The schemas that once provided optimal for navigation past situations, may not prove successful to novel situations, and the accommodation of them to include more data, more experience, more subjective experiential responses, is constantly being modified in accordance. The modification can choose to double down the assimilated schema which continues to “work” to produce the desired subjective experience, which can be reflexive of progress in the domains which we value, or the assimilated and integrated system can fail to achieve adequate progress towards those values, and in so failing, open itself up for improvement and new manners of “coping” that would better serve us to optimally embody our values or progress in the direction we desire. (Genetic Epistemology’s Implications)
New knowledge, insights, and developmental pathways to developed higher cognitive ability provides us with a broader perspective from which to conceptualize reality. As we grow cognitively we develop explanations of higher complexity in reference to details of the world around us, and in describing subjective experience. This integrated knowledge provides pragmatic utility to a vaster range of experiences, and leads us to believe that the dialectical movement of conscious orientation to our world is progressive in nature, denying the hypothesis that past modes of being would be more optimally suited to navigate existence than our presently actualized Being.
We naturally assume that through this process we develop to greater heights of wisdom and prudence in our assimilation, and accommodation of novel experiences and information. Seeing that each new schematic reformatting includes novel situations without excluding the already ascertained, we logically deduce that this “new” schemata is more optimal for our continuing Being-in-the-world. This isn’t always the case, while certain navigational pathways are created that allows us to be oriented towards a broader range of experiences, oftentimes we sacrifice modes of being-towards-the-world, virtues, and wellbeing in the process of doing so, which we may find, in retrospect, to be personally optimal in the manner of handling things.
For example, training to remain equanimous in reaction to emotional fluctuation. This is a developed skill around emotional regulation, such as in the emergence of anger, annoyance, or disagreeableness, and we can develop a schema for handling the situations away from un pragmatically optimal emotional outbursts. The reaction to anger with violence, unwholesome speech, or selfish disregard for those we love, can be modified in accordance with mindfulness training, consciously directed inaction in response to the arising of emotional dysregulation, and conditioned through habit in these circumstances. In this manner we accommodate our emotional reaction system to a mode of being characterized by equanimity, and assimilate experiences that elicit such emotional turbulence to the developed schema. While this is a dialectical movement that appears to be progressive in nature, we may find ourselves taken advantage of, and unable to express anger in times where its pragmatic utility is optimal for the wellbeing of ourselves or those we love. In this manner, the past mode of being, and the past schema used to react in such a manner, may be found to be more desirable. We may find ourselves in a state of nostalgia longing for that mode of Being which reacted in a manner that was aggressive, assertive, and forthright in response to any emotional deviation that elicited anger. All is not lost, and the benefit that we accrued from that past mode of being is still able to be achieved through further development. The optimal solution, of course, is not recursion to remove equanimous training, but further integration of both differentiated types of response in discriminatory reactions, where it is necessary for the one mode of being to be present in reaction to emotional outbursts, such as anger or violence, we can discriminate and act accordingly. When minor stressors occur that once would elicit an inappropriate response, we can develop prudence in discerning it as such and remain equanimous. So while a past mode of being may be wanting, we still have the potentiality of manifesting underlying schematics, and using them in accordance with the developed schema, to once again dialectically transcend them both to a more optimal manner of responding and acting in the world.
The potentiality of losing a prior mode of being that is optimal to a further developed stage, such as our current one, is an idea that has frightened many of us. How do we explain the nostalgia we have for past modes of being, how can we intuit them as being better suited for us than the manner of orienting we currently embody?
This happens in comparative analysis between remembered past subjective experience, its schemas used to navigate the situations which occurred, and their relative success, in comparison to our current subjective experience and the manner in which our mode of being and it’s currently developed schemas are adequate at handling our current situation. Where we find ourselves in a state of hopelessness to recovering what was once found and now appears lost, we can also find that piece within us, as it surely is built into our currently developed schema, albeit, lying dormant. We often find fond memories of childhood, and prior experience, and despite the transcendental nature of consciousness to advance, we still can make sense of this in terms of proportionality between schematic adaptability success and its inextricable link to subjective experience. This appears to be a paradox, as we grow and develop it should be clear that our subjective experience improves as we become better equipped to deal with internal phenomena and external situations, yet we oftentimes find ourselves longing for past epochs, and nostalgia entices us to perceive the past as something “better” than we now have it.
As we become better equipped to deal with a larger range of environments, problems, and internal states, the complexity of information grows, the amount of information needed to be integrated into the coherent framework grows, and tangentially, the amount of potential solutions and pathways to navigation grows. This increase in complexity can cause a disparity between subjective experience, it’s currently assimilated schemas, and the “perceived” complex environments we find ourselves in. In contemplated memory we find past epochs characterized by a retrospectively perceived improvement of wellbeing in relation to our current state, and this can be characterized by the reduction of complexity and our past schemas success relative to those simpler situations we found ourselves in. The relative success, given a less complex world, less encumbered by further potentiality to confront unknown problems at the time we were wholly ignorant of, can account for the difference in subjective wellbeing, and entice us to recall once embodying a mode of Being that appears to be marked by more wellbeing than our current state, and rightfully so.
In infancy and childhood, the amount of problems, information, knowledge of the world, and ability to navigate life, all is a lot less taxing on conscious life than is found in adult experience, as most of it is delegated to unconscious assimilation and accommodation. The schemas are optimized to work through assimilation in reference to a small range of experiences, and given the tendency for parental responsibility the infants success in these domains is usually sufficient enough to comfortably sustain life. As we develop cognitively our knowledge of the complexity of situations, ideas, and their potential solutions, all grows, as does the ever improving vastness of coverage by developed schemas. What we may perceive to be lost in wellbeing within subjective experience, is made up for in competency and clarity in regards to more optimally navigating a larger set of problems, and an improvement in capability to articulate a bigger set of knowledge about reality. But this perceived loss is merely that, a perceived loss, it is not lost forever, in fact, if we wisely analyze any area of our Being that appears to be lacking in such a way, there always lies the potential for bringing forth from the depths what was lost and accommodating the newer system in accordance with it, to a novel, integrated, schema that holds the best of both worlds, itself being the best possible formulation that we can articulate or embody. Any schema can develop in this manner, and many times develops unconsciously, but the consciously directed recognition, and following training, can actualize the potentiality to dialectically move in this manner.
We become better equipped to integrate new information, better able to describe the world in higher resolution, and create schemas that are relevant to the multitude of added experiences. When the complexity of our environment and situational encounters was relatively lower, and we had a schema that could easily assimilate us to those problems, we found success, but that success was easier won than the relative success of our current schema given the added data we have to wrestle with, the added situations, responsibility, knowledge, and capabilities. As our potential actualizes itself and opens us up to novel potentialities, the schematic underpinnings for decision making and acting in the world must accommodate itself to uncovering optimal solutions, as time and experience grows, the relative success is what is remembered, not the relative competency, knowledge, and potential.
The old structure is always retained within the new, and although it is transcended and modified to be more inclusive, we still have recursive ability to enact those earlier developmental modes of Being. The characteristics that are attached to outdated modes of Being, patterns of behavior, and methodologies all remain inherent in the manifest system, and often recursion to utilize those underlying characteristics can be prudently utilized towards novel situations. The reemergence of transcended knowledge and schemata to novel situations at that point becomes itself an emergent datum to which we are not currently assimilated to in our current schema, and the schema therefore undergoes a successive accommodation of the emergent phenomena with the current understanding towards a novel strategy.
The infallible mode of being certain promotes doubling down on assimilation despite inadequacy with optimally handling novel experiences and situations. This manner of top down deficiency causes stagnation against the biological desire to dialectically improve consciousness to manage the transient nature of existence by accommodation. Maintaining a fallible conscious interpretation of experience, consciously being open to having inadequate articulations of reality, in doubting the optimality of our manner of Being-in-the-world, we can exert a top down influence that promotes the accommodating effect of novel experience to better orient ourselves in accordance with it. Consciously directing our being in such a way can come at a cost to subjective wellbeing in the short term, in facing our own inferiority through admonition of being currently incapable of optimally managing situations, but it opens us up to transcending our prior mode of being and the schemas utilized by it to greater heights found in the resultant dialectical improvement that accommodation to novel experiences affords us. This top down directionality and mode of being which maintains its own fallibility simultaneously promotes the natural dialectical movement of transcendence, where the mode of being certain hinders it.
Jean Piaget’s framework and terminology of understanding infant and childhood development can be extrapolated for usage in cooperation with the discoveries within many other domains. If we integrate his method of educational and cognitive development to the adult mind, we can make general statements about the nature of existence. The movement described in Piaget’s system of infant and childhood development can be paralleled by the conscious development as defined in Hegel’s dialectical method. Philosophical implications of psychological, and psychoanalytic findings can grant us insight into the nature of consciousness and its further development as we find it in our current Being. This knowledge of the process of our past development, if utilized by consciously directing the process to occur in our present lives, given our current value systems, may be a crucial element to our personal development and wellbeing, and the actualization of potentialities we contain within. Pragmatic truth development in accordance with developed existential beliefs can be harnessed in accordance with conscious recognition of the dialectical movement of our psyche, and in so doing so, promote the actualization of our values. This knowledge, and ability, is invaluable as a source of psychological integration and development, and the success we strive for in the domains of significance to us.
Jean Piaget described the development of human’s knowledge systems in small yet distinct successive steps as we move through infancy and into childhood. Schematic underpinnings can be delineated within these periods as the number of schemas is relatively miniscule, their simplicity and lack of integrated experiences makes them articulable, and the number of factors which are large enough to develop us in a definite manner can be observed. As we move into adolescence and adulthood the number of factors and the relevant environmental and interpersonal influences upon our schemata increase exponentially, making change, progress, and the number of concrete adaptations or accommodations to novel knowledge difficult to pin down.
Piaget observed how in the first months of infancy the child’s schemata is entirely reflexive, inherent, and biologically instantiated. As these manifestations of inherent reflexes express themselves, they can be influenced by the childhoods own recognition of them as occurring, and circular reactions take place. Manners of orienting the head, hand, voice, and eyes develop schematically as the infant imitates his own abilities, creating schemas for sensory-motor abilities. These inherent movements and tendencies can be capitalized and reinforced in different manners based on the child’s perception of phenomena outside himself, which he imitates and thus develops his schematic underpinnings to movement. His parent’s recreations of the infant’s original manifestations serve to demonstrate his imitative competency, which develops in alignment with his intellectual power. Certain imitations that later on become means to an end, that have pragmatic signification, can be trained and developed, modifying the assimilated schema of the individual based on his accommodation to novel experiences.
The child’s reflexive desire to grab anything in the palm of his hand, as our primate ancestors cling to their mothers for years, leads to the ability to open and close his hand, grasp objects, grasp his parents hand, shake a rattle, move objects, and utilize tools. The schema for utilizing objects in the hand therefore develops as new situations arise where the infant can utilize his hands and current schematic structure, and the imitation he has of his parents reinforces his ability. A schema exists for making sounds, which he first expresses reflexively in crying, or screaming, in reference to hunger, or in the presence of other babies crying, which in the first stages the infant is unable to differentiate from his own sound. The imitative capabilities to reproduce sounds, parental reinforcement and directed recreation of the child’s voice, allow the child to imitate the sounds that he is able to make, in a manner that can be pleasing and directed by the parents. In this process the capability for speech, or the production of vocal phenomena, develops until individual words become formed. Only later does the schema used for orienting ourselves audibly develop into attaching a symbolic representational quality to the sounds we can manifest. We can see how these two examples describe the child’s dialectical movement through developing schemas of knowledge based on ability, competency, imitation, and cognitive ability. As the schemas evolve, meaningful significance to actions and schemas used as means to achieve an ends which means something to the individual becomes the primary driving force of our learning process. As they work in developing the infant’s capability and his manipulation of his abilities in accordance with phenomena in the world, so do we develop from the place of our current assimilated schematic structures in adulthood, albeit the number of factors, environmental situations, interpersonal imitations, and in general, the number of contributing factors that lead to our development are exponentially increased as time passes.
As all structures grow and either become reinforced in their stringency, or liberally move in direction that are drastically different from the original schema, the foundation for schematic development is always conservative, i.e. the original stages of development in any schema is still contained within its modification, whether or not any part of it still is expressed or not, the potentiality for its reemergence is carries through time as its integration has solidified in layers below the current manifestations.
Once an acquired ability works for whatever the activity is demanding, the child can be said to be assimilating whatever content arises in reference to that schemata. Once a novel situation arises for which his currently assimilated pattern of behavior is insufficient at manipulating, or using, then he must undergo the process of accommodating his schema to integrate the new knowledge. From that point the novel information is assimilated, and whenever it appears in his experience he has a “plan” for how to deal with it. We act from assimilation of experience to our current schema for as long as it is pragmatically viable, once it no longer is so, the process of accommodation forces us to adapt that schema to accommodate more information. In this manner our knowledge informs our orientation in the world, and we embody the Being from which the process takes place in successive steps as integral pieces of knowledge are discovered.
The manner in which the dialectical movement of consciousness works is through utilizing a current set of schemata to assimilate experience in a manner that is pragmatically sufficient for us. The objective validity of the utility of these schemata is reflected in our subjective experience in relation to the pragmatic assimilability of novel situations. Where novel situations fail to be met by prior assimilated schemata, we experience negative mental states, informing the process of accommodating our schematic foundation to include the novel problem. Whenever new experience isn’t optimally assimilated or can be utilized by the past schema, we undergo a process of accommodating our schema to include the new information into our framework. In this manner, we develop our schemas in regard to perceptive direction, perceptive ability, sensorimotor movement, for manipulating objects, behaving in interactions, situations, mental phenomena management, conceptualizations and articulations of reality, and even our overarching mode of Being from which individual manifestations of conscious content are expressed, through a Hegelian dialectical movement of progressing to higher resolution imaging of the information.
This dialectical movement promotes inclusion of added complexity as we experience novel situations, arising subjective phenomena, and abstract connections through acquired knowledge. As time passes, our perceptive system naturally becomes integrated with novel stimuli, our consciousness integrates novel pragmatic means of orienting ourselves in the world, and our schema used in navigating the world, both in embodied form (how we move, act, and orient ourselves to our environment), as well as the schema used to conceptualize and experience reality subjectively (mental experience, thought, emotion, content of consciousness) becomes modified.
Conceptualizations that represent objects not in the immediate environment, or abstract connections between representations that are merely linguistic, develop to greater degrees of clarity and provide more accurate depictions of reality that we can utilize for a pragmatic edge on the environment. The objectivity of our embodied orientation and our abstract conceptualizations is predicated on the pragmatic relation they have to enhancing our lives. A threshold of adequate framing, or a level of experiential evidence, reasoning, or embodied thought on a subject, can be the necessary instigator to the adoption of beliefs that are objective by nature and progressively pragmatic by such movements. Often times beliefs, concepts, and beneficial schematic rewiring’s can be in the process of developing without manifesting themselves, until they reach that threshold of “perceived” adequate pragmatic benefit which, if occurring in this manner, exists prior to conscious realization of its development.
