Tag: Psychology

First Live, then Philosophize

On By Chris Shuttleworth1 Comment

Embodied and Psychological Engagement with the World

Originally Written: Dec 8th 2020

All experience is found in our Being’s manifestation within the present moment, in the specific actualization stemming from the general overarching potentiality. In phenomenologically analyzing the expression of the totality of our Being as it actualizes itself in the present moment, we discover differentiable modes of being with specific characteristics. We can uncover concrete categories of existence that we designate as modes of being(s) by analyzing reflexively the realm of subjective experience and our orientation to our environment. These modes of being include phenomena such as sensation, perception, conscious awareness, thought, memory, sensory-motor activity, being-with-others, beings-toward-something in the environment, and in general the different manners in which we are modified given the innumerable factors that influence us. Everything that affects us in the moment, whether its developed or present, modifies our mode of being in a manner that is reflexive of the totality of our being’s conditional nature as it is so conditioned by the phenomena in the realm of content able to be experienced.

Certain modes of being stem from our activity acting in the world, in the manner we respond to our immediate environment, whether it’s the general modification of us by immediate phenomena such as objects, time, or others, or if it’s an external manifestation of our conditioned Being in its totality. The manner we interact with the world, experience the world, orientate ourselves within our environment, and spontaneously react to the content of the moment can be classified as a meta mode of being which contains activity and minor modes of being within it. The totality of our psychic state, as represented conceptually as our Being, insofar as it is affected genetically, environmentally, developmentally, and modified by its orientation within space and time, contains the potentiality of states and actions that we can actualize, whether from the meta mode of being embodily engaged with the world, or meta mode of being psychologically engaged with the world.

From the meta mode of being embodily engaged with the world, we are living as such, we are acting in accordance with our developed mode of being in a manner that is not cognitively interacting with the world. Immediate reciprocity, instinct, action or speech prior to conscious awareness, such as in free-flowing playing, dancing, talking, working, etcetera, all are momentary actions and modes of being. These momentary actions are absent explicit subjective awareness and conscious direction, to these minor modes of being, we group them under the meta-head of embodied engagement with the world.

Our embodied engagement with the world is characterized by the absence, or negative existence, of subjectively experienced internal content – which is often in the form of dialogue and conceptualization. The less such experience is explicitly recognized by ourselves, the more we are engaged with our immediate environment and living out our developed orientation towards the world. The set of modes of being that are unconsciously directed towards the immediate environment, whether it be that mode towards which objects are encountered as present at hand or ready to hand, a mode which has developed schematically through habitual tendencies, or that mode which produces spontaneous orientations of our bodies in response to the perceived environment and the content of the present moment, we will designate as characteristic of the meta mode of being embodily engaged in the world. This is differentiated from the mindful recognition of mental experience found in active thought, self-realization, and the awareness of the content of the present moment which can be experienced as being known to us in its most common form: conceptual representation. Conceptual representation is a form of abstract symbolic schema from which phenomena is classified and able to be delineated, in its manifestation within our experience we see one form of psychological engagement with the world.

This embodied engagement with the world we find in those manifestations of our being that are marked by accomodatory action in regards to an assimilated schema that is absent of the realization of subjective experience. These actions are lived through without consciously being considered. The subjective realization of our potentialities, the conceptual representation in the form of thought, the anticipation of the future, retrospective memory of the past, and the awareness of the present, break this mode of Being embodily engaged with the world. The spontaneous, instinctual, and developed reaction to the moment, is contributed to by every factor which enters our realm of influence.  All factors considered, the mode of embodied engagement is absent of abstract thought, and absent of a conscious awareness of the present moment. This categorization of a set of modes of being has its utility, and its drawbacks, in reference to psychological wellbeing.

Our psychological engagement with the world is in the subjectively experienced explicitness of our Being manifesting itself in accordance with the temporal moment we find ourselves in. As subjective experience is part of “our world”, it is in its experiencing, and dealing with such experience, that we attach to it as an “engagement with the world”. In the same manner that we develop an orientation towards embodily enacting pragmatic schemas that develop according to novel circumstances (Genetic Epistemology) in our embodied engagement with the world, we likewise develop our psychic realm in its manifesting content, and the manner in which we experience it, through the same assimilatory and accommodating process of dialectical development. As we experience more, and find the utility in different actions, movements, and symbolic representations used to order the chaos of existence, we develop mental patterns and reactive tendencies that are in alignment with a “successful” orientation towards the problem of our own Being – its explicitness and the implications of it being a problem for us.

The benefits of mindfulness and present moment awareness include establishing a knowledge of our mental experience and its characteristics, developing concentration and providing a training of the mind towards diminishing of unwholesome mental states and promoting wholesome mental states (Benefits of Mindfulness). Reflective analysis of our memories and a pointed directional thought towards anticipating and planning for the future provide a function of promoting learning and reorientation, allowing corrections for past sub optimality in navigation, promoting past success, and instantiating the lessons and developed goal fulfillment strategies which serve us to properly move forward in the world (actualization of our values and the subjective meaningfulness attached to such pursuits). This separation from an embodied engagement in the world is itself found in the world, produced by causal connectivity in its arising within the world, in reference to our Being-in-the-world, and informs our continued existence in the world as a causal precursor to further manifestations of our Being.

The engagement with the world absent of this explicit psychological engagement, which is our Being-in-the-world without the explicit recognition of it as such, enables us to embody the developed Being which is free of subjectively intuiting it as such. Taking objects up as tools as ready to hand, social situations, creating, building, working in general, become the object of engagement rather than the awareness of the experience of them as found in psychological engagement. This type of engagement with the world enables us to be unhindered temporally by mental deliberation and consideration, to act spontaneously without the problem of our Being interrupting the flow of life’s processes. This experience gained through embodied action provides developmental data that informs psychological engagement with the world, it acts as the basis of its interpretation of ourselves and the outside world. Without embodied existence, without our being-in-the-world, and the experience gleamed there, there would be no data to instantiate a psychological engagement that can characterize an optimal navigation of reality and our place in the world. Thus the literal interpretation of the old aphorism attributed to Aristotle “First live, then philosophize.”

Philosophy itself requires cognition that arises from the material substratum coupled with experiential “life” development in a certain manner in the form of being-in-the-world. Our genetic code instantiates a sensory-perceptive system (Merleau-Ponty), which forms sensory-motor accommodations that works to form schemas to assimilate experience in a pragmatic manner (Genetic Epistemology). From these systems we develop a manner of being-in-the-world that enables us to act and be that is sufficiently capable of operating in our environment. Everything in our immediate environment from which we are perceptively oriented towards, all introjected stimuli, has significance and meaning to us insofar as it modifies our Being. Once mental development reaches the point of symbolic representation, and then linguistic capability, and eventually abstract thought, we are able to conceptualize reality in a manner that makes sense to us. This representation of reality constitutes the formation of how we articulate an explicit philosophical belief and value system, and thus the capability of philosophizing emerges. When we are able to articulate subjective experience, and the construction of symbolic representation of different aspects of reality which occurs within it, we gain the capability of sharing information with other Beings who are able to deconstruct the linguistic symbolism and deduce relational meaning behind them. This knowledge is modified by our developed perspective and articulation of it, and constitutes the potentiality of philosophizing, prior to any logical, scientific validation. Embodied cognition is acted on by extended cognition of our environment and we have the potentiality of psychologically engaging with the content of consciousness within the present moment. This momentary subjective experience that is characterized by a psychological engagement with the world enables a subsequent conceptualization of the content located within itself, and this produces philosophy and sharable knowledge, as we know it today.

Due to the nature of such development we need to experience more of life itself in order to get a clearer philosophical picture. We must embodily engage with the world, psychologically engage with the world, then step back and articulate the content located within (by psychological engagement with the abstract representation of both modes in the form of language). This enables the production of philosophy. The degree of pragmatic utility, objective truth, and logical cohesion of one’s worldview, one’s manner of living – in short – one’s philosophical position, depends on one’s acquired knowledge and the wisdom in applying it. The more experience, the more data, the more knowledge, the higher intelligence and time in both experiencing life, and psychologically engaging with this endeavor of “philosophy”, like any endeavor, tends to constitute the universal categories of value that determine the success of it. Aristotle’s famous quote points to the wisdom in experiencing a range of life’s potentialities first, before psychologically analyzing them, and philosophically attempting to represent reality from the data. Without adequate experience, the philosophical interpretation is merely naïve and not grounded in reality. It takes living life itself, in embodied engagement with the world and the environment, in the situations, encounters, and experiences found there, to take place in order for us to make any headway in conceptualizing characteristics of reality. In looking to develop a moral code, and organizing a value system that is consciously articulable, we ought to have experiential data, and acquired knowledge, the more of which we can utilize to better inform our conclusions. Only once we contain adequate experience can philosophy be utilized towards the improvement of our lives.

In the admonition to first live, then philosophize, we are simultaneously warned against the opposite, which is to philosophize first, then live. This puts the cart before the horse, and as the existentialists conclude, existence precedes essence. Unlike Sartre who claims the implications of freedom in this statement, we find that in a deterministic development, our existence is still primary, phenomenologically, to the characteristics which we develop and attribute to it. We must be in order to become. While this becoming is understandable in causal terms, the production of the Being which we find ourselves manifesting today constitutes the essence of our existence as it has been modified by every experience and introjected perceptive content of our embodied Being. In striving to become the person we want to be, and in pursuing what we have developed as valuing, we ought to not merely think about the manner in which we do so, not merely conceptualize an optimal pathway, nor contemplate the nature of existence and reality, but we must simultaneously employ these conscious schematic rewirings through living as such, in our engagements with the world. It is through trial and error, experience and subsequent knowledge, prudence, differentiation, judgment, and post-acquisition of knowledge, that we become better informed to philosophizing, in any of its domains that we seek to do so. Whether its morality, metaphysics, politics, or philosophy of life, the pragmatic instantiation of philosophical models, the “taking up” of our positions and living them is essential to collecting the data that we can discern as being better or worse, good and bad, having more or less pragmatic utility. While pragmatic utility isn’t the only metric used to judge our behavior and beliefs, the objectivity of a claim can also be the standard used, but the value that objectivity in itself has for us is always mediated by the pragmatic nature it has of fulfilling the value of “objective truth”. Any way you slice it, the pragmatic truth is what matters to us.

