? To provide but a preview, excellence, a term I reserve for existence at the scale of the organism, has to do a lot with virtues of physicality, intellect and character that come together for a heterotelic life, i.e., a life whose purpose (or telos) is some objective value that is beyond, greater than or in transcendence of one's individual existence. There is more to it, involving subjectivity explained as a composite of the universal principles of consciousness and vitality, but altogether, the picture builds up to what one may think of as a classical notion—albeit one adopted for an existence facing the future—of being good, or being a high-quality individuated strand of the Absolute.
Now, I cannot help but be even more imprecise and rhetorical about greatness for now, because discussing that requires more immersion into the topics we'll be getting into soon enough. But to throw out vibes, if not meaning, a world of greatness is what comes about when that whose being is good acts beyond itself. It is, as we will see, a world that most intuitively would be described as marvelous and amazing, full of beauty and splendor. It is a world in which we attain heights, defy odds and manifest configurations of reality that a cynic would consider only possible to dream about, configurations that leave none of our potential unaccounted for.
As un-elucidative as these formulations are as far as philosophical definition or formalization goes, I think most of us get the gist of the idea of civilization being amazing. When Mike Solana, in his pinned tweet as of some years now, says "I just want us to be fucking amazing", we get it. It taps into a deep part of our definitive vitality. Getting that sensibility, bearing it and then acting on it, makes us what we are. The exact rendition of what it would look like for us to be amazing may vary, but here again, cross-culturally and across time, one can find a family resemblance between the ideals that various social orders, at their highest points, wish to project as comprising their greatness and their glory. As far as contemporary renditions go, we will look at more in the time to come, but one that may resonate with many would be Peter Thiel's description of his ideal society as "the Shire with spaceships", and I personally doubt I can convey the spirit (as well as some substance) of all that I have to say about greatness better than, of all people, Alex Jones once did.
On such notes, it would be good to make the following clarification up-front as well: My wager is not that the ideas that I will present here are entirely original, in either their substance or their tenor. In both East and West, seers have come to many of the realizations that we will be surveying. What I have to transmit may be especially consonant with various religious and spiritual traditions. However, I am bringing together concepts and putting them in terms that are, to the best of my knowledge, novel. The way that they are brought together and articulated, and the emphasis or centrality of some rather than others, may not be the first expression of things as they truly are, but may rather be the most appropriate configuration of eternal knowledge for this technopsychosocial moment in the unfolding of the Absolute. For example, Aristotle spoke of arête, and in ancient India, the Buddhist tradition declared sila as the foundation of the Noble Eightfold Path, and the yamas and niyamas make up the foundation of the Ashtanga, or eight limbs, of the Yogic tradition. These are all ways of talking about what I'm denoting as excellence. However, classical Greek and Indian thinkers could not possibly have thought about excellence for its relation to building and buoying technological civilization as an aesthetic, planetary-scale collective project that constitutes a principal method of realizing and communing with the Ultimate. That could only come as a transmission in, of and pertinent to this age, and that is what I am developing.
What I have written today will ideally, for the most intelligent readers, raise far more questions than it will reassure regarding any conclusions that I have claimed to work through to. This first post was just for invocations, if not provocations, and all invoked or provoked will be substantiated, qualified and/or concatenated in the dispatches ahead.