Scientific truths, in contradiction to supernatural explanations, develop a positive belief in this manner. It isn’t until they are pragmatically framed and beneficial to us as a biological organism that the belief system is modified to accommodate itself to them, and to have the schema to henceforth assimilate incoming datum to that conceptual schematic. For as long as we are ignorant of the benefit of objective facts to us, for as long as the value of scientific discovery remains below the threshold of pragmatic utility, we will not adopt the belief. A progressively secular society that values scientific truth, our social adaptation to that society, and the framing of such truths to be useful individually (inextricably tied to the social), provides further ability to enhance unorthodox beliefs that are able to find that pragmatic utility and become actualized in our Being. When beliefs are harmful to our wellbeing, and in extreme cases, to our lives and our family’s ability to survive, their pragmatic value to us almost never reaches the pragmatic threshold of viability. It is for this reason that the escape from a heliocentric worldview, or metaphysical supernatural claims, took so long to develop, the belief in the contrary, no matter how logically coherent and empirically validated they were, was less viable an option to us biologically.
Truth claims validated by logic in a world characterized by punishment for blasphemy produced a perceived and actual cost to our subjectively intuited wellbeing, our place in the social world, our actual survivability, and our genetic imperatives ability to progress towards its goals. As openness to ideas, ideology, and different beliefs became more accepted in society, and the pragmatic benefits of operating on different belief systems developed, our ability to modify our schemas that result from modified value and belief systems expands in terms of potentially viable modes of being. For most people, across most spans of time, as long as beliefs are unviable options to us pragmatically, their objectivity is rendered negligible, and they are not adopted. It is only those who risked and often lost their lives that were able to adopt contrarian viewpoints, articulations, and the tangential adoption of novel beliefs, that the further progression of knowledge and their acceptability progressed societally.
The ability for more people to cross over the threshold in adoption of unorthodox or novel belief systems, philosophies, or even ideas that contradict the social milieu’s agreeableness, provides the starting point for further imitation in the expanding influence of the rebel’s expression of himself. As the rebel’s views become able to be expressed, so does the ability of others to imitate his belief system, as well as his act of rebellion. As different ideas become viable to be imitated, and exist in the world, our ability to accommodate them to our worldview is enhanced as new information is presented to us. For many people, without the instigation of external conceptualization and beliefs, and our ability to intellectually adapt ourselves to them and perceptively recognize them accommodate our existing schemas to incorporate them, there would be no change in our Being, our current assimilated schema would be sufficient. As evidence grows to support the pragmatic potentiality of differing perspectives and conscious methods of articulating the world, our personal philosophies become primed to modification by the psychological accommodation system. The rational conclusion to take the leap into novel information (i.e. knowledge, worldviews, to improve our lives, to generate improved moral, metaphysical, belief, and value systems) is supported by the imitative ability of perceiving those who have done so before, and our ability to recreate this act of rebellion against the social milieu becomes the instantiator of all the worlds progressive technologies, philosophies, and domains of knowledge.
The concretization of this general principle can be seen in the examples provided by specific details of our historical development, in our current society, in empirical observation, and in subjective experience. We find ourselves in the epoch marked by the transformation of the Enlightenment period, in a society that values logic and reason, and their usage in application to objective claims. The ideas and truth-claims that we can make now go relatively unmitigated by restrictive speech, or punishment based on ideology. On a fundamental level, beneath perceptions and consciously held belief systems, the pragmatic viability supersedes the objectivity of claims and is the mitigating factor in adoption of a consciously held belief. This describes the difficulty in adopting the positive belief in non-self, hard determinism, illusory nature of free will, or a morality of rational self-interest or selfishness not at the expense of others. In actionable manifestations, many patterns of behavior are seen by the majority of people as an unpragmatically feasible pursuit and are therefore socially “selected against”. The pursuits of academic studies in a hedonistic environment are seen as not pragmatically viable, abstract thinking and personal ambition are deemed less valuable than social acceptance, indulgence, and entertainment. Long term character development is not acted out as the primacy of “the present moment”, or “living for today”, are easier psychologically to “live out”. The belief that “were not good enough” or we “ought to strive to do better”, or “progress through pressure, difficulty, and challenges”, are not universally actualized in modern society despite the reluctance we have to admit their virtue. Based upon the perceived negative wellbeing, time allocation, and energy needed to live them out, they fail to become embodied despite verbal and conscious adherence to the belief in their benefit. The absence of actualizing these ideas in our lives show their absence in our belief structure, despite our verbal admonition of their benefit.
The mode of being and the schemas used within it both transcend themselves as significant information is integrated. As we deterministically apply our developed schemata to situations their utility is tested and reflected by our biological and subjective wellbeing. Both our subconscious systems, such as our body’s perception, and our conscious systems, such as thought that uses conceptualizations to “order” the “chaos” of experience into articulated representations, become improved through new information, by every experience, moment to moment, and is modified in a relative manner.
Given our current social milieu and the potentialities open to us, a cursory framing of our own value systems and the pursuit of developing in accordance with them is more possible than ever before. As we develop belief systems, and attach meaning to pursuits, activities, people, and in general, that which promotes our subjective experience, we simultaneously have become better equipped to pragmatically actualize the development in the directions we choose. As our development through assimilation and accommodation continue to reshape the schemas we use to operate in the world, so does our ability to consciously direct our being towards the values we explicitly articulate for ourselves. Our manner of existentially Being-in-the-world, both in its instantiated form, and its conceptualized form, is itself a piece of objective causality that can lead to further dialectical movement and progress in accordance with our views. As we intuit further scenarios and environments that pose a problem to our currently assimilated schemas, that produce an undesirable subjective experience or hinder our growth and our pursuit of what we value, we can intellectually direct our Being to rationally modify ourselves to accommodate our current system to the novel experience. We can choose (deterministically arising after relevant knowledge is revealed) to voluntarily develop ourselves in where we are lacking, in taking on challenges, difficulties, and accommodating ourselves to pragmatically or objectively truly existing information. Disagreeable information, personal inadequacies, and psychological problems can be elucidated and encountered voluntarily, and with the required knowledge, experience, time, and effort, can be overcome.
While this requires abstract intelligent reasoning, time, and knowledge of the relative causal connectivity that would lead to such development, it nonetheless remains a potentiality for us. Psychological development continues through the dialectical movement with or without our mindful awareness of conscious experience, but consciously directed activity in accordance with developing ourselves, by remaining within a mode of being that is characterized by fallibility and openness to experience, given our current situation of pragmatic viability to pursue our values, affords us the appropriate area to consciously develop ourselves and our manner of Being-in-the-world in accordance with what we value. By doing so we utilize for ourselves ourselves the ability to meaningfully progress towards that which we desire, and improve our subjective experience of life. In any domain of inquiry that we wish to improve, if we can consciously utilize our developmental ability to accommodate novel experience to the assimilated schemata, we can transcend our current mode of Being to one which is more optimally suited to navigate the world in the manner we wish to do so.
Often people sing the song of modern neuroscientists, that mental issues are representative of actual chemical imbalances and physiological abnormalities. Thus, to fix neural problems, they intuit that the optimal solution is to change the neurochemistry through psychiatric means. While the neuroscientific underpinnings in representing mental conditions are empirically verified, their rectification through psychiatric means is not always pragmatically optimal towards its resolution. They are right, but draw the wrong conclusion as to an antidote.
Medication does, in most cases, provide a benefit in altering our neural state, and thus our conscious experience. This alleviates anxiety, depression, and other mental disorders which may be more pronounced in an individual in reference to the “average” human, mostly through means of “blunting” the subjective experience of dissatisfaction arising from their physiological underpinnings. What psychiatry fails to take into account is the existential orientation, social development, the individual psychology, the childhood nurturing, and the psychological patterns that precede the development of the “diagnosable” mental disorder. If we only treat the manifest symptoms neurologically, we are failing at acknowledging underlying issues, and pay an opportunity cost in the individual’s holistic development to be able to optimally navigate their internal and external world. We offer a crutch, an excuse, a label, and subsequently a path to victimhood, helplessness, and an unintegrated psyche. Medication is never permanent, and the management of mental health is sustained only insofar as the patient continues medication.
The caveat must be made that for many mental conditions neurochemical intervention is optimal, and for many other neurological abnormalities that result from development, drug intervention in accordance with cognitive development may be optimal. Wisdom, and adequate scientific testing is necessary to discern which of the categories patients fall into. The prime issue here is for the vast majority of people that are increasingly being medicated for psychological disorders that fail to recognize the developmental and psychological historicity of the individual. For many of these people, there is the potential to develop themselves and integrate their psyche to deal with whatever misfortune, negative emotion, negative self-image, or lifestyle problems that underlie the mental condition, whose manifestations take the form of “diagnosable” illnesses as a result. This category encompasses the majority of individuals solely using medication as a means to regulate their conscious experience, social position, and life issues.
The philosophical, biological, social, and cultural underpinnings, the experience of the individual, and the conscious state of mind which has developed in consequence must be taken into account in order to move forward with these patients. There is no way around the problems in their lives, and numbing them, or chemically altering their brains to produce a better conscious experience, doesn’t address the underlying problems, or provide the patient with the knowledge to independently move forward in their lives, relationships, interests, or what provides meaning to them. Psychiatric intervention alone does not modify these parts of our Being that ought to mean the most to us, and this is where the core of the problem lies.
The biggest hindrance to developing an integrated psyche from a place of present mental disruption, is the belief that only medication can solve mental problems. The mode of being certain in regards to the belief of psychiatric solutions being the only necessary intervention to psychological problems, closes off the individual to developing the proper social, and internal psychic integration necessary to actually deal with the negative phenomena intruding into our lives.
Whether the patient lies on the extreme end of psychological disorganization and physiological abnormality, or closer to the “average”, philosophical and psychological solutions in accordance with each other, and often as a sole remedy apart from medication, are our best way forward for clinically aiding those with a negative experience of life, whose lives are in disarray. Those who have prior trauma negatively impacting them, or have been slapped with a diagnosis such as ADHD, PTSD, anxiety, depression, and even forms of bipolar disorder, all still need to get their lives together and learn to cope with their experience, regardless of their current use of medication or not. Each philosophical or psychological solution posited here can be useful towards the individual integrating his Being towards an optimal place in order to navigate life’s struggles, but if one is to pursue the completion of all of them, then I hypothesize, the psychological wellbeing and social integration will be from an optimal baseline from which the individual can successfully navigate life. These empirically verified solutions include external optimization, mindfulness, correct origination of personality conceptualization, existential clarification, exposure therapy, value system explication, goal setting, habit formation, and virtue emphasis training. Psychological methods such as EDMR, talk therapy, and general forms of psychoanalysis are extremely useful, and have a growing number of clinically verified data suggesting their benefit over medicinal solutions. I posit here existentialist, and philosophical methodologies to be used as an alternative, or supplement, to alleviating mental health problems. Even if an individual hasn’t been specifically diagnosed in a clinical setting, yet still wants to reorganize and optimize their lives, and form a value system, these tools can be used universally for our benefit. In any case, it is better to create an integrated psyche prior to problems arising, prior to trauma, when things are going good, then to be unprepared when the misfortunes of life do hit us, which, they inevitably will. In this way, these methods can be used by those already suffering from mental problems, and those who have a “healthy” mind. In general, the training of the mind towards achieving external stability, and integrating its divisible components to a holistic psyche which understands itself, and its values, will produce a meaningful experience of life that is simultaneously suited to the social world in which we find ourselves thrown into.
Before we can optimize the psyche to be able to navigate the world, we must accurately discern the problem. This is where prior diagnoses can be utilized to give insight into prior clinician’s categorization of the mind in question. All individual data is relevant, some more than others. If the patient complains of an ailment that is hindering progress to a positive communal relationship, or posits the existence of a psychological disorder, pinpointing exactly what the problem is will be essential in getting the ball rolling towards what needs to change. Whether it is an obvious external shift, such as a failed relationship, a step back in a career trajectory, or of a subtler internal state, such as subjective dissatisfaction, repetitive anxiety, or damaged sociability, we ought to correctly assess our lives and the lives of our patients to discern exactly what it is that we desire to be otherwise. When a patient in disarray arrives with negative conscious experience, it is often useful to analyze the five big aspects of his communal integration before even looking to internal integration issues.
Often times external optimization is the catalysts supplementing the internal symptoms. Does the individual have a good social system – comprised of a healthy family relationship and a good relationship with friends? A job? A stable living situation? A romantic partner? Meaningful pursuits, interests, or hobbies outside of work? If these five questions aren’t first addressed, then any psychological issue will be exasperated, and perhaps caused, by the nature of the individual’s relationship to social life. Family and friends, work, living situation, love, and individual interests ought to be optimized to ensure stability and a proper framework for the individual to work from. Before anything else, we have to examine our relationship to these five areas, if any of the five, or more than one of the five are lacking, nonexistent, or severely damaged, the posited negative psychological experience may be merely social and environmental by nature. While deficiency in these areas can be psychological stressors and manifest mental dissatisfaction if not properly fulfilled, they also can be caused by a psychological ailment or unintegrated psyche which stems from other sources. Discerning our place in relation to them, and a pathway to optimizing them, can lead to providing a stable external support system and meaning, as well as rectifying anxiety to one of life’s basic needs, communal life. Before anything else, we ought to discern the individual in question’s relationship to these five categories, and work with them to rectify problems in all the domains.
When a patient, friend, or family member complains to us of experiencing depression, and we realize that they currently are unemployed, have a drinking problem, are lacking hobbies and interests, and have a broken relationship to their family, we ought not act surprised at their experiencing of a negative subjective experience. It would be altogether incomprehensible if they weren’t feeling some form of depression given their situation. To treat a mental state stemming from a deficiency in any of these five domains with medication, is obviously a misguided attempt. If more than one is deficient at any given time, we ought to expect a negative mental state, and encourage the individual in whatever area isn’t rectified towards its alleviation. The best medication for the individual may be a stable job, talking to his father, pursuing his forgotten interest in martial arts, or attempting to go on dates. Extreme diagnoses are often not necessary, and in these cases of external deficiency, a practical attitude ought to be undertaken towards, at the minimum, finding stability in these five areas of our lives.
In analyzing our relationships and external situation we can discern real life problems that can be rectified alleviating psychological suffering with some of the methods I will explain later on. Oftentimes these relationships are stressed not by misfortune or neglect, but due to an internal disposition, personality type, childhood socialization, as well as being the product of psychological disintegration. In uncovering the root of the problem we can look to underlying traumas, and phenomenal experience to be able to conclude on what is instantiating the problem. This knowledge is crucial to forming any type of pathway forward. Rather than medicate the emergent symptoms, we seed to psychologically rectify the root causes, to mitigate the symptoms at their source. If external misfortune is crossed off, we must look to several other areas to pinpoint shortcomings.
We can look into the personal subjective experience of the individual through instructing mindfulness or Vipassana training, which can identify problems through an accurate depiction of the nature of the patient’s experience, as well as have the tangential effect of revealing the content of consciousness to the individual. By focusing upon the content of consciousness within the present moment, the patient grows in the ability to understand the nature of their Being, leading to insights into root causes of manifestations of phenomena through identification of its causal connectivity, as well as learning to cope and remain an observer to emergent negative phenomena as they arise into the domain of consciousness. For the patient, both of these results are beneficial, for the psychologist, the revelation of articulatability of the internal states can provide the necessary data to identify personality types, thought patterns, and the nature of his patient’s internal life. With the practice of mindfulness, the individual can be simultaneously trained to better navigate existence, as well as provide the relevant data that will strengthen the understanding and helpfulness of the psychologist’s intuition in pinpointing a problem to be planned in accordance with towards the individual’s recalibration to a more “successful”, “stable”, “meaningful”, and “positive” mental experience.