The correct development of psychological engagement with the world provides the ability to consciously direct our being towards better orienting and experiencing the world, while embodied engagement lives out the conclusions, allows us to be in the world in a manner that isn’t scrutinizing every moment, and provides the necessary data for further analysis. The two systems develop cyberneticaly, and each domains success and pragmatic utility towards actualizing our goals and a life marked by subjective fulfillment is informed by the discoveries of the other.

Our developed value systems directionality based on meaningful pursuits are manifest actively in both forms of engagement with the world, and the ability to virtuously pursue what matters to us is only possible due to them both being employed in our lives. While the causal precursor to such engagements may be uncovered, represented, defined, organized, and represented symbolically in our psyche, it is lived out and expressed both in our psychological engagement with the world in every moment of subjective experience, as well as in every action taken in embodied engagement with the world. The significance and meaningful fulfillment of our values takes place only through authentic “care” or behavior predicated on the significance of content actuated in engagement with the world. Psychological engagement provides us with the potential of internal orientation necessary for proceeding with life in an optimal manner, and the embodied engagement with the world absent of explicit psychological engagement lives out our intuitions, beliefs, values, and conclusions.

We can discern the optimality of our system, and measure the appropriate balance between our usage of the two systems, only through psychological engagement, that is, in its ability to phenomenologically analyze past subjective experience that is the feedback to our Being-in-the-world. While this subjective feedback itself is the production of both types of engagement, it is itself reflexively analyzed within the present moment as a psychological engagement directed towards ourselves – upon the metric of these two meta modes of being. When we find negative subjective experiences stemming from a lack of proper orientation, our conscience forewarns us through negative conscious states such as anxiety, uncomfortableness, fear, regret, shame, or dread. In order to alleviate these unpleasurable modes of being, we ought to analyze the causal nature of those situations. We hold them in their proper place as isolated instances against the mode of being which acted them out, the perspective and mindset, actions and speech that lead to their arising. In most cases a minor mode of being that is running off an inadequate assimilatory schema is to blame, but sometimes the meta mode of Being itself is the culprit. If it is found that we were over analyzing a low value occurrence that produced negative subjective experience, we can look to if we ought to have been psychologically engaged at all, and if spontaneous embodily acting would have been preferred. If we are in an intellectual situation, whether its schoolwork, a research project, a critical thinking assignment for work, or a personal ambition to optimize our conception of reality, we cannot adequately do so merely by embodily being in the world, our sensory-motor system cannot alone solve the problem. Often times we find ourselves acting spontaneously in the moment and responding in a way that negative impacts those we value, or represents a character trait we don’t desire to have. We often have to be mindful of our actions and speech to guard against trespasses, especially once we’ve gone wrong in similar situations beforehand. In a balanced psyche, the constant recalibrating and transcendence of knowledge which takes place applies the dialectical movement of improved prudence in directing differing meta modes of being from which minor modes can spring from to adequately navigate our environment. In these situations, we can learn from the subjective experience and phenomenologically uncover the root cause of their occurrence. In learning the causal natures, applying wisdom to developing an optimal pathway to recalibrate our assimilated schema (conscious accommodation) we can train ourselves to modify our behavior in the subsequent occurrence of the situation.

Overindulgence in embodied engagement with the world has negative repercussions, both on an individual level, and a societal level. We all reach a point in conscious development where we have the potential to be aversive to our own nature, our own subjective experience, and this aversion leads to overindulgence in modes of being in the world that stem from the meta mode of embodied engagement. For many, when our own Being becomes such a problem that we can’t cope with ourselves, we attempt to distract ourselves from our very existence. This aversion can manifest itself in many different forms, and its characteristics can be identified retrospectively and interpersonally. It is broadly characterized by a constant directionality towards embodied engagement with the world, and a reluctance to engage in psychological engagement. This leads to a life of constant action, busyness, and external concentration, and is marked by an absence of pointed explicit awareness of internal dialogue, contemplation, and mindful subjective awareness. For many, this threshold of “perceived” inability to cope with subjective psychological life is crossed at some point in life, but for those of us who wish to deal with life on its own terms, and overcome psychological ailments, we must confront headfirst the problem inherent within our own Being, its very existence, and its developed essence.

For those that develop this inclination to engagement with the world, and sacrifice psychological engagement for the perceived benefit of its exclusion, spontaneity is the main indicator (Spontaneity and Conscious Direction). Immediate response to any stimuli, interaction, and situational encounters in life is responded by the assimilated schema without consciously directed contemplation, awareness, or accomodatory processes. Where accommodation still exists in response to novel situations, the process is solely unconscious if one’s life is predominantly oriented by the embodied engagement meta mode of Being. Psychological traits such as extroversion, openness to experience, and agreeableness become modified toward the higher end of the spectrum, as their manifestations provide the means to the ends of avoidance of psychological engagement, and promote embodied engagement with the world. Neuroticism in the forms of stress, anxiety, and unwholesome reaction to emotions, is also reduced. While their causal precursors may be the same, their experiencing consciously leads to less recognition and thus less influence over the individual’s life. This means someone who is actively engaging with the world is more than appearing to handle emotions better, they actually are, based on their reduced ability to subjectively experience, feel, and identify emotions as such. The psychological trait of conscientiousness is always reduced, as structured and orderly living requires planning, analyses, and mindful contemplation of activities. This is where we see the biggest detriment to the individual’s life, as conscientiousness plays the second most influential role in one’s “success”. A reduction in conscientiousness leads to less pursuance of meaningful activity, less accomplishment in work, less stability in home, business, and relationships. While someone who is characterized in such a manner may have an improved social position and reduced neuroticism, their ability to succeed at progressing in a skill, career, or other meaningful pursuits have a higher risk of potentially being hindered.

So long as we are in a social setting, or engaged in a physical task, activity, or occupation we can more readily avoid the explicit realization of our own nature. Embodied game playing, spontaneous speech, undiscerning decision making, and a lack of ability to judge people and life altering choices to be in alignment with one’s values are serious potential repercussions of aversion to psychological engagement. The rational faculty itself isn’t suspended, as it is embodied, but the critical thinking required in making long lasting decisions that affect us and those in our expanding circle of influence, necessarily requires causal chain analyses which becomes hindered. Spontaneity and the “whim of the moment”” take priority over delayed gratification with the view to long term meaningful solutions to life’s problems. In fact, in an absence of psychological engagement, life’s problems become subordinated to the problems of the moment, which, in many cases is the benefit of such an unbalanced psyche. The long term anticipatory problems that are inherent in our Being and manifest in psychological engagement are themselves a primary source of driving the individual away from psychological engagement. While the unpleasurable subjective experience is what drives some away from engaging with the inherent problems with our Being and consciously finding solutions, they simultaneously are the potential instigators of meaningful change and reorientation which is necessary to improve our lives.

Over indulgence in psychological engagement with the world also has its pitfalls, that hold the potentiality that can be equally detrimental to one’s wellbeing and life trajectory. Many in the modern era have become coerced to an overabundance of this meta mode of being, as its existential viability has become freer for expression, and it has become increasingly rewarded through social acceptance and the changing work environment. Despite this information, it still produced an unbalanced psyche, and holds a potential to leading to a variety of problems.  In finding pleasure in egocentricism, competence in one’s intellectual ability, and the reward systems craving for exploration of the unknown, the frontiers of the mind may become so captivating to cause one to be aversive to our embodied Being-in-the-world. The obvious repercussions of an unhealthy engagement with psychological content is that many of life’s tasks go undone. Where the predominantly embodied engager can lack stability through spontaneity and lack of structure, the predominantly psychologically engaged person can neglect socially accepted behavior as their dependence on external validation is reduced, which can likewise cause unstable living conditions. One pitfall that may occur is that the egocentric person can come to only seeks their own competence and self-sustained validation, which can lead to the value of career, family, friends, diet, and bodily health to drop below the levels which promote a holistically integrated psyche and lifestyle. The socially accepted values can be reduced in this individual; job importance, interpersonal importance, and the significance of social relationships all can be hindered by a self-interest that doesn’t place sufficient value on these areas of significant importance to our lives. Being that we are social by nature, and our wellbeing is inextricably tied with our Being-towards-others, and the social dominance hierarchies we find ourselves in, we will suffer a psychological toll from overindulgence in this mode of being. Health and romantic relationship repercussions may also follow a similar pattern, the ability for the individual to authentically represent himself in interactions is hindered by a mindful awareness of every moment, causing an impairment to his ability to act or speak naturally, as the “optimal” content is contemplated rather than “lived” out in the world.

In the relentless drive to psychological awareness and intellectual activity, one may succeed to levels unparalleled in a given field of competency which requires dedication and sustained critical thinking to make headway. In the aversion to sociability, a dedicated and conscientious pursuit of career, skill, or field of knowledge, the predominantly psychological engager can find success through the lack of opportunity cost in pursuing distractions, whims of the moment, or spontaneous acts. The psychologically engaged individual experiences a psychological trait modification towards higher degree of conscientiousness, and with it neuroticism, as their ability to experience, feel, and recognize emotional disturbances is increased, and thus the affect negative mental states have on the individual is also increased. Contrary to the embodied engager – extroversion, openness to experience, and agreeableness all decrease.