Where the external life and the internal life fail to provide an adequate explanation or solution to the ailment of the individual, developmental history and the nature of the individuals upbringing ought to be the next area of inquiry. Even if we are able to pinpoint a troubled psychological complex existing in the present, a personality type that is lacking development in a domain, or strained interpersonal relationships, these merely point to the expression of underlying issues, which, in order to be integrated, the patient must uncover the underlying causal foundation that led to their production. This necessarily entails a close examination of infancy, childhood, and developmental upbringing. Here EDMR and psychoanalysis are useful tools to be able to accurately perform talk therapy and reveal what could be repressed memories that have a significant impact upon the psyche of the individual. Birth order, parental and educational systems, developmental history in general, all is useful information. Here an in-depth knowledge of Individual psychology, and psychoanalytic theory is invaluable. The development of the individuals psychological coping strategy often is rooted in childhood patterns, towards which we ought to attempt to understand in order to understand the roots which have manifest the current psychological tendencies. Oftentimes deficiency in parental nourishment and teaching, sibling influence, and formal education systems in early childhood merge to provide the personality of the childhood and the strategy to which he adopts in coping with life. The lifestyle of the individual, as Alfred Adler proposed, is always the able to be discerned in his communal feeling and method of coping with the combination of his environmental influencers, and this strategy, lifestyle, or personality, has its roots in childhood.
Psychoanalysis directed towards uncovering childhood developmental patterns can enable us to link those developmental patterns across the span of the individuals’ lifetime to the present manifestations, and often there is an overarching narrative of explanation which characterizes the individual’s method of coping in the world. By revealing this to the individual they become empowered to understand the potential shortcomings in their philosophy of life, without which they wouldn’t be able to address them. These can be revealed, and modified through the subsequent methods which will be explained.
Once a psychological pattern of coping with life, trauma revelation, and present moment awareness has been implemented towards the articulation of a basic “self-knowledge”, one can lay claim to a hypothesis upon the root of the issues causing the shortcoming or mental disturbance which plagues conscious existence within the present. Understanding ourselves occurs in degrees, and a basic holistic view established upon the content available to us that links a description of personality and experience in the present to the totality of ones Being and historicity is necessary before attempting to alleviate any psychological problems.
Often times existential questions and the unknown which they elicit plagues the conscious mind, and towards such inquiries a rudimentary cohesive framework ought to be established to remove dissonance and allow an overarching purpose to be established, providing meaning to the life of the patient. I theorize that once a cohesive, uncontradictory, value system and metaphysical belief structure is firmly established, explicitly realized and consciously directed, then actualized, the majority of life’s struggles lose their sting, and the mental difficulties which face all of us find their altar to be sacrificed upon for the experiential wellbeing which meaning pursuance provides. The process by which we reveal our current value system, consciously intuit a novel framework, and actualize it, is quite a lengthy endeavor, but in all cases it is surely worth it. Here I’ll provide a summary, but for a longer length exploration of the subject, the essay “Value System Instantiation” makes an invaluable contribution.
To establish a new value system, the individual must first make known to himself what his current value system is. This can crudely be established by a look at our priorities, in how we spend our time, what takes precedence over other content, what people / relationships / virtues we value and spend time in developing. What we do, what we focus and concentrate upon, the time we spend in any given activity and the aims of such activities, can give us insight into our current values. Oftentimes our uncovered values, what we spend the most time on, and what we think about the most, isn’t in alignment with what we wish we were focused upon. This is the groundwork for regret, anxiety, and a negative self-image for many of us, that can be rectified with determined hard work, discipline, a reevaluation of what we ought to value, and time management.
Once our current values are established, we ought to visualize how our time is spent, and delineate what we want to want. Our current value system never is sufficiently satisfying for us, it never fully satiates our desire, nor embodies the characteristics we wish to value to the extent we wish to do so. This inherent place of deficiency propels us forward in the world we find ourselves in, in directions which are determined by the totality of our Being, as it has so developed. In uncovering and articulating our values in the present, in a clear and concise fashion, we can also sketch out the virtues, skills, and things we wish to achieve, and using that knowledge, look to form an explicitly articulated value system more in alignment with a consciously deduced system, in a top down manner, rather than the bottom up system which naturally propels us forward (DNA, perception, filtration, attention, direction). The bottom up value system can be found explained in the essay (What it Means to be Conscious). Here we are attempting to influence this same system, from conscious control (direction), in other words, the conscious articulation of values, and the conscious propensity to direct or orient our Being in a certain way, becomes the causal precursor to the subsequent action and thus (re)conditions our embodied Being, rewiring the bottom up system to be integrated with a consciously formulated value system.
In contemplating who we wish to be, the values we wish to actualize, we ought to look to areas of the psyche that are unintegrated, as uncovered in the first area of psychoanalysis. Those areas of our life experience which improper orientation and insufficient development has left us suffering, whether it’s our relation to externalities, interpersonal relationships, or inner management and subconscious integration. For a more in-depth look at archetypal integration on the road to centroversion of the psyche, the work here may be useful (Jungian Archetypes) / (Enantiodromia). The areas of deficiency ought to be accounted for as being rectified in the ideal image of the potential person we strive to actualize. We ought not merely capitalize on the areas of our most significant interest and natural disposition, although those areas are of high value, we must likewise place a value on the deficient aspects of our Being. If we wish to be properly balanced and integrated in the totality of our psyche than we must develop the aspects of our personality and sociality which are difficult to us. If we are introverted than we ought to work to be comfortable in large groups, and if we are extroverted we should look for ways to be content alone. In a likewise manner, if we are too disagreeable, it would benefit us socially to practice agreeableness, and vice versa. We will inevitably be placed in those situations which are naturally uncomfortable to us– therefore it would be beneficial to develop our psyche voluntarily than be confronted with aversive situations for which we are ill-prepared, and face the consequences both internally and socially. In developing our psyche and integrating its deficient modes into the fold of the totality, we becoming better equipped to handle the set of all problems, and working from that place of holistic competency, individual problems that inevitably arise will be met with confidence.
An external value system explicitly defined may look something like: survival, family, friends, sufficient income (work) for independence, personal goals in specific interests (self-development / learning / creating), hobbies, entertainment. An internal value system may priority compassion and truth, where priorities are held so that navigation is optimized depending on situations. Each individual topic can be further extrapolated upon and detailed. Say for the family domain, the interests of a child may be prioritized over a cousin, a hobby of primary interest may be prioritized over a less valued hobby. Everything is more important than entertainment, and valued and allocated time primarily. Yet entertainment can still be valued, for purposes of social discord, and mental and physical wellbeing. If work is done for the week, and the individual is pursuing an individual interest, such as reading on a domain they are interested, and a family member calls in a crisis, the value system recognizes the priority of the value, and is able to shelf the current endeavor for one of higher value. These frameworks can be done in multiple levels, and reinforced through time spent and action. The wisdom to navigate them necessarily requires updating as new knowledge and experience informs us of the optimal strategy. In this way the system is cybernetic, in that our experience informs our values, and how to pursue them, and the values inform the actions which make up our experience. Both systems of influence run tangentially, and conscious adaptation, reorganization, and ability to pursue values arises out of unconscious assimilation. The conscious aspect is to direct our Being towards integration of everything of high value into a system that we can pursue with stability.
Delegation of activity in accordance with our values to spontaneity and unconscious pursual can be done through habituation (Conscious Use of Unconscious). If we consciously structure our time in accordance with the things we value, and goals in regard to each domain, such as being a good husband, son, father, friend, becoming a great philosopher, developing an attractive physique, being healthy, etc., all can be pursued daily, weekly, or in any interval of time which the patient finds not overwhelming, yet sufficiently challenging to provide meaning. The organization of time to fit in pursuance of these goals, in accordance with our values, in a structured format, provides the freedom to do what we want to do. Adherence to it actualizes our value system, and I normatively claim that if we structure each day in accordance with those values, we will live a meaningful life, as we are exercising our freedom to do what is important to us in a disciplined manner. Jocko Willink describes this in the seemingly paradoxical formula of “Discipline Equals Freedom”. If you want financial freedom, you need to exercise financial discipline. If you want freedom of movement, and the strength or athleticism to influence the physical world, you need physical discipline in the form of exercise and diet. Similarly, if you want the freedom to pursue what you value, you need to be disciplined in your daily structure, or pay the opportunity cost of distraction and deviation from what you value, providing less progress in the areas which you value more. As this theoretical value system becomes actualized, it will produce a life that is meaningful, and consequently a subjective experience of wellbeing, that is, if the theoretical value system truly is a representation of what is important to us. Any progress towards goals and values necessarily creates the internal disposition of fulfillment, and even if such pursuance is difficult, the silver lining always makes it worth it.
Wisdom is the crucial element here. No system is perfect, any new structure of time and activity necessarily entails growing pains towards its optimization. We may delegate too much time to one value, and not enough to another, and need to reassess our day. Proper planning and structuring must take into account outlier phenomena, and be able to adapt to situations which arise that we haven’t planned for, yet must be managed in their occurrence. Sickness, death of a loved one, existential crisis of friends, all are monkey wrenches thrown into the turbulent waters of life – we must be prepared for the unknown. We must be prepared to handle the misfortune and suffering of existence that is outside of our domain of control as they arise, while simultaneously pursuing what is valued in their absence. The more misfortune and challenges that arise that we take on voluntarily, the better suited we are to handle them in the future. In this manner, the challenge is the training, and the training is the challenge (Training and Challenges). In addition to proper planning, we ought to leave discretionary periods to the occurrence of unplanned for phenomena. If we can habitualize ourselves to a steady disciplined structure, we don’t have to necessarily live a rigid life devoid of entertainment or flexibility. This too can be accounted for.
In terms of personality development, we hold a different value system, which ought to be more concentrated upon the virtues and traits we wish to embody. If we find ourselves in too rigid a lifestyle, the delegation of time every week to trying a new activity can provide the training to modify our openness to experience trait. If we are introverted yet wish to be holistically integrated to a wider variety of experience, we can delegate time to social outings. If we are too agreeable, we can firmly state our beliefs even if they are contradictory, in a prudent manner. As with anything, what we focus on, what we spend time on, naturally we will improve upon. This isn’t merely of the “mind cure” variety, it isn’t the “secret” of thin kit and it will become reality. It’s neural plasticity. Any consciously directed volitional activity, any such moment of concentration and effort in a given field produces changes in our neural network, it either strengthens connections previously established, or creates novel pathways which themselves can be further reinforced. Whether we’re adherents to a freewill doctrine, or a deterministic worldview, we can all agree that the more effort, time, and training we spend developing an area of our lives, the more competent in that field we will become. This is can be both subjectively verified, as well as verified in the consistent rewiring of our neural connections within the field of neuroscience. The proper relation of time to value pursuance, psychological integration, habitualization, and personal growth in the direction of becoming the idealized person we wish to become, will move our dial closer to that ideal, which, every moment spent in such a state of progression in alignment with value, always produces wellbeing and meaning, to us, as it’s what we value.
The more time spent within a system tailored to our consciously uncovered and articulated value system, however rigid it may seem on the onset, the easier it becomes to live a meaningful life. The removal of short term pleasure, distractions, and low value activities aides us in simultaneously removing feelings of living purposeless life. If we can change our lifestyle away from unconsciously being lead towards actions, situations, people, and activities which we don’t value, we can remove the negative self-image of us being someone who we don’t want to be. Stress, depression, concentration issues, all still may arise, but they will arise because we care about what we are doing, because it is meaningful to us – they all now have a rational place in promoting a system that is moving towards its desired end. The negative subjective experiences that plagued us before in relation to any undesired stimuli will be mitigated substantially, as we will be more engaged only in activities of value. This means that negative emotions and experiences that are contrary to our “will” only arise in reference to valuable content, which is their correct instantiation, and can lead us to meaningful challenges to overcome, and point out flaws in our navigation of whatever domain they appear to be arising in reference to. This is the correct manifestation of undesirable mental states, and they themselves play a crucial role in modifying us appropriately to the situation which they arise. Anxiety in reference to an important meeting, or date, can be the catalyst pushing us to concentrate on being well prepared. Sadness in response to misfortune occurring in a love one’s life can enable us to be sympathetic in our attempt to alleviate their suffering. Regret in response to not manifesting a virtue we deem important, such as telling a self-aggrandizing lie to a friend, creates moral shame that can be used as fuel to influence us to act otherwise in the future. This movement, whether containing misfortune, negative experience, or imposition of malevolence, will be seen as meaningful. The ailments of psychological suffering will have a purpose, it will be seen as part of a greater good, and will no longer have the same sting as it once did when it wasn’t in reference to something we value. In turn, we can see such subjective experiences as being useful in the pushing forth of our Being, as long as were still moving in accordance with our values and virtues.
Now that our relation to proper externalities has been established, a value system delineated, and habits and structures set up so that we are progressing towards our highest ideal aim through its actualization in our daily lives, and by doing so fulfilling our potential, we ought to take into account an emphasis on our character in doing so. While me way have been focused upon the consequences of our actions in producing wellbeing and a meaningful life, implying a type of utilitarian morality, here we wish to shift our focus upon virtue ethics, on acting in accordance with virtues and character traits we wish to embody (Virtue Ethics). This aspect will also cybernetically influence the system. We ought to embody not only the actions and personality traits we value, but simultaneously pursue our goals and spend our time in a virtuous manner. If we value discipline and responsibility, we ought to stick to our rational plan, and become independent from relying on others. We ought to take responsibility for our lives, and everything in them that we have the ability to effect or change. Jocko’s idea of “extreme ownership” is useful here, he describes how we ought to place anything in our realm of influence upon our own backs. If there is something going wrong, that we had the ability to modify or improve, but failed to do so, we ought not look for someone else to blame but look at where we could have performed better. This doesn’t mean accepting any external evil directed upon us as being our fault, but in situations where we look to blame a coworker, a friend, or a boss for a shortcoming, we ought to look to where we could have done better to mitigate or avoid the problem, and take responsibility for that lack of foresight. If we value compassion as a virtue, we ought to develop the wisdom in being able to provide a net benefit to others in their journey, rather than a hindrance. In actualizing virtue ethics in accordance with the idealized consequential goals, every moment isn’t only a pursuance of an actualized ideal, but a potential realm of expressing a virtuous Being in going about it.
As far as psychological health is concerned, we ought not only utilize the tools developed in modern psychology and clinical therapy, but also utilize aspects of existential philosophy. We ought to look to phenomenology to discern our facticity as the Being which we are. The past, present, and future all are of crucial relevance. Psychotherapy, exposure therapy, mindfulness, trauma exploration, self-evaluation in regards to shortcomings, external optimization in regards to our social feeling, value system optimization, time management, habitualization, and an emphasis on virtue can all be utilized to provide the means for psychological wellbeing and integration. Medicine may remove the negative subjective experience, but it in no way optimizes our entire understanding of ourselves, nor provides us with a meaningful life. If these tools and processes are carried out, whether in accordance with psychiatric means, or alone, we can help ourselves and others to live the most meaningful lives we have the potential to live. We can always choose to strive on diligently towards our highest ideal aim, and the burden of responsibility is on us to do so, for our own good, and the good of the society which we inhabit.