The two meta modes of being we differentiated, that of embodied and psychological engagement, cyberneticaly inform each other in a well-integrated individual.  This cooperation creates a cohesive, pragmatically beneficial, system from which differentiable modes of being spring from to adequately navigate us in the world. From this place of optimal pragmatic utilization of either mode of engagement we find the appropriate mode manifesting itself in response to the appropriate situation. In certain social settings we are embodied and living out who we are authentically, in intellectual discussions we speak from a more nuanced, intentional, conscious psychological engagement mode. Depending on our type of work, the appropriate mode will be employed. In schematic planning, problem solving, interpersonal and business relationships, and where awareness of one’s own internal disposition would be helpful, psychological engagement would be employed. When physical action in coherence with a plan, or where momentary reaction and intuition is optimal, embodied engagement is instantiated. When our spontaneous action isn’t calibrated enough for the situation, when we still don’t have the appropriate assimilatory schema and are still working to accommodate ourselves to a novel situation, or relationship, such as when we are learning a new skill or working a new job, we ought to be more mindful than in areas where we are competent and have a working schema that has proven itself successful. When acting from a place of balance between the two we find ourselves adequately responding to situational encounters throughout the day.

When they are working cohesively, successfully, and adequately, we find both a positive subjective experience, and a positive external environment. We find aspects of a well-integrated and healthy psyche, such as a solid friend group, good family relations, successful occupation, stable living place, and meaningful and productive hobbies. Our ability to manage our environment is optimized and our ability to cope with novel situations which arise in it are satisfactory enough to move us along through life in the direction of our values. Our internal disposition is authentically represented in our embodiment, and we live out the values we consciously ascribe ourselves to. While perfection in this regard is an impossible task, the integrated psyche succeeds to the degree in which our Being is experientially, intellectually, and competently prepared for the world. When we act out what we believe, and we believe that what we act out is authentically a representation of our psychological conclusions, we find a peace that is marked by coherentness and non-contradiction, in short, where there can be cognitive dissonance in one’s beliefs, so too can there be dissonance between ones psychological and embodied engagement.

While either extreme holds both potential positive and negative repercussions for the individual, we also hold the potential to select the best of both worlds. In seeking to counteract an unbalanced psyche in either direction, and to optimize the situational response we embody or psychologically engage with, in developing a discrimination of situations and environments which call for either in their optimality, we can improve our lives substantially. By subjectively analyzing our experience, realizing where we have tipped the scales of balance, and where we have unwisely acted from a meta mode of being that isn’t conducive to our goals and values, we can correct, and dialectically improve both our knowledge of when and how to act, and simultaneously the manner in which we instantiate different modes of being to act in accordance with our values. By improving ourselves in such a manner, we improve our lives, open ourselves up for growth, and become more competent individuals for a wider range of experiences. Our orientation towards the world is always modified by the mode of being we enact to counter it, and the meta mode of being which dictates whether we are embodied or psychologically engaged plays a crucial role in determining our pragmatic success of operating as individuals. By an awareness of these two factors, their characteristics, and a dedicated reorientation towards balance and optimal living in accordance with our values, we can modify ourselves to differentiate the manner we deal with situations in life. By prudently discriminating the modes of being which coincide with different experiences, we are better equipped with improving moral action, relationships, psychological wellbeing, and careers. The optimization of our meta mode of being system and its appropriate allocation to environments, situations, people, and novel situations, we improve our potential for living successful, meaningful lives. By firstly, living, then philosophizing, we are able to experience life in an authentic Being-towards the world, and can subsequently improve the system through analysis. By philosophizing, and then living out our ideas, we can optimize our experience, and test out the efficacy of our critical thinking applied to pragmatic utility. If we can utilize our ability to engage with the world appropriately from both an embodied, and psychological meta mode of being, and can live out our developed philosophy, we create the arena for active development towards greater heights of wisdom, wellbeing, and successful pursuit and actualization of our values.

Nostalgia Over Past Modes of Being

On By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment
Originally Written: November 23rd

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.

Genetic Epistemology’s Implications

On By Chris Shuttleworth3 Comments
Originally Written: November 23rd 2020

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.

Philosophical Solutions to Psychologically Rooted Problems

On By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment
Originally Written: Oct 25th 2020

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.

Critique of Social Justice and Critical Theory

On By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment
Originally Written: August 31st 2020

Popularization of social justice in recent times has had profound effects upon the totality of culture and society across the world. Its intentions are pure, and it in itself is something to be championed. The problem is that many of these advocates for liberal change are focusing on both problems and solutions which seem to escape justification by a critical eye in the domain of “truly” representing our situation. Many ideas and methodologies are falling short of meaningful change, and pragmatic utility in the long term.

Here I wish to delineate and articulate explanations of several major categories in the movement towards social justice, and those areas of popular culture that are being advocated as effective that I happen to disagree with for philosophical reasons. I will attempt to critique the areas I believe deserve an honest exposure of their flaws, and how I believe they can be optimized or disregarded – in the name of pragmatic utility, morality, and “truth” in reflecting an optimal navigation of the political and social landscape going forward.

Liberalism in itself is the progressive change within a society towards novel manners of living, towards new rules, towards rectifying outdated regulations, and in optimizing the government – by proxy its people – by altering its customs, standards, and regulations to be in alignment with the “new” values of the people which deserve representation. While all of the critiqued content herein appears to be on the liberal side of the political spectrum, I am in no way degrading the necessity of the liberal party in its useful and beneficial role in progressing the government, pointing out conserved aspects of our social systems which no longer represent the beliefs of the people, and in the general process of “change”. Here I only critique those elements of change I believe to be not founded on rationality, philosophical rigor, and proper moral consideration. I want to look into why these disagreeable (to me) ideas are propagated, based on the personality types of many of their constituents, and why they come to the conclusions they do. In many cases that appear malevolent to a large portion of society, it is often merely due to ignorance in the “perpetrators”. I by no means wish to attribute ill-will on behalf of any advocate of these ideas, I merely wish to expand upon a more nuanced view of their tactics, their “problems, and their “solutions. The issues most disagreed upon are those that are simultaneously the most complex, and it is this complexity that necessitates ignorance – both in the expression and description of problems, is source, and solutions.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR PERSONALITY TYPE ANALYSIS

It seems to be a reoccurring trend that many people who identify and embody the modern social justice movement are of a certain personality type which favors an application of critical theory. Many of these individuals are of higher class upbringing and have experiences which are characterized by less externally derived suffering than what the average working class citizen undergoes. Given this societal position, they are quick to recognize the disparity, and posit solutions with perceived moral benefit to those “worse off”, those who experience more environmental suffering. Many of those who identify as social justice warriors that hail from a “higher class upbringing” received more parental attention and individual catering in their upbringing than those they wish to see alleviated from suffering based on social position, and they often have a substantial edge in terms of educational opportunity. This educating, attention, and external economic stability in relation to members of lower classes provides a unique perspective upon the modern social system and its flaws, and has both its ups and downs. The problem which is often neglected, is that they lack the experiential wisdom of someone who has actually been raised within the lower economic classes.

Ignorance of any individual to the experience of any other individual necessitates misunderstandings, especially in regards to the optimal solution for the others benefit. Extrapolated to group identity, and class solution, the complexity grows substantially, and the disparity between perceived optimal solutions and actual pragmatic solutions likewise grows. This makes the perception of those outside of the system which is claimed to need aide often lacking of the knowledge of the actual root of problems, and includes a deficiency in perspective in terms of what pragmatic benefit can actually be provided towards improvement. Good intentions often pave the way to hell, and those who attempt to pave the road for people with whom they have never walked, often pave that hell bent road unknowingly.

People who find themselves identifying with the modern SJW movement often aim at altruistic goals and attempt to better the lot of humankind, especially for the more historically oppressed groups. While almost everyone holds these goals and are in agreement that we ought to raise the tide for everyone, many of the loudest voices of the self-identified SJW group members advocate for methods of doing so which has become disagreeable to many, and there are several flaws in their appropriating of the philosophical method of critical theory. Many who receive the most societal infiltration are doing so through applying critical theory in their attempt to alleviate the suffering of those who are less fortunate than themselves, and they posit massive societal problems for certain groups of people, at the hands of other groups of people, and the media spreads the message of outrage and injustice across the nation. While these proclamations sometimes are rational, just, and morally justified, often times they fail in proper application of critical theory to identify problems without taking into consideration the opportunity benefit the cause of them produces.

These ideas are propagating shortsighted, narrowly defined, and altogether unscientifically grounded solutions to problems that themselves may or may not exist. Often times these critical theory derivations provide the wrong pragmatic solutions to problems rightly uncovered, and in more cases then not, the simplification does a great disservice to reality, and fails to recognize the complexity of situations.

Naivety seems to be the marker of the ideas most pervasively spread by some social justice warriors recently, and this naivety has costly repercussions, not only for society as a whole, but also for those exact groups which they are attempting at helping. While fighting for social justice isn’t intrinsically problematic, on the contrary, it is quite an admirable task, the newest popularizing of its tactics is marked by ignorance of the historicity of systems and institutions, as well as the benefits they accrue to us. It is one thing to fight for social justice and bring forth a progressing of the cultural milieu to be more inclusive, it is another thing to label a population, act, law, regulation, institution, or movement as supporting the oppression of disadvantaged populations when in effect the solutions commit more damage than utility.

Given the “privileged” lifestyle of some of the SJW type advocates, in comparison to the “oppressed” proletariat, they swing far left into liberal socialism to provide monetary relief to lift the tide of the impoverished, they extrapolate individual injustices to apply to the entire system; they publicly denounce the government, education system, police forces, and society at large for being guilty of the crimes of individuals. The group is taken as the unit of measurement, both for the activist’s self-image, and in the projected image of the group, characterizing its members by the worst in the group, and using that as a basis for rhetoric arguing towards either the destruction or reformation of the institution. This is a fallacy of category error, the group must not be mischaracterized by an individual and simultaneously optimized to discover and correct for individual problems. While individual problems must be addressed, and opportunities for their re-education, and growth to being a productive citizen ought to be provided, the generalizing of their actions across a group of people, and the application of restrictive measures across that group, is unjust to those individuals who do not partake in whatever injustice the individual members have proliferated. This can be seen in the recent cases of police brutality and the attempt to criminalize the entire group of police, or in the conversations about reparations being levied against all white individuals, for the crimes of individuals who no longer exist. The primary object of importance in any society, government, or institution is necessarily the individual, and it must be optimized as such. While the bottom up system must be our priority, we cannot, as many social justice advocates frequently – yet correctly – state, ignore the top down influence. Both systems are cybernetically influenced by the manifestation of each other in the present moment, constantly recalibrating and updating, much as consciousness and governments do.

In the area of good intentions, the SJW type are ahead of the pack, yet in terms of naivety and solutions, many of the loudest voices within this movement are lagging behind. The societal division caused by their either correct or incorrect awareness of injustice appears to be causing more harm to the nation than benefit, making us wonder, is abstaining from asking the question a wiser choice? Or is it merely the way in which the message is received producing the division and lack of cohesive unity which we require to adequately solve the problem? Is the effect on the social milieu worth all the claims of injustice, does every claim of social inequity ought to be taken seriously? Or are the systems which propagate such injustice already being optimized, and is there a better way to do it?

This is probably giving too much credit, for I’m assuming the issues in hand by the few justice warriors with legitimate criticisms applies to the totality of those under the heading, which is far from being true. While there is a spectrum of differentiation between every individual in any group, thus far I’ve been focused on those individuals in the group with specific claims, but, there is a much larger group of members within the self-appointed SJW identification tag that have claims that themselves appear to be of criticism for racism, sexism, injustice, and oppression, but are merely based on either wrong data, wrong interpretation of data, and wrong interpretation of the causality of data, such as we see in the wage gap between men and women. Any singular attribution of causality, especially in such complex issues, we can be sure of as being incorrect, as the factors which influence human behavior, over spans of time, are innumerable in scope, and their analysis can be taken on from a multitude of different perspectives, and explained through many frameworks.

CRITICAL THEORY

If applied properly, critical theory can reveal areas of improvement. If you take society as a whole, or any subgroup, whether it’s an institution, government, corporation, or even ideology, and set out with the task of looking for moral shortcomings, whether it be in power inconsistencies, oppression, racism, whatever, and find there to be something, you can take that finding and apply it outside of the critical examination, to apply to the consequences of changing the organization of the “group”. The problem is, if you find this disparity, contradiction, or oppression, yet fail to compare it to the benefit of the whole, or fail to accurately determine its underpinnings, or causal connections, that’s where you get into trouble by attempting to find a solution to a problem that isn’t itself a problem, or a problem that is outweighed by the “positive” sides of the “group”, yet failing to take those into consideration.

Critical theory applied to the aviation industry may find that the seats aren’t designed for overweight people, and that can be seen as oppressive to them. Should the airplane designers take this into consideration? An ideologically possessed person might say that the white male privilege in affording to have the time, trainers, diet, enables more of the “wealthy” or “oppressive” population to be skinny, thus influencing the design of the airplane. I would say there are a lot of partial truths here, but the airplane industry isn’t actually doing anything with negative intentions towards “overweight” people, it may just be economically more feasible, with the given supply and demand, to make airplane seats that way. It just happens to be an unfortunate consequence of capitalism. Can they decide to lose money to be more accommodating? Sure, capitalism allows it. Do I think they should? No, but that’s due to my own belief in the value of exercise and personal health to be incentive rather than allowing reservations for those who voluntarily decide not to. If you look at just the criticism, which is uncovered through critical theory, but don’t apply the correct reasoning, comparison to the benefits, or consideration of a long term value system, and instead come up with a solution that follows an incorrect conceptualization of the “problem” – there obviously will be negative effects.

While alleviating problems to the impoverished, underrepresented, less educated, and those with less opportunities always sounds good, the means by which critical theorists attempt to do so are often not beneficial, and don’t take into consideration the full complexity of the situation. Factors such as those who benefit from the institutions, the economic tide-raising, the trickle-down effect from those who benefit to those who appear not to benefit, all are neglected in examining a system only for its shortcomings. Potential reduction in wellbeing by governmental intervention in these cases can be applied to those on the receiving end as well, as many are apt to instinctively point out.

Racism as the sole cause of criminality in the black conviction rate, sexism as the sole cause of the wage gap, corruption as the sole cause for the 1% being wealthier than the 99%, are all single factor claims that we ought to reevaluate. Where these claims are backed by “good” intentions, they make the mistake of simplicity, generalization, and naivety, and the claims they have, as viewed by an audience who is less educated on the subject than necessary to accurately depict its causality, is swayed by their off base interpretations and attributions of rationale. A simplistic interpretation claiming to be the source of all troubles, has its mass appeal, for obvious reasons. This in turn affects the public milieu towards advocacy of the systemic issues based on causal terms which are obviously not the whole story, sometimes beneficial and crucial to the story, yet, many times, irrelevant to the perceived issue at hand, and even on occasion the issue at hand isn’t even an issue.

Racism in cops is part of the story of conviction rates of minorities, part of. The benefit of the rich in educational opportunities is real, but not unjust. Sexism doesn’t optimally account for the wage gap, but rather a difference in interest can better be attributed to a biological interpretation.

Critical theory is great, but must be applied wisely. Critical thinking, experience, and philosophical consistency in alignment with scientific data is the answer to correctly account for issues in society, political philosophy, cybernetics, and morality, all of which are necessary for optimal politicking. Every issue that faces the world in such a vastly interconnected society is extremely complex to grasp as the factors contributing, and their contributions, are difficult to discern and difficult to evaluate as to their weight in attribution to the outcome. The situation gets even more complicated in discerning an optimal solution, or a system’s alteration and optimizing, and we ought to all work together, in an interdisciplinary way, to find solutions and progress as a society, nation, and world.

The biggest issue with critical theory is it fails to see the useful and beneficial aspects of society, in short, it is in its essential nature to be ignorant of the totality of factors, contributions, and effects of a system. It loses sight of the broad and beneficial for the narrow and destructive. I get that its aimed at what is a problem for society, with an interest to rectify it, but in making that assessment you have to take into account the positive side as well, there’s an opportunity cost in focusing only on the negative and that which is able to be criticized, while it surely is important and valid. If you presuppose injustice or immorality in an institution, domain, or society at large, and have intentions of rectifying it, it appears you are doing something morally justified – and you’re likely to find some downside in every institution. The problem is with the presupposition and if it is improperly formulated the whole enterprise ends up with rational ends that follow from irrational premises. When this happens the solution no longer is beneficial, useful, or moral when taken out of the framework the critical theory is being applied to.

Critical theory promotes looking for problems with discrimination and power imbalance of all kinds, which may not be uncovered without scrutiny. If not done naively, and by someone overcome by ideological possession, it can be beneficial. A beneficial solution that follows from its findings is in direct relation to the person who wields it, just like firearms. It is merely a tool, that, since its conceptualization and elucidation has not been in alignment with its goals of reducing discrimination and injustice in society at large. That being said, it can be useful, and it has its place, the problem is with the incorrect application, and willingness to apply it where it doesn’t belong. Where there’s smoke there’s usually fire, and we call firefighters to help the situation, but it could be the case that it’s not smoke, nor is there a fire, it’s just a guy with a vape who isn’t getting cancer from his previous addiction to cigarettes, the firefighters time is wasted, resources are wasted, and the people who were so concerned with the smoke were worried, and worried everyone else around them based on a false assumption.                 

REDISTRIBUTION / DIVERSITY

A movement which harms the majority for the benefit of the minority in the short term, isn’t morally justified solely for doing so, even if historically it was necessary and justified in the long term benefit to the totality of society. In those areas where it has been a necessity, we were pragmatically justified in doing so, such as the detriment to the majority of landowners in the abolition of slavery, or the detriment to the power of most male’s government contribution to society with women’s rights. But to apply this maxim across the board, in modern society, is a fallibilistic tendency, the higher class in any hierarchy isn’t always wrong, they aren’t always culpable of injustice, and individual scenarios must be delineated from the totality of implication of this maxim. Imposing detrimental effects to those higher up any hierarchy for the benefit of those at the bottom is in no way universally applicable, especially where virtues such as competency, effort, and time spent in that hierarchy have been historical requisites to ascension. We find advocate groups promoting the idea of racial and gender representation in politics, colleges, and corporations, which previously have been afforded to those most qualified by competency. In areas such as aviation or the medical field ideas have been posited to the end of equality of outcome, imposing quotas upon the race or gender of the employee hired for the position. In areas of life and death, in areas of the most moral responsibility, we ought to want the most competent person for the job, whether that’s a surgeon, pilot, governor, or teacher, regardless of race and gender. The opportunity cost for the nation, the education system, and economy, all will be negative if these quotas succeed in opting to select for anything other than competency.

To claim moral justification solely upon the grounds of providing a benefit to the minority, such as proposed in many policies advocating for equality of outcome, is a problem that appears to be morally beneficial as those at the bottom have been purported as being “victims” or “oppressed” (which for some individuals is actually the case), but neglects many aspects of the society that hold value as well. We ought to be taking into account the wellbeing of the majority in addition to the minority, and the virtue which has previously been required for ascension. To shortcut the character traits of competence, of personal sacrifice, and educational development required for a place within a hierarchy, such as in the job market, in college acceptance, and in political power, is to shortcut what is most optimal to be developed to be effective within these systems. Since effectiveness is paramount to the education of young, for medical procedures, for governing of a nation, we ought to be more restrictive in explicitly selecting for competency than less. The question of heritage, skin color, or sexual orientation ought to have no place in these domains, given our current position of relative equality of opportunity in the barrier to competency within them.

The subjective experience of the “rich”, the “privileged”, and the “fortunate” still holds moral consideration, regardless of their place in the hierarchy in comparison to others. While minor sacrifices in the lifestyle of the upper class are expected for the benefit of the lower, and claimed as being morally justified, ought those individuals be disregarded in respect to their subjective experience being negatively modified “for the good of others”? Where is the social justice for the rich and privileged, for those who sacrifice, who dedicate time, effort, and subjective wellbeing for ascension? Are those who succeed by the sweat on their brow and bloodshed in persistence not to be taken into consideration? Ought they to be punished for their success through hard work and dedication? Are they merely the source to be utilized for the alleviation of those less accomplished, or do they too deserve social justice? To be successful and raise your children in a good environment isn’t a crime, in fact, it’s a gift not deserved, a grace of sorts, and to attribute that success and benefit to corruption, extortion, and enslavement of the masses is to fall into a conspiratorial mindset, that ought not be generalized across the entire class. While these means to the ends of upper class lifestyle do in fact exist, their prevalence and the generalizing of them to all successful families is off base by a long shot.