Is there a pragmatic truth to viewing people like “robots”? Can we optimally navigate the world with a worldview characterized by a belief in hard-determinism, not only in the causal imperative of the physical world, but in relation to the very Being which we are? While conscious subjective experience has the possibility of preceding an action, and can exist as a real objective phenomenon, we are naturally aversive to letting go of a belief system characterized by the autonomy of our own individual “will”. In the consideration of the implications of hard determinism, many people become disenchanted, naturally, by the idea of a lack of individual agency and its correlates in choices, actions, and speech. The delegation of authority to causal connectivity undermines our embodied sense of being in control, it defies our developed sense of “self”, and renders our individuality outside of “ourselves”. For many of us this appears to promote a dissatisfactory view of reality, with its apparent correlation to a pessimistic perspective, or in the extreme a nihilistic mindset. Even if we believe in a strict causal web producing an explicatory account of the phenomena of subjective experience, we still gravitate towards believing in our own individual agency, and act as if free will exists for us. There seems to be a felt sense of pragmatic detriment to our subjective wellbeing in the adoption of the belief system which contains a hard deterministic worldview. I’m going to attempt to show that this is merely an error of framing, and that if reframed, a hard deterministic mindset will meet the standard of more than objective truth (as explained in The Causal Tethers Which Bind), but tangentially be a pragmatic truth in relation to subjective wellbeing. To pose the pragmatic utility of a deterministic worldview entails proving its optimality to the opposing world view based on agency, or the belief in free will, and I will attempt to show how this can be the case.
The natural embodied sense of autonomy, control, and freewill, is something hardwired into our very experience as being self-evident, prior to any concentrated attention. It is a baseline belief stemming from evolutionarily beneficial causation, supported by our social milieu, which over the millennia has gone unchanged in the emphasis of it being a foundational truth. We all assume at first glance that our actions are the result of an agent which we are, the Being behind the eyes, the conscious observer and instigator of action. We assume our choices and decisions are the product of a “self”, a singular concrete being that is characterized by a developed narrative that we use schematically to describe ourselves. This conceptual self whom we believe to be has the ability, in common parlance, to escape the causal tethers, and make different decisions according to its own disposition. Regardless of the situation, our natural inclination is that in a retrospective analysis of any action we could have done otherwise than we have done, that we had an option to act differently than we did. Whether we find justification for free will through religious imperative, rational deduction from experience, or in the philosophical conviction of the pragmatic utility, its social acceptance as a foundational truth is widespread and all pervasive in society and has been for as long as history has been recorded.
While we do have the ability to choose, and decide, those choices and decisions, those actions, the experience which takes form in the present moment, is not decided by the “self” which we believe to be. They are the productions of the chain of causality forcing itself upon the Being which we are, in its totality. Our genes, our body, our conscious experience, all have developed up until this moment in a specific manner giving our present moment circumstances, reactions, actions, and the orientation of our body their shape and their actualization. Our subjective experience is an expression of the totality of our Being actualizing itself according to the moment which we find ourselves thrown into, environmental stimulus informs our Being, and our Being works to most optimally navigate the environment. Whatever content arises into conscious experience is not selected by the conscious awareness itself to arise, it arises in a wholly determined manner, the resultant of material causation.
The objectivity of causal connectivity in the material realm is realized by any scientific enterprise, and in the subjective realm easily realized by any present moment analysis. Sufficient attention to the present moment will display that within the sphere of conscious awareness content is arising and fading away devoid of the agency of the awareness itself (whom we consider to be “ourselves”). Bodily sensations, visual concentration upon physical objects, conceptualized ideas appearing as thoughts, feelings of emotional persuasion, all arise into this conscious experience, themselves not consciously instantiated. If the conceptual thought of directing awareness or action is preceded by the action, we assume that it is the production of our free choice. This assumption leads to the conclusion of the existence of our free will, and is naturally held by the majority of people, prior to any introspection or instruction otherwise. What is missing is the admonition that the conceptual thought itself is preceded by causal influence. We merely are aware of the thought, and its preceding action, and claim agency, when the thought is not directed by an agent. In paying attention to the content of the present moment, we realize that we can consciously formulate multiple pathways to dealing with a situation, we can move or not move, speak or not speak, act in a certain manner or another. In this deliberational sense, we make “choices”, “decisions”, and have “thoughts that precede action”, in the fact that we do choose one of the contemplated pathways and not another, but the choices we make are selected for in a manner that is outside of our ability to do otherwise, if the clock was turned back, we would make the same “decision”. We always can do what we conscious think we “want” to do, but where that “want”, that “will”, that “desire”, itself stems from, is altogether prior to the conscious realization of it. It is the production of the causal chain of influence, beginning with our DNA, and informed through our development and modification.
While Christianity in its dogma of omniscience logically introduced pre-destination by default, and ancient religious systems such as Norse Mythology have posited fatalism, it isn’t until recently that the claims have reached their conclusion in both the scientific and subjectively intuited realms of discovery. The ascension of physics, advent of modern psychology, widespread translation of Buddhist texts with subsequent immersion in meditation, have all played a role in providing evidence, both empirical and ideological, of the illusory nature of freewill. Deductions from practices in all these domains have lead modern philosophers to give rational accounts and methods of intuiting our causal nature, which have given us an improved method of viewing mental phenomena, choice, and decisions as being on the same deterministic plane as any inorganic system.
Whether we came to develop the belief in hard determinism through spirituality, through direct intuition in examining the content of consciousness, or through philosophical rationale, the conviction has sway over the minds of millions and the modification it has upon our Being, including our conscious subjective experience, has varied considerably. In some we find the development of nihilism, in others an air of superiority in being “awake”, but for most it seems to be a defeatist attitude and resignation of responsibility, meaning, and duties. To abolish freewill, for most, is synonymous with destruction of pride in accomplishment and of being an inhibitory factor towards pursuing meaning, and growth. Conventional framing seems to reinforce these deductions, and within a framework viewed as such these conclusions are all pragmatically false in the manner of their impracticality towards providing a positive subjective experience and living a fulfilling life.
Pragmatic truth will be that which is practically useful towards optimizing our lives, including subjective experience, in our Being-in-the-world. A belief in an abstract ideal, that which transcends mere sensory perception, must enable us to be better able to navigate the ups and downs of existence for it to be a pragmatic truth. We ought to express this in the ability to live a life that provides subjective wellbeing, not necessarily moment to moment, but over the span of time from which the belief is held. Short term pleasure, delayed gratification, long term fulfillment, and the general managing of life’s necessities must all be taken into account. Certain normative value claims will nevertheless be crucial to any conception of what this pragmatic truth entails. Our developed moral system, what we deem to be important – family, friends, relationships, career, personal interests – all are necessary considerations to factor into what beliefs so modify our Being to be optimally suited to our individually developed inclinations and values. It only necessarily follows that given our inherent biological diversity, and subsequent individual development of personality and unique experiential historicity, that what is a logically pragmatic truth for one, may be pragmatically false for another. In this sense the pragmatic claim of optimality in regards to specific truth-claims and belief systems are ambiguous.
We must admit that there are degrees of utility when the goal is discovering pragmatic truth, for different people, with different values, at different times of their lives, different beliefs may be more or less suitable in enabling the individual to optimally navigate their environment – either practically, interpersonally, or in terms of their subjective wellbeing. In addition to becoming convincing enough for the individual to adopt the belief that freewill is an illusion, and that the real nature of their individual reality is one of being deterministic in its foundation, the belief must cohesively fit into a larger intellectual belief framework. If it is inconsistent, or poses a contradiction to other held beliefs, such as is frequently seen in our common view of “self”, then cognitive dissonance will ensue. For the reasons above, Christianity may be best suited towards optimizing the activity of one person while being injurious to another, and any individual belief within a system may have the same dissonance causing effect upon different individuals. In taking up hard determinism, we must go a step further of adopting it with other beliefs if we are able to stand upon a non-contradictory ground that promotes the optimality of our Being. To hold a certain belief is to simultaneously confirm the belief in the non-existence of its antithesis, which, itself is a tangentially running belief, if any of these positive beliefs posit a contradiction to a pre-existing belief, we will suffer the incoherentness of a schema that doesn’t systematically and cohesively represent our environment in a manner that is explicatory for us. Hard determinism meshes cohesively with a scientific materialist belief system, as well as an evolutionary biologist perspective, and in the religious sphere, with certain principles found in Buddhism such as their “non-self” doctrine, “dependent origination” doctrine, and the “impermanence” doctrine.
We can see how the ambiguous nature of the pragmatic utility of hard determinism is quite obvious, its acceptance as a fundamental truth may not be beneficial for everyone, I’d even go so far as to argue it is quite unbeneficial for the majority of people. Setting aside the objective validity of determinism, the pragmatic utility here is what is under scrutiny. We are biological organisms thrown into a world that makes demands upon us for existence, and we have an experience which is an expression of our developed Being which admits of better or worse ways to navigate this thrown existence. Seeing that better or worse methods of schematically representing reality exist in relation to their utility in our lives, the pragmatic utility of operating from a pragmatic perspective ought to be an objectively beneficial imperative for us. Does hard determinism fit into the optimal belief system that provides this pragmatic utility? As we’ve seen, this seems to be the case only in certain individuals, under certain conditions, in the same manner that other beliefs operate. Towards what kind of person, given what education, experience, personality type, and purposive values would the belief in hard determinism provide a pragmatic benefit?
It mustn’t be someone who is inclined towards hedonistic aims, as the pleasure in believing in freewill and the classical interpretation of determinism leading to reduction in wellbeing is aversive anyone who isn’t vigorously concerned with the truth of their reality. For those who don’t wish to “think deeply”, for those who are most concerned with positive emotion, enjoyment, entertainment, and sensual pleasure, such abstract concepts surely have no place within their value / belief system. To him who values introspection, to him who has a pointed interest in philosophy, psychology, religion, science, and the nature of reality, both externally and internally, determinism posits a value of being both revelatory in its explanation, and cohesive in its comparison between our experience and abstract reality. To him who is introverted, with a mind bent upon discovery of empirical truth, to the phenomenologist, the meditator, the critical thinker who is able to view the world through multiple perspectives, and criticize them for their shortcomings in his search for an infallible foundation to stand upon, hard-determinism offers the cohesive explanation to the fundamental nature of our subjective experience. To those less inclined to discover the nature of our experience, such a belief will be wholly barred from acceptance, as the value in its revelation will be diminished to the point where even rational argumentation will not hold sway. To the mind which is emotionally fragmented, the psyche that is unintegrated, such revelations such as the illusion of free will may be entirely disruptive to the psyche, and pose as a catalyst to substantial existential dread.
It is to the philosopher, the scientist, the explicit seeker of truth, to him who is not beholden to dogma, and to him who doesn’t belong to any rigid pattern of beliefs that hard-determinism will hold the most pragmatic utility. In general, it provides a pragmatic utility to the authentic eclectic searcher, who holds an open mind. One must be a sort of fallibilist to progress from the inherent belief of autonomy to that of causal determinacy, one must hold that one’s beliefs are not the end of the road of knowledge, and that greater potential modes of being, conceptualizations, and experiential knowledge exists in order to ever modify ones Being in the direction of holding the belief in hard determinism. One must maintain this fallibilist mindset to be able to go through the subsequent modifications that enable one to hold the belief while simultaneously pursuing meaning, embodying a morality, and navigating the world in a manner that is subjectively deemed “successful”.
Personality traits of low neuroticism, low extroversion, high openness, low agreeableness and high conscientiousness will be most suited to the adoption of a hard-deterministic belief. Low neuroticism enables the individual to be less emotionally sensitive to the kind of depersonalization which takes place in the individual modified by strict causal reasoning. Low extroversion implies introversion, while this is in no means necessary for pragmatic utility, the less inclined one is to find enjoyment with others, and the more one is inclined to spend time alone, the more viable the framework of belief characterized by a lack of agency is able to become. The introvert is more likely to find themselves in solitude, paying attention to their own conscious experience, rather than interaction with other people. The more attention we pay to our own experience, the better we are able to utilize hard determinism towards its optimization and instigate the pragmatic potentiality we have from such a framework. This naturally leads into the benefit in being high in personality trait openness to experience. The belief in freewill and power of the individual over his environment is a highly traditional and conservative belief, it is in openness to novel ideas, new abstract conceptualizations, and new experiences which provide the groundwork for better suitability between our existence being compatible with the belief in hard determinism. Being that freewill is an illusion held by the majority of people, the lower one is in reference to trait agreeableness the less likely one is to believe what others believe, or go along with them in mutually confirming each other’s basic assumptions. It is only by a rebellion against conventionality that one can come to terms with a worldview devoid of personal agency.
The most important personality trait in reference to not only career success, but likewise to being beneficial to the adopter of a belief in hard determinism is that of conscientiousness. A personality low in conscientiousness will not contain the required planning, organization, and integrity needed to follow a disciplined pathway predicated on causal influencing oneself through one’s actions that is needed to provide the biggest benefit to him who has adopted a belief in hard determinism. The higher one is in trait conscientiousness the greater able to plan, organize, strategize, and optimize time-management towards the development of values. As hard-determinism places an added emphasis upon the causal intricacies in reference to our Being, the more we are able to discern our values, and organize our time in accordance with them, and pursue them with integrity, the better we are able to conscious direct our Being towards actualizing those values, and growing in the direction we wish to grow in. The higher in trait conscientiousness, the better we are able to carry out this whole process. The better predisposed we are towards time management, value system instantiation, and actualizing that value system, the better we are able to grow towards our idealistic potentiality of who we wish to become, a goal bolstered by the belief in causal determinacy.
W.H. Auden said “Truth, like love and sleep, presents approaches that are too intense.” In the same vein we find that for most people not already exposed to a vast array of experiences, perspectives, and ideals, the introduction to the illusion of free will, its disenchantment, and the production of a positive belief of hard determinism is all too intense. It shakes the common world view to its core, and there should be no surprise as to the disagreeableness we find in those with little exposure to unorthodox viewpoints. The more expansive our knowledge of various philosophies, lifestyles, and ways of being, the more primed we are to be able to develop a personal belief system that is less dogmatic by nature. If all we know is Christianity, any immediate deviation from the structure is a dive into the unknown, which halts any productive growth towards transcending the idea to a higher order conception of reality. The Hegelian dialectic of truth transcendence towards a higher resolution conceptualization, manifest in our beliefs, must not be halted for progress to be made, whether it’s in a domain of knowledge, a skill, or in our general approach towards life. Maintaining a fallibilist mindset indefinitely never closes this process, and opens us up to improvement across all hierarchies of competency. Whether its familial duties, financial management, moral action, career progression, virtuous conduct, skill advancement, relational and communal strength, all domains are open to improvement if we hold the meta belief that our beliefs are not perfect or infallibly true – whether that be from an objective standpoint or a pragmatic standpoint. For him who holds this conviction, deviation from a belief in free will to hard determinism becomes a possibility as being pragmatically beneficial.