There ought to be a way to provide alleviation to the underprivileged, oppressed, and unfortunate, by means that is agreed upon by those who desire to sacrifice, give, and aide them. While not everyone has the same opportunity, and this ought to be rectified, those who do have relatively similar opportunity, and capitalize upon it in a way which is afforded to others yet not traversed, should not be punished for doing so, they ought to be championed, and their stories ought to be used as inspiration for others to rise in a similar manner. The common solution posited by many is merely to tax, regulate, and “redistribute” finances from these upper tier performers to be siphoned to the less accomplished. While there are groups that deserve a better opportunity, and have suffered misfortune, such as the disabled, abused, or victims of violence, it ought to be universally considered that their alleviation is on the hands of all of society (including their own), and not disproportionally to those who do not opt into their alleviation. Local communities that are voluntarily assented to ought to be means enough towards their aide, and improper, disproportionate, allocation of funds from involuntary philanthropists ought not be our go to solution. There is a limit to the degree at which we can siphon off resources from the fortunate to the unfortunate before we make those fortunate into an unfortunate position.

INTERSECTIONALITY

The complexity of group divisions in any intersectional analysis makes the distinction between classes along any domain difficult to delineate, and competency, effort, background, education, and other areas of which “privilege” can be attributed, are altogether innumerable in their relation to any individual. Correct identification of different groups from which to allocate funds for welfare programs therefore becomes next to impossible, as the factors which contribute to any individual’s intersectional analysis are extensive, and anyone is likely to fall into an “unprivileged” grouping along some metric of analysis, regardless of their other characteristics. There is more than merely the financial class that distinguishes the fortunate, we all fall upon a spectrum of benefit and detriment in our developed constitution.

At what point to do we distinguish someone as fortunate or otherwise? At what degree of racial profiling do we delegate someone to a class of “unprivileged”? Race, family situation, upbringing, environmental factors, are all as complex individually as are factors attributed to one’s financial situation. These things are in no way “black or white”, pun intended, or easy to define outside of the individual level. The inadequacy of definitions such as “richness”, “coloredness”, “privilege”, even in the domain of sexuality, are quite contentious and difficult to pin down. Where do we draw the line in any form of discriminating differences so as to classify different groups? What combination of groupings is to be selected for against others? Given the limitlessness of potential groupings based on any irrelevant factor, we find the correct defining and characterizing of classes of people to be wholly inaccurate in depicting anything of real substance. Intersectionality runs infinitely deep, and hasn’t been properly delineated with a formal definition, nor do I believe it ever can be. As is now hopefully commonly known, there are more differences within any racial grouping than between them. To make arbitrary labelled groups the emphasis of selection, to make the group identity the order of importance in a society necessitates the degradation of the individual, and doesn’t accurately represent any individual within that grouping. The level of the individual must be that which is taken into primary consideration, it is the only domain in which accuracy can in any beneficial manner be depicted.

The overlap or absence of qualifying factors which constitute per the intersectional analysis of what makes someone “unfortunate or unprivileged” hasn’t been adequately extrapolated upon, and at what point do we make class qualifiers important in the face of racial or gender classifications? The blurring of the lines between degrees of “misfortune” and “less privileged” are currently delegated upon social perception. Currently we are basing our perception of privilege upon mere appearance, in a perfect world many of these liberal idealists would be calculable by a “privilege” system according to individual characteristics. Being that this ability to calculate intersectional evaluability in terms of societal ability, and opportunity, is impossible, how can we possibly delegate laws, quotas, or societal movements based upon it?

OPTIMIZATION

To merely delegate the equality of classes or groups to governmental control, is to impose authoritarian control upon many who earned their position through embodied virtue. It isn’t merely upon those who are corrupt, and cheated their way into financial success, its purported across the board. Governmental solutions often stem from these higher financial brackets, which, while themselves in the minority, many individually are legally required to aide in ways that are contrary to their will. Those who vote towards higher taxes of the rich, who themselves fall into that bracket, ought to be the only contributing, as it is their voluntary will. To extrapolate the involuntary will of many who do not agree with the distribution method, or its end recipients, ought to only be required to use their funds as necessitated by the state or local governments in which they reside and have more of a say in effecting change, not for things they do not assent to. The democratic process ought to defend for injustice in this regard, but given the minority position of those in the higher ranks of hierarchies, they often are underrepresented in regards to their wellbeing. This is obviously quite controversial, and counter to the common narrative, as those at the top of the hierarchies often wield the most power, influence, and means to wellbeing. I am not negating this by any means, I merely am stating that in a democratic system that holds the potential to do what it was devised as doing, that is, being run for the people, it has the potential of authoritarian redistribution for the majority of the population at the expense of others. This isn’t controversial, and it often is beneficial in a utilitarian sense, I merely want it to be recognized at the same time that we must not shrink from consideration of those on the end from which we are taking. They are human beings from which our moral consideration holds ground, and their wellbeing, despite their position, is not negligible. In their negligence the system actually holds the potential of oppressing the rich and powerful, as paradoxical as that sounds.

In the master-slave dialectic the slave in the final analysis gains conscious development through independence that isn’t afforded to the master who is dependent upon the slave for his wellbeing, so ought the members in higher standing in any hierarchy be disregarded for the advancement of those at the bottom – when they provide the means for their actualization and ascension? In extreme times of war, or in past ages of racial and gender inequality in the eyes of the law, this surely was necessary. Now that the law is impartial, and the problem is merely cultural, group orientated, and class orientated, yet not hindered by the law, we ought to strive for individual decision making of the rich, rather than compulsion by the government. This means reducing the slide into further socializing the economy, and promoting a laisse faire economy. This doesn’t mean that a pool based socialist system can’t still run in parallel to pure capitalism, merely that it ought to be opt in, as insurance is. If people are given the decision to opt into socialist programs in regards to any domain of financial redistribution, they gain the benefit of potentially being aided, as well as providing aide that the system dictates to those in need – based on their own values. In this way, we can satisfy both ends of the financial political divide, maintain freedom and democracy, and provide support for those in need and wish to help, without validating the right to economic and personal freedom our nation is supposed to stand for.

Mere hand outs and governmental aide for those who are of less fortunate standing may actually increase their dependence rather than empower them towards a rise in any hierarchy for which they are interested in having the opportunity to ascend. The same goes for quotas based on race or gender. To regard any monetary aide as universally beneficial, is surely to miss a nuanced argument about its detriment. Is it better to give food to those who are hungry or to teach them how to provide for it themselves? Is it better to give a solution to one’s problems, or aide them in discovering the solution for themselves? Is it better to move someone up the hierarchy by your own hand, or to provide them with the opportunity and education that they can engage in to earn that spot themselves? In allowing people to fail, and having real life social and economic repercussions for doing so, there is a form of tough love that is eliminated by the safety net.

While a type of safety net that supplies basic needs for all citizens is beneficial, a safety net that allows people to abuse the system while just contributors work hard to make ends meets is surely an injustice to those who are working from the bottom of the economic system to better themselves. By crying outrage and attempting to burn the system down, many social justice advocates in the modern era blind themselves to the benefits the system has accrued to the majority of people, and rather than looking to spread those benefits to those who don’t have the opportunity, they seek to overcompensate those outside of the walled garden for their endured oppression, at the detriment of those within, which, is the majority of people.

MORALITY

Everyone deserves moral consideration, as we all have moral worth. In many schools of thought, all life has moral worth, or at least that which has a subjective experience that can be better or worse. Given that all humans, despite their race, sex, age, financial class, share this propensity for better or worse subjective experience, they all must be considered when we’re talking about systems which have implications that can alter this subjective experience. Therefore, the domain of inquiry which holds the greatest moral responsibility – politics – (as it has the most widespread effect amongst the greatest number of people) holds the greatest power to effect the subjective experience of people. The complexity of issues, and their moral consideration needs an extension. As we’ve included environment consideration, non-human species consideration, racial, sexual, and gender consideration, we’ve simultaneously been recently inclined to regard as morally less important those who have previously been afforded higher consideration.

The raising of tides within the standard of a class that in its entirety has been historically regarded as higher in the social hierarchy, such as that of straight white males, is now regarded by many to be hold less morally considered weight as an entire group. Individuals within this broad group hold the same variance as any other group, many individuals within it are impoverished, have been given unfortunate familial situations, and face the same challenges by the same systems that effect other intersectional groups. Mental capacity, competency, financial situation, opportunities afforded, are varied within any group, within any race, and to discriminate against an entire group based upon the historical position of some individuals with the same skin color, and to extrapolate that privilege and negative character resemblance across the group, is by definition racist. To characterize individuals upon the color of their skin, at their detriment, is social injustice, and needs to be rectified, as any racial consideration ought to be placed upon equal footing.

As we’ve worked to undue the wrongs our forefathers committed in racial inequity, we ought not reinstate their methods against any racial, gender, or sexual intersectional group, ever again. We ought not work to repair certain intersection groupings at the detriment of others, if those groups are predicated upon race, sexual orientation, or gender, but rather we must maintain equality across all domains in regards to opportunity, and recognize the variance across humankind, not merely in these specific groups, but across areas that actually matter. “Social justice” ought to be primarily for those who are actually oppressed, such as victims of totalitarian corruption, like those in Venezuela, North Korea, or China. It ought to be for those individuals within our societies which have been impoverished based on family upbringing, educational opportunity, physical disability, regardless of their skin color, gender, or other trivial characteristics. Any individual which has been unjustly (properly discerned) served by a system ought to be campaigned for, and the system ought to take into consideration the whole of society, rather than a narrow scope of it. My main point is that the complexity of society as a whole, its shortcomings, its progress, its many factors, is quite larger than the succinct narratives which have been used as a description of a whole. This complexity needs to be addressed, if we are to realistically improve the system which is complex.