Viewing people as robots, their present actions being the causal manifestation of the “programming” through their “hardware” of DNA and body, being modified by environment/experiences, appears to depersonalize the individual, but it really points to the uniqueness and individuality of each person as being entirely differentiated from anyone else. To think in terms of robotics may entice one to diminish the value of others, but it may also provide the necessary framework to best navigate life. To view another’s disagreeable, naïve, or malevolent actions as merely ignorance of a more “beneficial” lifestyle, promotes the view of innocence, and aids us in relinquishing grudges, depreciating hate, or giving up hope for their improvement. In viewing the world through hard determinist lenses, we can see the “responsibility” inherent in our action as they will have an impact on the Being of another. This responsibility is in knowledge of the causal effect that proceeds from everything we do, its ability to impact others, for better or worse. Whether that is a low degree or high degree is irrelevant, everything we express, every moment, action, word spoken, thought thought, idea concentrated upon, has moral significance. Every moment is data in our own robotic system towards further navigation of life, and every interaction we have with others will likewise be data integrated to their causal system towards the modification of their totality of Being. Therefore, everything we do has meaning for us as individuals, and for those we come into contact with, and the causal chain that spreads from there. Words of wisdom go a long way in aiding someone in need of advice but even more so in the expanding circle of influence which expands from that person’s modification extrapolated across all their subsequent interactions ad infinitum.
It is through the recognition of causal correlation to every mode of Being we embody, towards the potential for having a better or worse subjective experience, that we can utilize the metaphysical position of determinacy in effecting the most positive change. Thus, hard determinism, when framed in this way, opens us up to the importance of every moment, whether we take this for our own self-interest or in its moral implications, we can view every moment as an opportunity to pursue what is valuable to us, to improve our lives and those that are important to us. It can spur us to positively affect everyone we come into contact with, as we know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, even a smile can alter someone’s day, their mode of being, and the repercussions are infinite in potentiality. While this knowledge affords us knowledge of the power of our time and actions, it simultaneously places the burden of responsibility of power. We become encumbered with the weight of being the best we have the potential to be, if our personality and developed Being values a moral intentionality of reducing suffering. It requires we take action to improve our lot or our career if we value ascension in those domains that are meaningful to us.
Framing the knowledge of causal connectivity in this way shows us that we must not rest on our back foot as the nihilist interpretation may push us to believe, but rather reveals to us that for a better lifestyle, ascension in any hierarchy, to become more virtuous, or to pursue anything that holds meaning to us personally, we must necessarily effect our Being in a way that causally leads to the production of achieving our ideal state. As we know impermanence is a permanent condition, and we are always changing, and becoming modified, the belief in hard determinism inspires us to pursue what we value, to look for ways of embodying and developing ourselves in whatever domain may be important to us, by taking the action that is a causal precedent to that state of Being. This emphasis of action in pursuing value is provided due to our understanding of the cause / effect nature of everything in reality, where physics points to this as a fact beyond the shadow of a doubt in material reality, concentration on the subjective experience of the contents of consciousness conclusively points to the fact of non-self, impermanence, and hard determinism at play in our own experience, and if we extrapolate that conceptualization and take it seriously, we can utilize it towards progression to the heights of wisdom in uncovering the most optimal mode of being. For those that are able to view the belief in hard-determinism from this consequentialist perspective, in the manner it can inform our actions and our intentions to pursue what is meaningful, and take more responsibility for every moment of our experience, the pragmatic benefit exceeds that of the alternative “free will” perspective.
In pursuing our highest ideal aim, we can rationalize steps towards getting there, in realizing the importance of every moment, in orienting awareness, concentration, thought, and action, we can attempt to pursue whatever aspect of existence we have developed to value, knowing that if we manifest the right action, its effect has the potential of leading us in the direction of our aim. This wouldn’t be possible without causality, and in viewing the world from this framework, we optimize our ability to pragmatically navigate existence. There is no more meaningful life than that which recognizes the potentiality of meaning within every moment of existence. Nothing is more fulfilling than the pursuance of what is individually significant to us, and recognizing the causal implications of every moment compels us to select for that which is in alignment with what we value so we can better ourselves in the domains of importance. Freewill lacks this causal connectivity between what we do, what we concentrate on, and who we are, and the progress to who we can become. By explicitly recognizing the implications of every moment, we are able to utilize them discerningly and prudently towards the aims which we have. This isn’t a pipe dream, but a rationally deduced emergent fact from the data of the objective validity of hard determinism. The scientist, the philosopher, and the spiritualist all can hold the conviction of hard determinism, and in so doing, on the question of free will, not only progress in their fields in the most optimal manner, but experience life in the most satisfying manner, that is, as being meaningful, from start to finish, no matter what the content of consciousness may happen to be. The layperson, the free thinker, the explorer, all can use the framework provided by hard determinism in living a life of wellbeing and fulfillment that caters to the individual.
Is there anything in biological action that cannot be explained by dissatisfaction? Beneath every action, every intention, every present moment experience, there is a desire, a craving, a will for things to be otherwise, namely, that things should be better, for us. This desire has an underlying sense of dissatisfaction which manifests in the action, the speech, the moment of conscious attention, the concretizing moment of experience. Our orientation towards the world may be temporal, may be characterized by perceived care or concern, and every perception and moment has meaning to us, yet, this meaning is one that is qualified by the suffering inherent in our very nature.
This dissatisfaction expresses itself in every moment. Any present moment experience will serve to be an example of its manifestation. While genetic and biological disposition form the structure of our Being on a material basis, the manner in which our genetic material in accordance with our developed Being expresses itself in our conscious experience of our orientation towards the world, is one in which we can uncover as rooted in dissatisfaction.
Phenomenologically, every conscious experience is the accomplishment of dissatisfaction actualizing an attempt at alleviating itself. In thoughts which appear to us in the form of articulated language we are attempting to place a rational ordering upon the content in our immediate environment, whether that “closeness” is our mental condition, sensory information, or external surroundings. The articulation which actualizes the attempt to represent this content only stems from chaos, and the desire to impose order, that is, an inherent dissatisfaction and an attempt at its alleviation. The imaginative thought, the directive thought, the idealist or abstract thought, are all a multitude of expressions manifesting the core inherent nature of our Being.
Heidegger correctly states that this being is temporalized, that it is inextricably connected with time, that it is itself temporalizing the world through its very existence. The trinitarian union of time, that of the effect of the past, experience of the present, and anticipation of the future, unified within the present, modifies our behavior as our Being “moves” from one moment to the next. This produces the relevant content of thought, in relation to our modified, evolved, socialized, experientially transformed Being. This Being which we find ourselves as expressing in the present was instantiated by genetics, modified by environment, and has a nature of attempting to reduce the dissatisfaction at its core through its alleviation. The nature of the content of the present is an expression of this temporalized nature, that it is predicated on past habitual tendencies in response to the present, and modified by our anticipation of alleviation in the future. The conscious content we have the ability to be aware of in the moment presents itself as doing so through the experience of directed conscious experience, or within a mode of being characterized by intentionality or “directedness”. The content in which our consciousness is directed upon is available within every moment and is an expression of a value system instantiated by dissatisfaction, giving rise to the signification of our perception system to filter content, filtered through our developed Being in its entirety. The content which makes its way to conscious experience, being of whatever nature, we are directed towards with the “intention” of reducing the dissatisfaction which we presently have with our existence within that moment. If we did not have this dissatisfaction, there would be no signification of objective reality, no orientation within the world, no filtration system of our perceptive abilities, and the totality of our Being wouldn’t be directed towards valuable or meaningful content. The meaning of the many systems, many of which are cybernetically related, is grounded upon a biological imperative to alleviate a dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs. This is visible as microscopically as the cellular level in the need to maintain homeostasis, to regulate nutrients, to consume energy, to survive, and reproduce the genetic instructions themselves, in short, this dissatisfaction is a biological necessity to push forward to the next moment, for us in the totality of our material underpinnings, and as far down as we can see.
The manifestation of emotions of a satisfactory conscious nature, if analyzed in the present moment, only serve as the illusory covering up of our fundamental nature, and are better thought of as lesser deviations of suffering than having a positive essence. The reward systems instantiation of positive modes of being, or subjectively “pleasant” experiences, are only a degree of dissatisfaction removed from our “normal”. Our suffering is not a degree of removal from baseline neutrality, but the baseline, and relevant positive emotions, are merely deviations of negativity. Happiness, satisfaction, contentedness, blissfulness, is as transient and conditioned as any other content of consciousness, there is no permanent escape from dissatisfaction, and the experience of satisfaction only serves as an indicator of a manner of acting that biologically leads to a better anticipatory interpretation of the future. If there wasn’t dissatisfaction at the core of satisfaction, it wouldn’t ever be rewarded for subjectively, nor would it condition us towards patterns of behavior that re-instantiate it. When analyzing a mode of being which appears to us as satisfactory, we still find present the desire for that mode of being to extend into the future, we are still temporalized and are living ahead of ourselves, we are never satisfied, not even with the present mode of being characterized by satisfaction. By the nature of times passing, we are more than aware of the impermanence of any present moment’s existence, as time passes, so does the content of consciousness, as we recognize happiness, bliss, and satisfaction, we simultaneously recognize its transience. What these concepts denote as positive emotion, or perceived positive emotion, only go to show modes of being that are a degree of deviation of suffering away from our baseline, which we never can escape.
While Heidegger correctly explained our temporal nature, he failed in his claim as characterizing it by a primacy of care, just as Merleau-Ponty failed in his emphasis of the primacy of perception. While these do serve as useful articulations of characteristics crucial to representing our Being in its manifestation, the root of them remains unarticulated. Care, concern, perception, attention, meaning, merely are products of our essential dissatisfied nature, they are the biological expressions of an attempt to alleviate this suffering through “action” or “movement”, not necessarily in our physical being, but in relation to our unconscious striving.
To escape desire, to escape suffering, is what the world’s religious matriarchs claim to have experienced. At the core of these claims is the belief that one has transcended desire and suffering. In phenomenal experience the thought can surely arise that distinguishes transcendental experiences with a normative claim that they are truly happening. Just because a content of consciousness is truly existing, and appears to represent reality, doesn’t mean that it actually represents the nature of our Being. While one can believe that they are experiencing a separation from the experience of dissatisfaction, one is merely misaligning their vocabulary in its representation of their conscious experience. One cannot experience “pleasure” without simultaneously desiring its continuation, and, if one is wise, one cannot do so without recognizing its impermanence, as time will show, it will not last. Naivety and self-delusionment serve to improve our experience of existence, thus the emergence of the “self” concept to distinguish egotistical intentions, thus the emergence of a belief of temporal transcendence in an afterlife to escape death anxiety, thus the belief in happiness and contentment to persuade ourselves that our essential existential nature isn’t characterized by misfortune and dissatisfaction. The biological correlate to such belief structures proves evolutionarily beneficial, the conscious experience of certainty in regard to these claims works to dissuade us from suicide, complacency, reproductive stagnation, and biological degeneration, in short, they serve to to dissuade us from acting out the revelation of what our basic nature appears to imply, meaninglessness and a lifetime of dissatisfactory experience. This dissuasion reflects a biological advantage in the utility of being-towards-others in our altruistic acts, which, in the manner of kin selection, group selection, or reciprocal altruism, served to promote the wellbeing of the individual, and thus the species as a group, as a whole, towards further development.
The thoughts that appear in our conscious awareness always is directed towards something. This directing is characterized by an attempt to alleviate dissatisfaction. The pragmatic utility of the thought, speech, or action is determined by the success it has as a precursor to actualizing an alleviation of suffering. The degree to which it is deemed pragmatic, to us, is the degree to which it moves us away from or below the baseline of dissatisfaction. This success or failure, and the degree to which we do so, further informs our Being towards repetition or recession from further implementation of the strategy.
Any experience of emotion appearing in conscious awareness is our neurological systems way of informing consciousness towards the utility of external or internal content and its affect upon our being. Our genetic predispositions are the blueprint which allow us to develop a value system centered around the core of biological imperatives, that of the survival, reproduction, and replication of our genetic material, which is nested in the cells of the “survival machine” which we coin “the body”. The manner in which our body is oriented towards the world, and within the world, is based firstly upon pre-conceptual perception which shares the same origin story instruction, it is instantiated by genetic predisposition, and modified by environment which includes our society and cultures role in molding us.
Our society and culture play a role in our modification because how we interact within them will determine the success or failure of the biological imperatives, which is always taken into consideration in thought, actualized in speech, and manifest in our actions, whether that consideration is conscious or unconscious is aside from the matter. The social milieu in which we find ourselves in limits our range of acceptable actions from which to act upon that determine our success within communal life, whether its through legislative means, accepted taboos, or general conceptions about morality. We are modified by this whether we rationally agree or not. This restrictive nature of society, by so hindering our freedom, puts constraints upon our Being and the manner in which we interact with the world, whether we act in alignment with the social and cultural conditioning, or rebel against them, we are acting in a way that takes them into consideration, which doesn’t explicitly have to be conscious. The nature of this Being which interacts within the communal world, as previously described in its instantiation, does the perceiving, the conscious directing, the expression of content within our subjective experience, due to the underpinned suffering hardwired into our genetic material which drives us towards its removal, for its benefit. When biological imperatives are constrained by social factors, we necessarily take into account the effect our actions will have upon others, or how they will be perceived. This kind of reinforcement serves to condition us through the acquisition of desires from the start of life, desires that are desired by the social and cultural environment we find ourselves in, towards the progression of the biological imperatives. Any interest, hobby, job, action, or turn of phrase which is contrary to the socially accepted catalogue of desires, becomes less desirous to us without our explicit approval, prior to conscious consideration. In looking to alleviate our dissatisfied nature, we always do so with an eye to our self-interests and how it aligns with the current society and culture.
Every expression of consciousness is biological in nature, being that we are biological organisms. No matter how distorted the manifestations appear to be from the “state of nature” recorded in our observation of other life, they are nonetheless manifestations of nature. It is due to our attempt at satisfying our natural tendencies that we strive to become socially integrated, and to rise to the top of social and culturally informed hierarchies. Whether the drives are best explained by a biological or social perspective, sexual or individual causes, all these perspectives and aspects of our biological being is entwined with the Being which we find ourselves as, and any motion which flows from it are always a complete combination of these (every momentary subjective experience or action, whether conscious or not). We find ourselves oriented based upon these factors, and it is visible under the metrics of improvement and way of life that result in optimality in finding a mate, and reproducing our genetic material. While this seems to be biologically reductive in expressing the core of all our actions, it is more than an evolutionarily informed position, and can be better expressed under different domains of inquiry, yet in its totality, philosophy enables the delineation of each of the integral structures in relation to the whole, and provides a description of the whole which the natural sciences can merely point to in each of their findings. It is entirely possible to make a case that phenomenological analysis is itself scientific in nature, and the underlying subjective experience which proceeds even specific scientific methodology is always relevant to the scientific endeavor itself. To phenomenologically, experientially, philosophically, conclude upon the dissatisfactory nature of our Being as being integral to all life is itself a scientific claim that can be proved through scientific measures.
A phenomenological analysis of what the experience of the present moment reveals to us in subjective experience enlightens us towards the mechanism by which our Being pursues these courses of action, from which all other courses of action are integrally related. The suffering which permeates all experience is visible in any present moment which we can concentrate upon. The essentiality and inextricable connection to every arising content of consciousness, to every retrospectively analyzed manifestation of our Being in movement, speech, or subjective experience, can be recognized through practices such as Vipassana meditation or through using the phenomenological method in application to our own experience. While motivation, and causal generalities can be numerous, whether we view things from the lens of genetic influence as an evolutionary biologist might, environmental influence as a sociologist may be predisposed to, or familial upbringing as a psychologist does, all these lens of perception and articulation of causal conditionality can be understood as containing an underlying philosophic tendency of dissatisfaction in the manner they are manifest. If a psychologist views an action we are taking and charts a repetitive overarching pattern of goal accomplishment that links to childhood experience, that perspective holds, yet the motivation as to why that pattern emerges, and from what underlying characteristic of the mode of being which produces it can be described as, both point to the inherent dissatisfactory nature of our Being. The motivation can always be described in terms of dissatisfaction, and its correlates, (albeit these correlates are almost always wrongly attributed as the core of our being) that of craving, and clinging, of desiring and aversion, which merely are conceptualized notions of the products of dissatisfaction. The dissatisfaction isn’t merely an emotion we experience, but a characteristic of the manner of our being-in-the-world.
We can clearly understand how drug and alcohol use are prevalent in humankind from this explanation, they offer an external alleviation of the experience of our natural being, that of dissatisfaction. By so modifying our conscious experience, some can succeed in momentarily covering up our essential nature, they modify our subjective experience away in degrees away from the dissatisfactory baseline which permeates our waking lives. Some substances are desired, work to reduce suffering, and regarded as pleasurable, merely for their short term, controlled, impermanent, yet effective alleviation and deviation from our natural mode of Being. Anything which serves as a crutch towards the alleviation of suffering is prized by our reward system, and the neural pathways that lead to its alleviate are always strengthened by the actions which actualize the desired outcome. Any absence from the possibility of greasing this neural groove that produces alleviation becomes itself the source of further dissatisfaction in our separation from it, thus dependency and over indulgence can result in anything which has such a nature to alleviate this desire, this aversion, this suffering beneath it all. Food, sex, drugs, love, all serve to do this, and we can see how our desire and ability to abuse them is warranted by their very utility in satisfying our essential craving. While the usage of substances to modify neurochemistry and subsequently our subjective experience can provide short term alleviation from our existence in its nascent state, the problems always arise at the extreme end, and a withholding of rational control can form abuse or dependency, solely upon the grounds of that neural groove to alleviate satisfaction going unreinforced. It’s entirely explainable, given our nature, why we would desire to escape ourselves, and the desire to do so all the time, makes perfect sense. The problem is the perceived benefit of such escapism, or navigation of experience through continued substance use, is always temporary, as any experience is, and almost always isn’t reiterable across time as providing a net benefit. In the final analysis the consistent use of any conscious altering substance that results in dependence, daily use, or overuse, will ultimately end in the user experiencing a profound dissatisfaction that is normally described as substantially more detrimental to subjective wellbeing than the original dissatisfaction that led to the substance abuse.
Those that are so biologically gifted, or cursed, to be more attentive and aware of their present experience, are better suited to recognize the essential nature of their Being. The degree to which we have a genetic and environmental disposition in the direction of self-awareness and intellectual ability to articulate it, is the degree towards which we discover that our own Being is a problem for us, and the degree to which it actually is. At a certain point, destruction of Being itself becomes an option of consideration. For many people the revelation of certain truths of our Being, and of our place in the world, are improperly framed and can lead to a pessimistic or even self-proclaimed nihilistic interpretation of life. This holds the potential to lead to an increased attempt to escape the confines of suffering that this specific knowledge appears to point to, and addiction rates increase. The degree to which we suffer, and are aware of our suffering, and the manner in which we frame such revelations, determine the degree to which we have a dissatisfied experience of life. The way we view the world, the way we interpret our knowledge of it, and the manner in which we navigate the world given such knowledge, is of paramount importance to informing our subjective experience. Such truths such as the impermanence of all phenomena, the suffering nature of our existence, and the deterministic foundation for all action pose the threat of being interpreted in a manner that increases our dissatisfaction with life, but they need not do so.
How do we experience the world through this lens? Individual childhood dissatisfactions and the experience of dissatisfaction which permeates all of our lives can become so great so as to produce the thought of suicide as being a resolvent of the problem of the dissatisfaction itself. The introduction to alleviating substances which could remove the cloud of darkness which is the subsequent production to rumination on the negative experience of life, provides us an apparent escape, albeit, an escape in degree alone, from the nature of natural existence. The addiction, thirst for power, accomplishment of social recognition, and the experience of Being so modified by experience, only can work to confirm the utility of the lifestyle which afforded its modification. Once the utility of this lifestyle becomes revealed as un-reiterable, or of providing a net negative in the consequences of pursuing it, subsequent rejection of the lifestyle is considered. In the developed aversion to conscious altering substances, we are pushed to experience the added suffering of craving for what was lost, and we experience the return to the baseline of suffering, the return to our essential Being. In attempting to cope with Being as such, in its nascent, unmodified by substance, yet heavily altered by environment state, we then can find the pursuit of abstract ideals in philosophy, the concentration on family values, or activities such as physical exertion to be of the most prominent forms of alleviating the permanent awareness of dissatisfaction. We can attempt to form meaningful relationships, but when we do so, we may find ourselves in a similar position, of experiencing the dissatisfaction inherent in life, and conclude that it must be due to our relational partners, that the source of the dissatisfaction must be external. Thus we are enticed to drive off the ones who love us, and eventually may conclude that the dissatisfaction which currently manifests itself as directed upon an object (that of our partners) is in fact due to the partner, but not explicitly, it is only by our essential nature that we can direct it in such a manner. The more someone appears as a viable long-term partner, whether in friendship or romance, especially if the person is imagined to be a partner in which we desire to bear children with, the greater our anxiety in them being suited for such a position. The closer we become, the more dissatisfaction is biologically “required” in order to make sure the situation is optimal for the goals which are, again, instantiated biologically and modified in their expression and the manner in which we actualize them by our social milieu and past experiences. Thus we push away those we love out of false yet true attribution of our suffering towards their role in our lives. We cannot escape dissatisfaction, and our attribution of its manifestation to external factors is merely a part of the biological game, to which we were designed to be players. In the essays “Philosophic Interpretational Structures” and “Pragmatism of the Hard-Deterministic Worldview”, I offer solutions of framing from which we can actually benefit from the knowledge which has the potential of producing further dissatisfaction. In the following sections I will give a brief summary of the proper method of which to utilize these “difficult” truths, and the framing I’ve found most pragmatic.
How do we learn to pragmatically cope with this state of affairs? Do we have to be players in the biological game of dissatisfaction alleviation? Whether we like it or not, as awareness of these truths become evident, they will never fade away, they will be ever presented as driving forces behind our experience, whether it be thought, speech or action. Do we heed their call to arms? We cannot do otherwise. We ought not act upon every thought, but we have to think every thought that is presented to us. The answer lies in the correct modification of our Being towards values which are consciously formulated, and proven to be personally experienced as beneficial in the mitigation of dissatisfaction. The presence of dissatisfaction in the natural mode of being (unhindered by chemical substances) isn’t abnormal, it’s the most “normal” thing about us. The wise maneuvering and orientation of ourselves in relation to our values, their explicit defining and the manner in which we actualize them, the way in which we act in the world, the way we spend our time, our worldview, in short, our view, intention, thought, speech, action, job, mindfulness, and concentration all must be optimized towards the alleviation of suffering. We can actually harness this natural ability towards accomplishment of our goals. If we allow our dissatisfied nature to be directed toward areas which we do not consciously value, we will only progress towards activities, aims, skills, and experiences which, while they biologically are significant, and therefore “matter”, don’t consciously matterto us. In a proper value system revelation, explicit revamping, instantiating, and actualizing, we can utilize our core expressions of dissatisfaction towards a purpose which we value, towards aims which are meaningful, albeit, to us and us alone. This can only be achieved by diligent striving to do so, yet, we must be fully cognizant of our inability to fully escape the confines of existential suffering which we are encased in. Pursue meaning, attempt to alleviate suffering, yet do not fall into despair over its impossibility. While this presents itself as paradoxical, in the pursuit of the nonexistent by our absurd striving towards it, it is the striving, the Being-directed-towards-value, the present moment directedness and movement which is all we have. The manner and direction which we do so, will determine our ability to cope with life and the subjective experience we will have in doing so.
The biggest problem in life is suffering, and suffering is inextricably tied to our being, as long as we abstain from mind altering substances. How can we most optimally navigate our experience sober? I have found this is best done by pursing values which provide adequate combat against, and in unison with, the essential core of our being. For many this is abstract contemplation, it is career goals, it is development of skills and ascension in hierarchies which we value, it is familial and interpersonal relationships, it is character development in a certain direction, it is becoming the person we simultaneously desire to be as well as have the potential of being. While any area we direct ourselves towards progressing is a manifestation of the system which we simultaneously which to negate (the suffering nature of our biological system), we succeed in mitigation only through the process of attempting to do so. Mental progression in character development, wisdom optimization, and ability to deal with the set of all problems, mentally, always provides a cognitive relief that we can capitalize on despite abstaining from substance alteration. Present moment awareness of the content of consciousness in practices such as meditation, or introspection, give us a greater degree of understanding our experience of life, and the ability to consciously experience this content provides us with the knowledge towards its causal nature, information which is invaluable towards optimization. Physical exertion in hard training, such as physical combat, exercise, sports, or endurance activities, plays a similar role in fighting our genetic predisposition towards desire rooted in dissatisfaction to master our environment, to rise in the hierarchy of physicality. Working a full time job to provide for oneself, one’s family, is adequate in soothing that biological source of dissatisfaction that stems from the will to power through independence and communal benefit. Having mutual beneficial relationships that foster love, support, and mutual growth and understanding provide an experienced social cohesion that is beneficial to our Being. The combination and unity of the four, is a good start at a holistic method of coping.
Is this optimal? Is this the best philosophy of life, the best way to live? If anything, it’s a start. If we can optimize our lives towards pursuing what we value, if we can gratify the modes of our Being which include the mental, physical, and communal modes of our Being, which all are sources of meaning, then we are best suited to deal with the navigation of experience despite its essential dissatisfactory nature. While these are normative claims, and existential conclusions, I believe the search is never over, the modification of our belief systems, the alteration of knowledge used in directing our Being in the world, the experience both in success and failure in these respects, all seeks to better inform us of a better method of navigation, but for now, this is the best I have.
There’s a multitude of factors that result in the overwhelming pursuit of hedonistic lifestyles in the postmodern era, here we’ll look at those that are most predominantly occurring to factor into its support, as well as its biological and cultural underpinnings. Most notability, the amount of free time afforded to those in the west due to economic and technological progression, the cohesion of democratic nations, and the general alleviation of poverty. While hedonism has been a perennial pursuit, the ability of more people to have the free time and money to even consider and engage in hedonistic activities has opened the playing field to the majority of the population to adopt a hedonistic lifestyle. Modern technology and societal systems have reduced primal goals through the increase in readiness and affordability of base necessities such as food and shelter. Base necessities are more easily covered by a shorter work week, there is an almost complete absence of threats from external sources and we are provided safety from impending dangers – which we would have been constantly guarded against in previous eras. These changes result both in a positive shift in wellbeing as well as a negative, depending on the individual’s reaction to them and his method of filling in that extra time afforded to him.
The ability to pursue our interests can be a double edged sword, depending on what those interests are, and the manner in which we pursue them. By progressing as a society in such a way we face some loss in the traditional forms in which our evolutionarily engrained reward systems are triggered, but this removal in no way erodes the systems and their potential rewiring to other stimuli. Removal of traditional forms of triggers to our reward system, such as personal acquisition of food in hunting, exploration into unknown areas, violence expressed in conflict, and, in even more primitive times, the unpunished acquisition of multiple mates forced into satisfying sexual desires. While food, war, exploration, and reproduction are still aspects of the modern life, the ways in which we acquire them, and the limitations governments put on our actions in pursuing them, has been altered as our extension of morality pervades the culture. While this certainly affords us a net benefit in terms of safety, equality, and basic rights to freedom, it simultaneously causes a shift in the stimuli which causes the production of serotonin. This differentiation removes some of our sources of the subjective experience of wellbeing, producing the desire to replace them with new forms of stimuli, and the question becomes, by what ought we replace them?
By moving away from the environment we found ourselves in for millions of years, into one which is almost entirely constructed by the human species, we find ourselves with new methods to cope with the drives and constraints of the human psyche. On the one hand we must find new methods to mitigate our unconscious, primal, and instinctual drives, and on the other we are faced with a much more expansive, yet strict, societally informed morality. Punishment for deviances such as violence, theft, and injustices enable greater freedom to act within the framework of society, while limiting the threat to the pursual of the majority of societies interests. The current state of the legal system reflects an improvement of moral considerations, aiding in removing external threats to our wellbeing and cybernetically informing the moral guidelines of society (we inform the government of morality and it, in turn, informs us). While all members in society have the risk of imprisonment for moral deviance, and this modifies the nations morality in the same way it is itself informed by it, it still leaves open the potential for vastly different methods of coping under its general guidelines. While both the unconscious urges and the moral restrictions have altered, our conscious, intelligible, mitigating “power” remains wedged between the competing factors, and it is how we cope with being “thrown” into such a situation that will determine the quality of our subjective experience.
The growth of the population and the interconnectedness of humanity has allowed for the upper constraining factor of conscience to be modified in a way that is in no way universal. Everyone is raised differently, whether it may be in a traditional nuclear family, or by more diverse familial structures. Some are influenced by sub-groups to follow strict religious morality, others are raised under more or less strict secular imperatives, and in other corners of the same society parents raise their children to conform to the most prominent form of moral imperatives, that of pursuing “whatever makes you happy”. While there is a vast range of ways we develop from infanthood to adulthood, the moral rules, discipline, and in general, what is deemed “important” and “right and wrong” vary according to individual circumstances. This variance causes a variance in the upper constraint of how we mitigate our instinctual drives, which are more or less universal in their grounding. While the generalized group of individuals that believe in the overwhelming pursuit of happiness may have been led into such a mode of being with the best of intentions by a society and family that only wants the best for their children, it holds the risk of developing a belief system that finds no problem in the overindulgence in sensual or pleasure producing stimuli, resulting for many in the pursuit of a hedonistic lifestyle. Given the ability to live such a lifestyle afforded to us by the modern era, the backing of an interconnected society, whether it’s the majority or merely a subgroup (we can find ourselves in an echo chamber in regards to whatever belief system we hold) the mutual acceptance and propagation by other members of society reinforces the belief system and can produce ideological possession to push the individual in the direction which he has been raised.