CONCLUSION

Many areas of moral consideration escape the public eye, and many ideas of a disagreeable nature exist upon rational grounds which may provide benefit to systems. It is the job of any philosopher to expose these nuanced views, to propose counter points to common narratives, and critically examine even the use of critical theory. In a meta sense, we have the ability to apply critical theory towards the institutions and segment of society that primarily adhere to belief in the overarching utility of critical theory as being the optimal philosophical method of “improving” society, and in so doing, reveal the flaws within that group itself. Taking that group as the sample size, apply critical theory, I wonder what there is to be found in the power that group holds, and its benefit or detriment to society at large, given its large influence, and the effect that shouting fire has upon those near and far.

The “Why” in “Why do We Seek the Truth?”

On By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment
Originally Written: August 19th 2020

The “why” in “why do we seek the truth” has to do with a biological desire that has been reinforced by our reward system to value the acquisition of insight into the true nature of things. In the hippocampus we find two systems of importance here, one which seeks to discover the unknown, as a biological imperative (this is why dissonance is such a problem to us) as well as a dopamine release system which is linked to that acquisition, and reinforces pathways that in our past have proven to accomplish that goal. The two are inextricably linked, and at a basic biological level, explains our will to push frontiers and knowledge of the environment. Being that the materialistic underpinnings of both the manifestations listed above are located together, their cybernetic influence upon each other is more closely linked than their relations to other areas of the brain.

This is only the start, and like all other basic biological values, how we spend our time, how we achieve the things that give us pleasure, the method we do so, and what is the end, becomes mediated by our social and cultural milieu, and tweaks from the initial imperative in novel directions by our experiences. This value system, the will or desire to achieve what grants us pleasure, and reduces suffering, as well as what is in line with underlying biological “wants”, is the source from which actions manifest, including actions and subjective psychological processes that encourage us to the pursuit of truth.

While everyone has this “to a degree” the more our experiences inform us to the beneficiality of uncovering truth, in a specific manner, whether scientific or philosophical, the more inclined we are to pursue them. The greater source of pleasure or accomplishment we find in creating a habit of searching, finding, contemplating, and theorizing, the greater possibility we will pursue it more often. Thus, we find the mutual reinforcement between accomplishing new conceptualizations and modes of being, which we consciously attach the definition of “truth” to, and the feeling of its intuition. A deeper analysis of the content of the word “truth” may here begin to break down as we dive deeper into the phenomenological realm. What the word stands for, merely is the expression of what we believe to be actual. But what we believe to be actual, in concepts, in thought, in idea, is merely the expression of our attempt to organize the chaos of factors that make up our orientation within the world, from our DNA instigating a perceptive system, to our embodied Being and its navigation in the external environment. The conceptual level merely scratches the surface of what underlies such statements or consciously held beliefs. What we seek is an optimal mode of Being in the world, for which a consciously held belief can support as an epiphenomenon and a causal agent towards the makeup of our Being. It is merely surface level expression which attempts to label an intuited idea which we may or may not embody. The real truth which we seek is to be found in how we are, in the manner in which we act, in how we are so situated in the world, the attitude we take up, the things our body does. While this can be consciously directed, that conscious direction arises from subconscious content, form the totality of our body, and psyche, in the integrated Being. The “why” in “why we seek the truth” from a philosophical standpoint, can be explained by a deeper investigation into the effect upon our Being that such “seeking” entails, and the “why” behind such a question is even posited runs tangentially to the same answer.

The biological closeness of the neuronal divisions which have been uncovered as exploration of the unknown, as well as the pathway reinforcement system, and the functions inherent, provide the necessary basis to explain the human drive towards exploration of the unknown. The biological purpose of rewarding exploration through chemical intervention, in the form of serotonin and its empirically observed “pleasurable sensation” worked through environmental expansion is for purely primitive human’s evolutionary reasons, from a materialistic perspective. While environmental expansion provided benefits to our ancestors in the utilization of different domains, in expanding territory, in more options and potential which can be uncovered in new areas, the use of exploration and its place in the realm of idealism is now the frontier which is phenomenologically “closest” to us. This means that the drive which once was directed at environmental expansion, has been reallocated according to our current environment, that of the social world, the world of language, ideas, and their cultural transmission – memes. Given that ideas rule the social milieu in which our Being is oriented, given that memes and ideas are the currency which direct our consciousness and its impulses, that is, beyond the instinctual, it is deducible that we may “seek the truth” for merely biologically fitness enhancing purposes even in the realm of ideas.

Those ideas which captivate us and inform our beliefs plays an integral role in shaping the mode of Being from which we act from in the world. While these ideas and their subsequent belief modification may be consciously formulated, the level at which they affect our psyche and our value system is stemming from subconscious alteration. Meaning, we may conscious receive the memetic material from reading, from conceptually piecing together information, from auditory sources, from reflection upon experience, but the content that arises into consciousness which states “I believe something” is integrated based on a predisposition that is wholly subconscious, and, from one perspective, even sub-psyche. Our conscious rationalization of beliefs is merely the expression of an attempt to justify what we have deterministically been led to perceive as the truth. Given that this perceived, intuited, believed, “truth” plays a role in modifying our value system and mode of Being, we can connect its role to the biological “goals” inherent in our DNA.

The connectivity to a subconscious stratum, and our mode of Being, implies a modification of our conscious attention, and our very navigation of the world we find ourselves in. Thus, the seeking of truth is always a perceived fitness enhancing activity for evolutionary reasons. On the basis of what we believe to be “true” our behavior is modified, the way we interact with others is modified, how we spend our time, and what we perceive is all modified. These changes based on our belief system can be better or worse in relation to the replication of our genome, the task which the survival machine which we intuit consciously as “us” is tasked at accomplishing. What we intuit as “true” can have several senses, towards which I expound upon in “Truth Claims and their Corollaries”, but one such method of interpreting the word “truth” is the pragmatic utility of a content upon our subjective experience, or upon what is practically beneficial and useful. This method relies on the empirical data that we can phenomenologically analysis, and it is from this methodology which we will perceive, as it is all we truly have available to us (everything else is merely an abstraction from the empirical groundwork).

We may attempt to consciously hold on to the “belief” that what is true is the objectively verifiable statements, or that which holds logical consistency, what “true” necessarily implies for a biological organism, in the preconscious processes, is what is beneficial and useful to the organism, which, for us, is the DNA’s protection and reproduction. Thus we may consciously state that we don’t believe something to be true merely because we wish it to be, but because it is, but the reason why we believe that truth claim, stems from a subconscious belief in the utility of such a belief. If we believe something to be true due to verifiable evidence, logical conclusions, in consequence of the scientific method and its deductions, the very belief in such a method’s veracity is for pragmatically utilizable reasons. Taken from a phenomenological perspective, we act out what we believe to be truly the most effective at accomplishing a goal. Whether this goal may be looked at from an Individual psychology perspective, as constituting power and dominion over our environment, or whether it be social feeling and an inferiority complex looking to be rectified, or if we look at it as removal of dissatisfaction, or the pursual of satisfaction, the underpinning perspective here is irrelevant. What is necessary for the “seeking of truth” is that it only correlates with Objective Truth in that it is objectively the drive of our subjective experience for a reason that is biological in nature. If we consciously hold the view that it is being done otherwise, the statement itself is arising for fitness enhancing purposes of the individual. Perhaps this idea is popular in the current social milieu, perhaps we attribute reason and logic to its statement, no matter from which experiential factors the statement “seek the truth” and our actual “seeking” and “finding”, finds its conscious rationale to be, its core structure is founded upon the pragmatic utility for the individual.

Thus beliefs which seem wholly contradictory in their expounding are understandable, such as “I am a nihilist”. The belief that everything is meaningless wholly negates the very existence of the Being which finds it significant to think such a thought, or state it to others. It is a statement that is destroyed by logic upon any comparison with “objective truth”. Yet, for the conscious individual who states such a belief of the meaninglessness of all experience, there is an objective truth that the content is consciously believed to be representing the “truth”. How can this be so? How can we explain such a seemingly contradictory phenomena existing? The statement and its corresponding subculture of adherents find it mutually beneficial to their psyche to state their “nihilist” belief. There must be a psychological benefit to the individual who can live with the conscious belief in a world devoid of meaning, otherwise, they would not be alive. If we follow the statement to its logical conclusion, and truly take it as the truth, the individual would find no reason to state the belief, nor reason to believe it, nor reason to breathe, eat, and continue living. The fact that self-purported nihilists exist confirms our deduction that pragmatic truth runs our belief system, whether or not we consciously believe it. There is a significance and a meaning behind any idea, any belief that we may hold, and this significance impacts our Being in such a way that we value the “seeking of truth” both for the pragmatic utility in the mode of being which is supported by the very journey of seeking, and of the pragmatic utility of the discovered “truth”, regardless if such a truth is modified by the utility it has to the individual, regardless of its logical or non-logical justification. Whether that is spurred by social context, environment, indoctrination, survival, or purported philosophical consistency and reason, the underlying factor which all phenomenologically experienced “seeking of truth” contains is the pragmatic utility of the endeavor.

We seek the truth for the same reason we do anything. Because of existence. Because of life. Because of DNA. Because of evolutionarily beneficial prerogatives. Because of our developed neuronal structure. Because of our past experiences. Because of our perceptual system mediated by a value system which informs our Being, and the subsequent orientation we have to our environment. Because of the social milieu we find ourselves in, and its cybernetic influence upon us, and us upon it. Because of the Being which we are. We seek the truth because of its pragmatic utility towards the goals which we have developed from the totality of influences and factors which make up, in the overarching synthesis, the totality of our Being. The principle of sufficient reason guides us to deduce that there is good reason for these goals, and we find explanations for driving factors from many perspectives, across the domains of philosophy, psychology, and biology, yet, experientially, we find them in the content of our subjective experience. For us, this is the most real, and from this, stem all our pursuits and goals. If we ask ourselves, why do we seek the truth? It is because it is the most natural thing for us to do, and we couldn’t do otherwise.