The answer of how to act in the modern era – given the lack of formal structure and openness to ever-increasing options – is for many of us with quick fixes of serotonin surging activities. While this satisfies a “natural” unconscious urge, and it can be rationally defended by conscious self-interested arguments, I argue, it is not the optimal framework in which to develop a wholesome psyche and a meaningful life. The manifestations of the hedonistic mode of being, whether rationally considered or merely driven by societal and unconscious desire, manifests in the form of overindulgence in an excessive amount of food, sex, and drugs and alcohol. Social media allows for our pleasure system to be moved by apparent attraction and acceptance in communal settings, by opening us up to the approval of millions of users. Fixation on societal approval in our online presence across social media becomes reinforced by the dopaminergic systems response to attention, television and video games provide satisfaction that the non-human created outside world doesn’t provide to the same degree. Bars, clubs, and drug dealers are found on every corner, and there is the added social reinforcement of those who indulge, not to mention the widespread cultural acceptance. The secondary acquisition of our basic biological needs through work rewarded by compensation for currency and further exchanged for necessities, allows a recourse of the dopaminergic system towards striving after wealth and power, which would be a second derivation away from our primitive desires which still must be met. Although the means have changed the ends are relatively similar, in the abstract. While the plague of desire for quick satisfaction, attention, wealth and fame may be a modern problem, it is in no way a non-perennial one, merely the form in which it manifests itself is altered.
While these factors are relevant and its results can, at times, negatively affect the populations overall wellbeing, at least in the lives of many individuals, the tendency to generalize it, and to only apply a critical theoristic framework to the current milieu is fallacial. While we can find negative repercussions of any frame of mind, applied to any era, or any society, we must not limit ourselves to merely criticism and stating the situation as being a novelty, without seeing the whole picture, including the benefit. In preindustrial society the ability to abstain from hedonistic pursuits and desire for excessive wealth existed alongside the ability for altruism, which, in our social development, became more than a possibility as seen by our current large scale states, which couldn’t have been created and developed to cohesive welfare societies in the absence of cooperation between individuals and groups of individuals. The development from primitive egoism, to kin altruism, to reciprocal altruism and later to group selection, has, in the west, been extended to populations of millions of people, for the benefit of the vast majority. The expanding circle of our consideration has enabled the lower class to have enough extra time and currency to pursue what once was only afforded to the wealthiest and most powerful in a society.
We can see technology and the mass productive capabilities of modern society, along with the scientific erosion of fundamental religious views as producing suffering and existential crisis for many people. It may be that the development of humankind has produced a society that is permeated by negative emotion not equipped for its newest development, while the suffering which drives us is perennial regardless of the era, the disconnect between our environmental adaptations informed by evolutionary biology and our societies rapid development has never had a bigger gulf. The ability to transcend the societal norm, the human condition of permanent desire in a constantly fluctuating experience, has been reframed to an extreme extent given the situation and environment we find ourselves in. The more our conscience’s diverge from our biological nature, the bigger the toll on our psyche to mitigate the difference, which for many is too big a gap to attempt to reconcile, leading them into escapism and a masking of the “natural” mode of being, inhibited by the quick fixes available to us.
Humans have evolved from their primitive ancestors, but this has shown less biological movement than societal and cultural change in the recent millenniums. Memes have altered and propagated our current milieu more so than genes over the last 10,000 years, and to lay the blame of the nihilistic tendencies, and lack of meaning in many of our lives upon this lagging biological nature, would only be half of the story. Our societal influences and the progress of civilization in general bears a tangential relation to our biological nature, the coupling of which is failing to provide adequate answers to how to cope with our lives. We merely haven’t evolved to be equipped with a positive subjective experience, and as we have more time to be self-aware and contemplate our existence, the fact of this phenomenological truth makes itself clear.
As our ancestors had the potential to escape suffering through meaningful pursuits, whether that be by providing food for the tribe and their families through sweat and blood in hunting, or if it’s by factory work with the same outcome, the potential for a meaningful life with values that highlight the positive side of our nature are still possible. As beneficial as critical theory is at exposing problems and injustices, it merely is one side of the existential coin. The potential to suffer, even if it is itself an impermeable widespread pandemic, is truly part of our nature, yet so is the potential to live meaningful lives of value, whether they be summarized in religious principles, traditional family values, liberal or progressive in nature, or personal and idealistic. The reward system which consolidates our biological, social, and cultural influences into a present desire to pursue whatever it intuits as beneficial, still runs through us. The ability for that desire to be directed at more or less fulfilling and meaningful, or pleasant and unpleasant pursuits still is an existing possibility, and wisdom remains the guiding star towards optimizing our value system (what our actions stem from) as well as the traits we embody in systemically providing a feasible ground for their attainment.
Openness to novel perspectives and abstaining from dogmatic beliefs is a potentiality for anyone, and individuals who hold a fallibilistic mindset can find other likeminded individuals who will reinforce their belief that such a framework to operate from is beneficial. While this is a possibility, the advantage hedonism has is that it is experienced as a short term pleasurable subjectively, as well as having a group which reinforces it in culture. Those stimuli which provide short term satisfaction are more enticing to a biological system which isn’t designed for long term goal acquisition, we are wired for short term indulgence, and this butts its head against the current situation we find ourselves in. With ever increasing lifespans, and the benefit of stability across a long period of time becomes more important to individual and familial success, the hedonistic route is revealed as a hindrance to our long term goals and wellbeing. In America we champion hedonistic heroes, many of our most popular celebrities, musicians, and cultural icons display the type of behavior that reinforces a hedonistic lifestyle, providing an example to those who already are inclined toward pursuing happiness (everyone!) that if they continue to do so they could be successful in a similar manner to the famous representatives of such pursuits. The cultural reinforcement to the hedonistic lifestyle is strong in the modern era, and with our natural disposition and unconscious urges, fleshed out in our neural chemistry propagating a reward system based on these urges, we find it easy to explain why anyone would prefer a hedonistic lifestyle. The real question becomes not how anyone could find themselves in a mode of being characterized by hedonistic pursuits, but how could anyone escape it? The answer to this question is seldom posited, but as more and more people discover the result of hedonistic pursuits in the long-term, that of creating a lack of meaning, that of not providing real relationships, or success and inner contentment, they find themselves asking what a better way could possibly be.
Being that our genes haven’t provided the optimal influence towards pursuing meaningful and subjectively beneficial experience in our current environment, we must turn to the word of culture, memes, and, if so inclined, philosophy, to properly uncover what a meaningful life would look like in the 21st century. We ought to optimize the memes which influence us, our belief structure, and develop a conscious top down influence to drive behavior, based on reason. While this system is developed on the framework of our biology, using our genetic heritage, we can utilize the tools in accordance with our modern environment to form more meaningful and productive lives, which can sustain well-being rather than promote suffering.
The sacrifice required of short term pleasure for long term gain isn’t merely a leap of faith, but it can be proven in personal experience as providing a more meaningful life. Anyone who has tried both lifestyles, in their extremities, or has found themselves somewhere in between, can personally recognize the benefit to themselves and those they value in abstaining from a purely self-indulgent lifestyle. Nothing someone tells us should be taken up dogmatically, especially when it is in regards to our morality, how we live our lives, and what to believe. It is in the exploration of different methods of living, of testing different philosophies of life, in living different lifestyles that we collect the data needed to inform us of better ways of living. If we take the human enterprise of what’s the best way to live seriously, and concentrate on the causality, both in the positive and negative repercussions of our actions, applied to different lifestyle experiences, we will be better informed as to which interests to pursue, how to spend our time, and what values and character traits are most optimal to be embodied. To dogmatically heed cultural norms, or a specific belief system, without collecting this data, limits the evidence we have towards uncovering, or progressing, in a way that is optimal for us.
Finding a better way to live our lives, that produces a more sustainable and positive subjective experience, is in the interest of every individual, and deviating from what is comfortable and known towards attempting to live a life in the absence of purely hedonistic pursuits can provide the necessary data to act upon to improve our lives. This is entirely possible for anyone, regardless of economic class or upbringing. The current milieu’s championed ideals may not always adequately provide trustworthy advice for us in the pursuit of a meaningful life, and we should question it where we can to discern what is useful and beneficial, and what is harmful and reductive to fulfilling our potential. There are individuals and great minds, now, and throughout history, that can aide us in developing a system which foster our attempt in developing such a mode of being that can better navigate our current landscape. All hope isn’t lost, and it is our responsibility to ourselves to seek the truth, not merely metaphysically, but existentially, not merely for ourselves and our own wellbeing, but for the benefit of our current society and future generations to come.
The problem is that we have an experience, and that experience can be better or worse. Not to mention, that experience and its contents, which are ranging, are wholly contingent upon this world in which we find ourselves thrown into.
The question no longer becomes whether anything matters or doesn’t, as it surely does, to us, it becomes – how do we best navigate this existence we find ourselves thrown into? The social milieu, the time, the space, the experience, the present moments causal tethers, and the anticipation of the future, how do we navigate with the givens?
Do we stop trying, and produce an intolerable suffering that we subjectively experience? Do we struggle to pursue what we individually uncover as valuing, despite the universes judgment upon the futility of meaning? We ought to. We ought to rebel against the universes condemnation, and bring to the forefront that meaning which we find gives sense to our experience, that which relates to our conscious awareness the beneficiality of pursuing, not because it means something to the world, but because it means something to us. Is this real? Does it exist? It exists as sure as our experience of existence exists, and to optimize this experience is to pursue what we value, which, if we’re smart, we would look to discovering what is the most optimal pursuits to value themselves.
We don’t forget our thrownness into a world unasked for, we don’t ignore the universal insignificance of our existence, rather, we value the content of our own experience, we see the sense that is made behind every moment, as our embodied perceptive ability discerns which content to manifest in conscious experience, and in so inviting, we discern modes of being, we experience life, we live and we learn, we strive for optimal states, and we ought not feel guilty, nor forget the framework from which we work in.
Our natural orientation toward the world will inform us of our values, whether they be pre-conscious in perception, or consciously directed. Our genetic encoding for how to perceive, and the way in which we orient ourselves towards our environment is done so by a certain signification that objects in our environment give as mediated by the perceptive system (itself genetically and environmentally informed). This is base level sense, meaning, and signification. It also just so happens to be the case that we are located in a social milieu, a familial and culturally influenced system, which is formulated into our perceptive orientation system since birth. These systems all seek to orient us in a way that has value, from the basis of survival, propagation, and other evolutionary factors. This basis, provided with a social milieu, entails action and Being that works in a way towards properly being in the world. This “proper” is somewhat anthropomorphized, but it is a natural process that is underlined by a certain sense.
There is sufficient reason why we pay attention to certain things, why certain content has the effect it does upon us, why we reciprocally act in a way that is “intuited” as optimal for us. It is a production of a value system, that is part in parcel of our Being, that which we are, and our place in the world we find ourselves in.
We can extrapolate, as the desires and goals become enriched by the societal norms, become more complex as the means to survival and satisfaction become more entwined and enriched with a causally determined value. We pursue things, we say things, we do things, we think things, and we reflect on our own experience, not for no reason at all, but for good reason, it is all bursting with meaning, we ought to attempt to uncover such things, which we can (Value System Uncovering). Proper Vipassana meditation, analyzed with a phenomenological method, can disclose the intentionality behind conscious experience, can disclose the modes of being which we embody, and their characteristics (Phenomenology of Vipassana Mode of Being). One of which, as Hiedegger pointed out, is our natural care or concern system, which courses through every present moment.
Everything we do is fundamentally informed by our care and concern, our want, our deficiency and its alleviation. We care about things, we value things, because they mean something to us, there is no escaping this, whether we consciously attribute our belief structure to being nihilist, or absurdist, etc., the orientation towards a belief structure, and mediated by the belief structure, itself is rooted upon a type of meaning, albeit the selection of negation over affirmation (in these cases).
Why do you think you better yourself? We should answer these questions for ourselves, look to who we want to be, what we want to do, and strive to go there, for good reasons and intentions. Making this goal, these intentions, and the path there explicit provides a benefit towards achieving that goal of becoming who we want to become, of getting “better” in a subjective sense – made objective only in its relation to our subjective experience of being better or worse.
Why do we continue living? Why do I do the things I do? I do it because it fills me with meaning, provides positive states of being, it will make me a better husband, father, citizen, which themselves are sources of meaning, they provide a framework from which to act under that improves my psychological state, it fills my life with potentialities that have a significance to me, and for me, that is enough to continue living.
The better we are, in ways which we value, hypothetically (if our goals, intentions, practice, and definition of “better” is actually conducive to a better experience of life) the better we can navigate existence, the better we can cope with hardship, the better subjective experience we have, and the better we can aide others. By bettering ourselves, we become more equipped to handle life itself, optimally, that produces wellbeing for ourselves and those we care about.
The more virtuous we are, the better we can act, the more knowledgeable we become, the better we are able to understand reality, and the better equipped we become to live in an optimal manner.
While this is itself subjective, I think we ought to pursue what we value regardless, at the least on a “whim” as Camus said, but we can go past that, because this “whim” can be properly informed and backed by empirical evidence of improving psychological wellbeing, which ought to matter to us, seeing as our experience does matter to us. We can instantiate a path towards a consciously formulated goal, mode of being, character trait, personal accomplishment, creative act, etc. that is the result of a pursuance in accordance with what we find meaningful in the present moment, or what we value.
Now why ought we to pursue what we value, what we consciously formulate as being valuable? This is generally a tautology, we pursue what is valuable because it is valuable, it provides us with wellbeing, reduces suffering, creates a life that is meaningful, to us, by definition, because it’s based on our values.
This would be, if you could grant me, a subjective pursual that is objectively verified as a real present moment decision, act, understanding. The phenomena of such conscious decisions, the awareness necessary to realize, is all subjective, but we can say, from our experience, if is an objective fact about our existence that it is occurring.
I would never make a claim that pursuits and values are universally shared to the same degree, just that they objectively exist and can be discovered subjectively. Any further extrapolation would require quite a detailed phenomenological explanation as well as a philosophically vigorous explanation of what “truth” here entails. (On Truth Claims) I hope you see where I’m coming from regardless.
One more point on the is ought problem, as far as morality is concerned, I’m coming from a meta ethical perspective of moral realism, tempered by individually acquired wisdom in actuality, so there’s that.
In regards to extrapolating these musing beyond the life of a human, to other sentient life, the natural orientation we have towards the world we’re in, this goes for Dasein, and dog, and buffalo, is naturally oriented towards the content within its environment, pre-consciously. This orientation is grounded upon the biological structure of our system, formed through DNA, developed through our historical development by environmental factors. The dog isn’t aware of the being of the object which imposes a reaction, the dog is merely orienting himself to the environment he perceives in embodied pre conscious adjustments. The perception of the hot ground in Arizona, and the subsequent movement of the lizard in response, isn’t merely an empirical sensory intake and thus movement, neither is it the intellectual comprehension and directedness of the mind imposing direction and movement, it is the embodied perceptibility of his being which is seeking to reorient that being based on the conditions of the world in which he finds himself, the milieu which surrounds him.
I would say the orientation of the being of the organism to color and heat is intuited by its perceptive abilities prior to cognize, that being said, where anthropomorphized cognition and intellect must be suspended, such as in another organism such as a lizard, we cannot claim that it recognizes the being of such phenomena as such. We only claim the being of the object being perceived in consciousnesses as being a possibility due to our own recognition of our being, I think it would be fallacious to attribute the same power, to the same degree, to other beings – but this also holds true to members of the same species.
That being said, from our perspective, using our language, we can say that the organism does intuit heat and color, that they recognize the fluctuation, variance, and thus orient themselves accordingly, but this content is never made explicit to itself in a way which humans are capable of doing so.