Self-Identification Modifying Being

On By Chris Shuttleworth1 Comment
Originally Written: July 22nd 2020

There is a certain mood, a manner of being, an existential modification that takes place within the self’s conceptualization of itself. If we self-identify with a group identity, with a concept that denotes the existence we believe ourselves to be, we become modified in a manner that is in direct relation to the significance of the term, in a manner that necessarily follows from the sense that we give to the concept in our defining. By defining the nature of our own being as that of being a “philosopher”, “proletariat” (worker), as being a liberal or a conservative, we gear our existence into the groove that is defined by the sense that the word as idealized provides to us in our own understanding of it. Our understanding of language and its application to defining the nature of our being, i.e. who we are, is modified by the signification that the social milieu in which we find ourselves, historically, has created in defining the term and has so given its defining over to us. The way in which we understand the term “philosopher” or “conservative”, as deterministically intuited through our experience both introspectively contemplated and informed by externalities, is the way in which the term will modify us in its taking up as believed to be referencing our Being.

We take up the reference of our being to that which we associate it to, to that which we are able to understand it by. If we believe the defining conceptualizations of our being are those that contain a group identity, or of any description, we not only apply the cognitive label through making the judgment and forming an internal thought such as “I exist as a philosopher”, but we modify our embodied perspective and its correlative characteristics in relation to which we are certain of the description, and in a manner that is extracted from our understanding of the given description. We become geared into the world in a manner that puts on a lenses that is colored by the description of our identity, and our actions reflect this position. This description can be presented externally, can be judged by another in their evaluation of us, and we can take it up either by doxically accepting the description of others, or through our own intuitional connection, regardless, the taking up, the accepting, the gearing into the description, modifies our character and perspective in direct relation to the conceptualization that we take up.

The prevalent descriptions of characteristics of political groups as presented in the media, in our social interactions, the societal defining of psychological traits, the class separations and racial connotations which are thrust upon us by our perception of auditory signals, written, or intuited designations, form groups with significations that mean something, and are differentiated according to our introjecting the content that relates to them in our formulation of the word. The meanings of such terms become modified as pushed upon us by the environment in which we find ourselves in.

Our lenses through which we take up our being in the world, and the subjective experience of consciousness which results from this filtration, is constituted by the color of the lenses which we use in our depiction of ourselves. While the initial filter is the pre-conscious perspectival taking up and revealing, in a bottom up fashion, the top down integration of conscious direction can cause a perspectival modification, thus what we consciously value is designated by our embodied perspective, yet simultaneously informed by consciously formulated ideals. One such conscious formulation is the change in values as modified by conscious self-reflection, and the manner in which we tend to do so happens to be linguistically, or conceptually, using language. This language which we use to describe our own Being, orients us towards the world in a manner that coincides with the way in which we understand ourselves, and this is where behavior can change in relation to the values underlining our understanding of self-constructed definitions in reference to our own Being.

We don’t only conceptualize ourselves as we are, but also as we wish to be, what we wish to be is due in the first instance to our biologically instantiated value system, and subsequently modified by the environmental and social milieu to which the value system is modified throughout the historicity of our existence. Our historicity, insofar as it is temporal, builds upon the first order biological filtration of our perceptive system (Value System Instantiation), in a progressive manner. As more present moments don their contributions towards effecting the totality of our being (over time), the value system is modified in accordance with that which is determined to follow the cultural environment as mediated and understood through the biological organism’s perspective. Thus, we develop our facticity, that which constitutes the fact of our Being in the present moment, and we find within us a certain orientation towards the world that is directly influenced by the value structure that has so been developed, desiring this or that, pursuing this or that, behaving in accordance with this or that, and wanting to be this or that. This desire towards embodying or actualizing a certain description, can lead to self-connotations that one believes to be an accurate depiction of oneself, which is in alignment with one’s value system. We only believe what we believe, and this changes due to cultural norms, our environment, that which we are educated and that which impresses itself on us as being most valuable.

Ignorance of far ranging perspectives by the narrow indoctrination towards a specific ideology might not be seen by the naïve consciousness which knows of no other existence, but unbeknownst to it the very core of ones Being is permeated by said ideology and one’s entire existence becomes characterized by a critical permeation of the idea. Every action, thought, or word spoken is an expression of the totality of the Being which we are, and if this being is characterized by a narrow ideology, you can be sure the person will live out this ideology across the span of his existence. The label which is supported by the ideology gears us into living in accordance with it. The prevalence of societal norms, of societally supported descriptions which one believes that embodying would better support oneself in navigating life, dominate the psyche as a driving factor to actualize in oneself, and can lead to the behavior modifications which go along with applying such descriptions to one’s own being. How I came to desire to be a philosopher, how I came to refrain from applying political labels to myself, is instantiated upon the nature of my being in a causally determined way that is no different than the ideologically possessed, I am, as well, ideologically possessed by the idea that this description of my being is not only accurate, but the best I have found so far. The objective status of our primary identification in relation to other descriptions depends upon the nature of the judgment we place upon descriptions as being “better” or “worse”, our morality, and what we see to be the “good” will inform which values come on top, in terms of what we spend time in association with, as well as in how we identify. Being that this judgment of our current self-description and its contents are all instantiated in a manner that is beyond our control, and have been the product of a historicity towards the development of actualizing our being to believe of itself to be so constituted in the present moment, is likewise out of our control, in the same manner as any other ideological possession we can point to.

The description we apply to ourselves orients us in a way that modifies our social interaction, and how we behave towards others, not only in the manner in which we present ourselves, but in the manner in which we wish the other to perceive of us, itself modifying our behavior to be in accordance with the desired instantiation of the mind of the other in their perception. This manner of being-towards-others, conversely, will affect the manner in which others treat us, and how their being becomes oriented in the space of which is perceptibly shared by ourselves and them, as we meet in the world and occupy the same practical milieu which can be affected by both of us. Thus, the manner in which we describe ourselves, does more than mediate the content of our subjective experience by modifying actions and behavior in accordance with it, but it has an effect on our being-towards-others, their being-towards-us, and the content that stems from such interactions.

Every moment in our life is a manifestation of the totality of our being, in one way or another, we are always authentically representing ourselves by any action, behavior, thought, emotion, mood, mode of being, or perception that takes place. To him who is dishonest, or attempting to put on a deceptive act that paints his character other than it would otherwise be, that too is reflective of the person’s Being, if such knowledge is ever truly revealed. In seeking to better orient ourselves to the world in which we find ourselves, we are constantly seeking the mode of being which is best suited for the environment that surrounds us, the people we come into contact with, the thoughts that manifest themselves, in short, our Being is seeking optimization of itself, towards the management of the set of all moments. Obviously, the best solution is to seek to better oneself in handling the set of all problems, rather than individual problems, but both can be mutually improved upon through the development of the other. The way in which we do so, the best life we can live, the method of gearing ourselves into the world, and the role that conscious self-conceptualization plays in modifying such areas of our most profound longing, becomes extraordinarily significant to us, insofar as the content of our subjective experience is modified by it. Since the content of our subjective experience is of integral importance to us, and poses a significance that is valuable regardless of ideological possession, we ought to consciously direct ourselves towards those descriptions which modify our being towards producing the greatest amount of wellbeing, subjectively, the most amount of time possible.

This isn’t a merely selfish endeavor at the peril of all others, although it can be. If it appears best to us to identify and behave as a tyrant and deceiver, for whatever reason, one will experience the subjective experience that alignment with such an ideal provides. One in such a position may fail to see the benefit in acting otherwise, and will never know what they are missing, and to those in such a position, they will meet with unending misfortune, and, most likely, an extremely dissatisfied experience of life. We will no longer be treated with love and respect, will probably find ourselves hated, distrusted, imprisoned or injured as a consequence. This negative experience may be the catalyst to change, or may not be. But, if given the opportunity to experience what acting in a manner that doesn’t reflect that identity can provide, it may sway the person’s judgment of such identification, and lead to meaningful change to a different identity.

We can mitigate the dangers in identification, as well as exploit the usage. By limiting ourselves to a single political position, we alienate ourselves from other perspectives, and close off ourselves to seeing the entirety of the picture. By defining ourselves by our job, or our current role in our lives, we face an identity crisis should our position change. If we identify with character traits that we value, such as having a strong mind, being disciplined in contact, as being a person who is able to be virtuous, we identify with a description that is not only valued and thus desired, but we become able to better modify our character to represent the identity that we desire. By identification with discipline, we become more urged to remain faithful to exercise, diet, and hard work. By identifying as a loving friend, rather than, say, “John’s friend” we become better suited to care for friends as they come and go out of our lives. By identifying as a strong leader, rather than “the supervisor of a certain company”, we don’t lose our identity should the company fail, and we become able to embody leadership principles across the board in our lives.

 Our being in the world must take into account the social milieu in which we find ourselves, as we are social beings which place a significant amount of importance upon our relations with others, and our behavior must reflect that internal disposition, which can be modified by the self-conceptualizations as described above. So a merely selfish mode of being that is the production of self-aggrandizement in self-depiction is clearly not the answer, if one is wise, and has a grasp upon one’s true value system, they will take into account the many factors towards which our wellbeing and environment are conditioned by. We must take into account society, family, friends, that which we value, that arena of experience which is closest to ourselves, not merely that which is conscious experience itself, but also its mediating factors that can be altered based upon our behavior, in their reflective affecting of our subjective experience.