So the organism does have a comprehension of the color and heat of the sand which it darts across, and thus is impelled to action through movement, but that comprehension which we say is the comprehension of the being of externalities, isn’t the same comprehension which we are used to. Our comprehension is mediated and filtered through our perceptive abilities, and the mode of comprehension which is enacted upon by the lizard isn’t making the content of his environment explicit, or attributing it to the being of externalities, he is merely reorienting in much the same way we do with a hot stove, or when someone walks into the room.
Every being, in relationship to any other being which enters into our perceptual or even conceptual horizon, modifies the being which is present in response to its recognition (not conscious recognition, merely perceptive.) The manner in which we do so, the characteristics of such modes of being, how phenomena influence us, and how we come to perceive, comprehend, and are modified by such phenomena, is the role of the phenomenologist to attempt to uncover.
The manner in which organisms which are farther away from us do so, i.e. not Dasien, becomes less clear and more difficult their degree of removal of sameness they are from us, as we all know, even denoting our own fundamental characteristics in regards to any given phenomena, noema, and the underlying noesis, is difficult enough.
What stands, regardless of the being which is in question, is that if it is life, it has a set of values, instantiated at birth towards certain aims. These aims, whether conscious, unconscious, or merely perceptual and reactionary, inform the being of the organism in question as to how to orient itself in life. Whether to produce locomotion, cognition, action, or inaction. This evaluation of our environment, our modification in response to the gulf between ourselves and the environment, urges us in directions, towards objects of intentionality. This all is presupposed by a significance, a meaning, an evaluation, which, if uncovered, can provide insight into why we do the things we do. This system isn’t merely bottom-up, but can be effected significantly in a top-down manner as well, which is where the absurdist or existentialist conceptions come in play. As long as our subjective experience matters to us, we ought to pursue that which we value, re-examine our value system, and direct ourselves towards actualization of that content – that is – if we want a meaningful life, if we want to have a positive psychological experience. While none of this matters sub species aeternitus, from the universes perspective, or from any perspective outside our own, the fact remains that it matters to us, and that is more than enough to pursue what we value.
The past informs the being which you currently find yourself as embodying, it creates potentialities which in their actualization inform the modification of your ascertained perceptual evaluation system, the current state of which, you find yourself inhabiting in the present. The present moments content contains underneath its subjective manifestation the state of being which you find yourself in now, both of which, the content and the underlying mode, is effectively modified by what has happened inside your historical development. The structure that comprises the evaluation, judgment, and filtration of possible experiential neomatic content is modified by what has happened to us, what we have experienced, patterns recognized, habits formed, and optimality accounted for, thus, the past matters insofar as it is the necessary precondition to our present experience, and is inextricably connected to the present and the future.
As for the pasts objective existence, we can start with the indubitable subjective claim that our present moment is appearing to exist for us, and while this holds for us subjectively in regards to the present, the past holds the same connotation. While we always are fallible as to our recollection of the past, our perception and subsequent conscious experience of the present, and our projection of likely or desired futures, we can state with a high degree of certainty that at the very least what is appearing in our conscious experience, whether it be memory, sensory experience, psychological formations, or projection and imagination, are all appearing to happen. This appearance of existence is a certainty to us, whether or not it actually coincides with reality, whether or not it is an illusion, or an inaccurate description based upon human limitations of cognitive capturing of phenomena, is a question of probability, and never of certainty, whether it be of the past, or otherwise. We do not exist in indubitable certainty in the Cartesian conception of being unable to doubt our doubt, or “I think, therefore I am” but rather, thinking and its psychological correlates are appearing to exist.
Insofar as our present moment subjective experience matters to us, which, we can agree does, as long as we value a pleasurable, satisfying, meaningful experience of life, the past has meaning to us. This meaning isn’t relevant to a being that isn’t us, and we can’t extrapolate it to a universal purpose without an air of falsifiable contention, but what we can say, is that insofar as we are life, insofar as we have a value system and better or worse experiences, that the past which informs these experiences is meaningful in its modification and actual effects in mediating our conscious content and psychological state, to us, and for us.
In regards to the situation in which an individual appears to encounter misfortune at every turn, we don’t have enough context to accurately specify the moral worth of his character in its totality, nor in any specific case. Is the misfortune in his life to be attributed to a lack of awareness, an un optimized belief or value system, or the result of ignorance? In any of these cases the individual could’ve made adjustments to provide the grounds for better results, to a degree, depending on the more detailed context of the situations in which misfortune manifests itself.
Anytime someone finds themselves in a situation where it seems the world is crumbling around them, they should make damn sure it isn’t crumbling due to any fault of their own, because it often is. An exhaustive introspective reflective analysis is necessary to rule out any character deficiency, or methods which could produce more beneficial results. Oftentimes it is the lack of fulfilling of potential that can account for the misfortune which appears to mark our lives, and it is in the course correction that we alleviate our lives. If lack of awareness, or immorality, is found to be the root from which travesty springs forth, it is in the moral shame acquired in contemplating our inadequacy, transferred into moral dread of repetition, that naturally allows us to habituate ourselves to better handle problems of a similar domain in the future. This habitual course correction in terms of the punishments of conscience goes unconscious often, but it can be made explicit, through a mindful analysis, and thus be consciously reiterated to provide the means for a better navigation of novel problems.
In the alternative case, if the individual truly isn’t culpable, and they conclude “well I just won’t do anything since anything I do has a net negative influence on the world”, then they are surely naive, in that this type of claim is missing the significance of opportunity cost, in that the mere recession from the world is itself an action that implies the giving up of responsibilities and duties. The retreat from action implies the negative moral connotation of the opportunity cost of doing so, in so far as an individual has personal responsibilities that effect other people, whether it be in familial responsibility, or societal, and just in general in his duty to leave the world a better place than he found it. In relinquishing responsibility and duty, in retiring from the world, you are simultaneously resolving to relinquish the potentiality of doing good, being virtuous, affecting others and providing something beneficial and useful to your fellow man, to your family, to your general circle of influence.
No matter how much misfortune may appear to be manifesting from one’s actions, if it isn’t one’s fault, conclusively, then the diligent striving forward should be the response. Everyone faces misfortune, and it takes experience and practical wisdom to learn how to navigate it. How do we make peace with a life marked by misfortune, how do we best work to solve the set of all problems, and in doing so, make life worth living? This is a perennial question, how do we navigate the misfortune and suffering of existence? It would be quite a lengthy job for me to attempt to articulate an answer to this, but honestly, I think it would be in everyone’s best interest to attempt to articulate an answer to these questions themselves. To anyone who values the truth, who is seeking for ways to counter the malevolence and suffering inherent in the world, who wants a better life, a more moral life, the degree to which we can cope with such existential ambitions is in direct relation to how we are able to meaningfully provide an answer to these questions in regards to the wisest way to organize one’s life.
All in all, regardless of the content of one’s experience, and the apparent misfortune that marks it, I believe we should strive on diligently to fulfill the potential we all contain. Things only have “meaning” or “value” in the effect they have to sentient beings to life, naturally we value things based on our orientation to them, which we do through our inherent perceptual system, that is, preconceptual attention through the perceptive body, and we act out these values and meaning in every moment, whether were cognizant or not. It is due to the ability to have experience, that this meaning or value, the time we spend, the things we do, have moral significance. The actions we take can affect our and other sentient life’s experience, and due to that potential of affecting experience, for better or worse, we develop morality.
What drives men to pursue philanthropy, men like Orwell, or Solzhenitsyn, or Viktor Frankl to expose the world’s travesties, to put human suffering on display and advise us on how to overcome it? Great men such as these were successfully able to utilize their talents and experiences to bring something meaningful into existence, each in their own way. Here we will explore their stories, and the archetypal structure which they all embodied, so we too can learn from great men, and attempt to embody the spirit of leaving humanity in a better place than we found it.
George Orwell, being of lower middle class upbringing, was employed as a young man in the British Police force, serving in colonial India in the 1920s. He saw the injustice caused by foreign dominion over people who didn’t desire their presence. Out of guilt, and repentance for the injustice he saw through becoming part of such a system, he endeavored to pursue a course of correction for the sins of his Being. He voluntarily undertook the challenge of subjugating himself to the lowest working class, emerged himself in their culture, studied their misfortune and the content of their lives. Being himself an intelligent writer, he sought to expose the many problems of the working class, to bring to the light of day their suffering, and their tragedies, the terrible working conditions, the housing crisis, the food and economic poverty. He published The Road to Wigan Pier, not only revealing to the upper classes the plight of the lower class, but offering criticism and advice to the Socialist party in how they should change their ways to better unite to face the difficulties of the suffering of the less fortunate.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian soldier during the beginning of WW2. In a letter to a friend, he criticized Russia’s disorganization at the time of German redaction of a peace agreement between the two countries, and subsequent attack on Russia. Russia’s unpreparedness was obvious, and he spoke to this point in his letter. The apprehension of this letter led to his arrest and imprisonment within the Russian prison camp system, which was unjustly imprisoning and putting to work millions of its own members for any perceived criticism or rebellion against the Russian government, which, at this point was a perverted Marxist system, stimulated with totalitarianism. During his time in the Russian camps, he documented the terrible experience he underwent, and the stories he collected along the way. He wrote to the torture, malnourishment, excessive prolongation, the freezing climate, and the altogether hellish conditions within which some 40-60 million Russians died in. Once the Americans freed him from his final camp, he exposed the camps conditions, and what the government was propagating in his novel The Gulag Archipelago. He published this work first under an alias, as the continued totalitarian nature of the government would have condemned him once again had they uncovered his identity. He exposed the hidden Russian gulag system to western Europe and the rest of the world, for what it truly was, as the rest of the world was wholly ignorant of the details of what had happened there. In addition to such acts of bravery in the face of evil, he remarked as to what enabled himself and the prisoners to strive forward in the face of such calamities, the pursuance of meaning. Individual responsibility and the strength of the human will, he offered, in short, the antidote to chaos and suffering.
Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychologist in Germany at the start of WW2, and was subsequently imprisoned at a variety of their prison labor camps, one of which was Auschwitz. He too, like Solzhenitsyn, wrote to the tragedy and cruelty of the oppressive governing state, and the affect it had on demoralizing and killing millions within its own borders. During his stay in the prison camps, Victor used his psychological knowledge to alleviate the suffering of his fellow countrymen, to help bring them through some of the worst conditions involuntarily forced upon human beings. After the war, he released Man’s Search for Meaning, a novel exposing the system in its first half, and in the second half, outlining his system of logotherapy, of a truthful pursuance of meaning to counterbalance the malevolence and misfortune found in the world. By providing a psychological system of meaning to alleviate illness, sickness, and misfortune, Viktor Frankl not only gave an anecdotal explanation to the value of such pursuit, but provided the means by which one can implement a similar strategy to one’s own life to alleviate suffering and provide wellbeing.
In all three cases, these great men encountered malevolence, and tragedy, discovered a way to overcome it, and using the powers they contained, brought back something valuable to the people. This was their way of pursuing meaning in the world, and the amount of virtue they displayed in doing so, makes them all heroes in their own right. They went through hell, discovered how to survive, made it back to Earth, and revealed the optimal pathway through the shadow of death.
Those that carry the biggest burden, who take the most responsibility, are the ones we still talk about, are the ones which have provided mankind with the greatest boon. As Jesus Christ carried the biggest responsibility (archetypally / metaphorically), that of suffering for the sins of all mankind, we thus still revel in his virtue, and his story is known by all. Regardless of the supernatural claims, the archetypal nature of his story is that which inspires the great men of history, and whether they know it or not, his story lives on in the actions of the philanthropist, in the words of the philosopher, in the lives of the great men of history. It is to him who takes the most responsibility, who carries his cross for the sake of repaying the debt he owes to the world, and by doing so, saves others, who finds the highest purpose, and to him we owe a debt of gratitude for the current state of the world we find ourselves in. We think the world we find ourselves in is free, and it is free, to a degree, more so now than it ever has been, but it was forged to be so at a high cost, the cost of error, of miscalculation, of injustice, of evil, of malevolence and inhumanity, and the rebellion against such forces, through the suffering, the deaths, the struggle and the perseverance of millions before our time. The cost was paid in effort, time, suffering, poverty, war and blood far before our time. It is the result of thousands of years of sacrifice, and to call this freedom free is to be naive to those people over millions who have laid down their lives in pursuit of a greater future. Sacrifice is a bargain with the future, it is the payment of the present, for a result in the future. This negotiation was carried out by our forefathers and generations past who fought for rights, for knowledge, for truth, for peace, for freedom, and their fight costed millions their lives, many their physical and psychological wellbeing, many endured great sufferings in the negation of injustice, so that now, we can see the fruits of their bargain.
We yield the fruit of that future, and bear the burden of honoring those sacrifices by pursuing what is meaningful in our lives. We hold the responsibility of providing a better future for our children and generations to come, we owe it to them, as we are in debt to those who come before us, to leave the world a better place than we found it. We ought to make a similar sacrifice, a similar negotiation with existence, so that we can provide the ground for a better future for those who come after us, just as we were afforded the luxury of the world we find ourselves in today (in comparison to how things were for those who came before us). It is great men like Orwell who provided the brave counter narrative that spurred the legislative aid that brought millions out of poverty. Orwell went to the slums of Wigan, and Sheffield, went to the coal mines and was able to expose the conditions of millions who lived in an altogether horrendous lower class, in an altogether different world than that of the bourgeois and upper class. It was through his elicit stories that an awareness of the profound suffering was detailed, and provisions could be made for their alleviation. It was his voluntary sacrifice of time and wellbeing, to dive to the depths of humanity, that led to him to be able to bring to civilization the stories of the underworld, so collectively, we could solve the problems which we didn’t know existed. Since the problems of the poverty of the lower class were brought into the spotlight in the early thirties, much effort has been done to alleviate the conditions of the poor and working classes, so now, their baseline, the average member of the lower class, is a king in comparison to those who lived just 70 years before. The change, the improvement, didn’t come for free, it came at the sacrifice of many people, in the face of adversity, it took courage and it took people navigating their lives towards a cause that superseded their existence, it took sacrifice of the present for the gain of the future.
It is in the pursuit of meaning, of doing something that has implications beyond ourselves, that we prove to be worthy of the lives we should be grateful for having, and it is in this pursuit that united men such as Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, and Frankl. They all saw the potential they contained to do more than they had to, to do something good, and right, and it was never easy. It is in this adoption of responsibility and in the creation of something valuable that we repay the debt with which we are charged. We all have different abilities, different potential, different manifestations of the divine, yet the objective potential for pursuing a higher value, is something inherent in all of us. As Jesus is the archetypal son, God is the father, the Holy Spirit is in each of us, the potential to align ourselves with the greater good, a higher ideal, lies within every man and woman’s very Being. Jesus was the greatest articulation of what the manifestation of God himself should embody at the time, and in being the greatest manifestation of the highest good he was charged the highest responsibility, and the highest suffering, that of taking up his cross, taking the suffering of the world upon his shoulders, and paying the ultimate price for the sin of mankind. As God is the highest representational symbol of “the highest ideal”, Jesus the highest manifestation of that ideal, and us, being intricately interwoven with the potential of alignment with that ideal through the holy spirit, we too hold the potentiality of manifesting it, each in a different form, in a way conducive to our situation and competencies.
Seek Truth 