Existential Ramblings and Conclusions

On By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment
Originally Written: July 20th 2020

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 Moral Upper Limit of Responsibility

On By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment
Originally Written: May 25th 2020

While the adoption of responsibility and discipline in one’s life may appear to be beneficial to the individual, which it surely is, there exists a limit to which such virtues no longer are optimal. Many people say the limit here is spreading oneself too thin, or adopting more responsibility than one can handle, but in these cases, we are no longer successfully adopting responsibility. Here I want to assume that the responsibilities, and discipline we apply to being industrious, or orderly, or in the duties we voluntary undertake, are all physically and mentally possible in a successful manner. Given this framework, I propose, there is still a limit to the usefulness and beneficiality of further adoption of responsibility, and that limit has to do with the effect that our actions have on other people.Once a given adoption of responsibility effectively and unjustly removes the opportunity of others to accept responsibility, in effect, once there is no longer the possibility of others being able to voluntarily accept responsibility in a manner that is detrimental to their wellbeing, then you may question whether the limit of your actions in terms of duty has been overstepped. In this case, you may gain the personal character advantage in being able to hold a heavier burden, thus sharpening individual discipline and intellect in ordering chaos, but, you do so at the price of compassion for the growth available to others. This limit, like most golden means, requires experiential and contemplative wisdom in discerning, but that it exists, cannot be doubted.

In addition to limiting the ability for others to adopt responsibility, the excessive undertaking of additional duties in one’s life may lead one to resent others for whom he is effectively removing obstacles from. While your time, energy, and mental effort is spent in carrying out excessive duties, you may notice a growing resentment towards those who could’ve, and perhaps should have, done the task, that is, had you not been the one expending all the resources in undertaking it. This may be personally rationalized by a self-reflective justification by the appearance of acting virtuously, and doing the right thing. If this excessive responsibility limit has been crossed, then the individual may feel contempt for those who have not opted for a similar path. Far too often this type of personality trait is represented in the more orderly and disciplined types, in trait conscientiousness, as they are restless in pursuing careers, and dedicated towards a cause. Those high in trait conscientiousness often will continue working and are unsatisfied with things being undone, and thus will be the first to alleviate problems, the only problem is, they often cross the line in removing the opportunity for others to do so, hindering their growth. They often oversee the fact that they effectively are removing potentiality for others, and see themselves as doing the right thing. From a virtue ethicists standpoint, they surely are being virtuous, they are growing in responsibility, and are better able to organize chaos, yet they are blind to the implications of their actions on other people, which is truly missing the mark of greatness, which is quantified as morally bad in the utilitarian system, as they remove the wellbeing which could be potentially afforded to others had they had the chance to adopt the responsibility themselves.

There is a fine line between licentiousness, proper fulfilling of duty, and over excessive adoption of responsibility, and the management and correct view in regards to this aspect of life can be life altering in its optimization. Often times we need to look outside ourselves, not only at what we can do to make things better, but what we ought not to do to make things better, for ourselves, and our expanding circle of influence. The bigger the circle of influence we wish to effect positively, the less focus we need to place on the actual individual action we undertake, and more upon the effect of the action upon the people whom we are including in the moral analysis. The greater the circle of influence, the greater the introspection, analysis, contemplation, and weighing our actions ought to require, and for this, we must look towards the wellbeing not only of ourselves, but of those we care about, for the benefit not only of others, but, paradoxically, for our own benefit and optimization of life experience as well.

Inclination Towards Authenticity in Recognition of Manifesting the Persona

On By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment
Originally Written: May 19th 2020

The persona is that which we present through the embodiment of an underlying archetypal pattern of Being when we want someone to like us, it is the state of Being which posits the expression of what we believe would be appealing in the other person’s eyes. We should be wary in this projection, or once we realize that our mode of being in relation to someone is characterized by the will to be appreciated, liked, respected, or lusted after. The mindfulness in recognizing the personas emergence is the first step towards an authentic resolution, or modification, which can be consciously directed. From this mode of being, that of the persona’s dominance, it is easy for us to embellish who we are, or spin things in an appealing manner, effectively applying a mask to our true nature in the revelation of who we are, the act of doing such, is the persona embodied. If we can be mindful of entering into this mode of being, we can acknowledge our intent from which it has an end of producing, and seek to modify it, in either of two directions. We can either embellish the mask, and continue towards deception, or we can seek to be as honest as possible. Our inclination towards either one of the poles, whether it be honesty or deception, is determined by a number of factors. The amount of pride and confidence we have in who we truly are, how appealing our true nature is, how virtuous, or full of vice, we may happen to be, and our learned habits. The natural biological inclination tends towards deception, I’d say, on the average, while there is an evolutionary benefit in honesty and trust, the choice depends on our temperament, acquired character trait, and circumstantial navigation. Whether or not our true nature is appealing or not, I argue, we should lean towards the side of honesty in any moment on which the persona is noticed as dominating the psyche, for multiple reasons.

One reason why honesty is optimal as a corrective course to the personas emergence is that, if we do otherwise, if we continue down the path of being deceptive and putting on the mask of the persona, we not only deceive the other, but run the risk of deceiving ourselves by doing so, we contain the possibility of believing the deception, thus leading to a heightened sense of ego, and altogether, creating further dissonance between who we are and who we think we are. In addition, if we are honest in the presentation of our Being, especially in situations where we desire to be admired, the result can be beneficial to us, on an individual level, regardless of the other person’s respect or admiration, as either result can tell us something about ourselves and the other person. This honesty or authenticity in modifying the persona, doesn’t necessarily call for a radical truth telling, or admission of more than would be optimal for the solution. It merely points to not allowing us to be dominated by the psyche’s desire to be attractive. While it isn’t inherently a negative thing to be admired, or to will to be attractive to someone, we should want to do this through an authentic representation of ourselves. Oftentimes an authentic representation of ourselves does mean the compassionate navigation of truth claims, that is, not bluntly stating things, but wisely omitting unnecessary or hurtful content with the intention of the best long term result for the other person. If we truly want the best for someone, we should act so as to manifest what we believe to be the best content to display in order to aide them. The truthful authentic representation of ourselves doesn’t always mean telling the truth, it means not pretending to be someone we’re not, not stating falsehoods, or falsely representing our beliefs. This can be optimally navigated not through radical honesty, but through temperance and restriction, through openness to expression of who we truly are.

Here we have four cases in the authentic representation of ourselves. If we present our Being honestly (to the degree that we can) and the person for whom we seek admiration responds positively, we succeed and everyone is happy and we learn that who we truly are is actually in alignment with the values of the other person. If we seek admiration from someone, it is out of desire or admiration we have for the other person, which implies that our success in gaining their admiration tells us the things we aim at are conducive the type of person we wish to attract. If an honest approach to correcting for the personas emergence works out in our favor, we learn that the person we authentically are is in alignment with what we value, as we judge the other person to be someone who contains, to a degree, traits which we value.

Stemming from the same framework above, if the other person is perceived as truly someone who we respect or contains virtues or traits which we value, and our persona becomes modified by a conscious intention of honesty and authentic representation of our Being, yet we are received negatively, or are rejected, it appears we have lost. But we have gained something through this knowledge, of which a critical, honest, self-examination will determine the nature of. Perhaps there truly is something wrong with us, to which, further inquiry could enlighten us, and we could improve. On the other hand, in the case our authentic self is not desired by other person, perhaps we misjudged their values, perhaps the things they value truly are not the things in which we do, in which case, we no longer will desire their admiration. In either case, individually, we can grow and navigate existence, except, we are doing it from a place of authenticity.  

If we recognize the persona and continue under its influence, free from conscious modification in the direction of authenticity, and we are well received by the person we seek admiration from, it appears we have won, but as far as I can see, this is a loss. The persona which is accepted, and valued, is not an authentic representation of ourselves, and therefore, we can take no pride in admiration from the other person. We merely have succeeded in deception, which, as time will show, we will pay for, as there is truly nothing which goes unaccounted for. As we struggle to maintain the persona, we may fall into self-aggrandizing, in delusions of grandeur, and believe ourselves to be someone we are not, leading to psychological confusion, and further distancing from psychological individualization. The fracturing of the psyche, and the domination of any given archetype, in this situation, the persona, will result in dissonance, suffering, and, on a practical note, given the relationship produced by such actions, it will inevitably fall apart as soon as the other person comes to their senses and takes a peek under the mask at our true nature. Dante denoted the innermost circle of Hell as consisting in those who partake in deception, and that is exactly what our experience will contain of once we walk down the path of self-deception. On the other hand, the person we have successfully fooled, will suffer the pain of wasting time, of losing trust in another human, in effectively being deceived. The truth always comes out, and the suffering it will cause the deceived is no arbitrary thing, it won’t be good, that’s for sure, and the resentment and bitterness that results from such experiences, will add insult to injury to the suffering we are already undergoing as a result of such pursuits. So we should really be wary lest we fall down this path!

In the last case, if we continue down the path of deception, in the personas will manifesting itself in an inauthentic representation of ourselves, and the other person rejects us, than we find ourselves in a situation where not only did we lack the confidence to be ourselves, but the person we thought the other would like still was not received, meaning, not only could we not authentically be someone who is attracted by the other person, but even when we pretend to be something we aren’t, we still couldn’t achieve positive evaluation from someone whose perspective we value. The suffering caused from lack of confidence, the pain of failing, even though vice, may provide the groundwork of negative reinforcement towards attempting authenticity, or another mode of Being. This may be the benefit in failure, in this case, that we learn that such a pursuit is not only successful, but that who we ought to be needs to change, our strategy didn’t work, and change is revealed as necessary, at least in how we present ourselves in the face of someone whose opinion we value. This leaves us in the position to assume that authenticity itself may be optimal, since this method surely didn’t work out for us.

We always can misjudge the character of someone, in which case we can determine by their rejection of values we contain or deem important. We also can learn if we are not the type of person who can be desired, in which case we should evaluate our flaws and set out to work. In either case, the perceived negative effect of rejection by tilting towards honesty in the projection of our persona, not only saves us from the perils of being admired as someone we are not, saves us from self-deception, but offers up the Being in which we should desire to be appreciated, admired, respected, or wanted, the Being of our authentic self, who we truly are.