This is suuuuuper interesting to me. Feels true in practice, although it gets weird when it's like "I *want* this force to push or change me, without my approval".
- Does that make me evil?
- Is a force that complies with my desire then evil?
Underneath those questions is maybe: Can anything *good* come from evilness? Can it be possible to learn agency through experiencing a lack of agency intentionally?
this is easier to resolve by seeing the individual human as a collective of competing desires/wills
when I am sitting on the couch bored & doomscrolling, and my friends push me to go out or go to the gym, what's happening there is part of me has a desire for that fulfillment of going out. But it doesn't have enough energy to take the action, because the other parts are distracted / getting a reward (social media dopamine)
In that state, I am misaligned (the parts want different things and they are pulling in different directions, expending energy but not moving). Not too different from a divided country
From here we can identify multiple aligned states for this system (either I stay at home but I am fully engaged in something nourishing, or I get up & out). You may get there via a "necessary evil" (external force overriding your will). But that's "evil" because it's an external dependence (a good entity doesn't want you to depend on it, it wants you to be able to take care of yourself. Unless you "merge" but that's a different topic)
The ideal way to get there would be via internal alignment. Recognition that the current state is suboptimal for all parts and conceding one way or the other.
Absolutely! I think internal alignment (or coherence) is probably the biggest blocker preventing people from discerning good vs. evil automatically. So creating pointers to identify where alignment arises, and memetically sound (AKA effective) methods of returning to alignment, are my current top priorities.
(actually there's still plenty of work to do in “applied alignment” once a piece of theory is cracked. And that's the part I'm most excited for. People trying it in their lives, in their companies, in their small towns, in their friend groups, and reporting back. Very similar kind of bottom up scaling & open experimentation that the Fractal folks/Tyler Alterman are doing IRL)
Nice, yeah, as one of my friends said (roughly paraphrasing): “It feels like there are maybe 100,000 of us, and we’re all on the same boat. The boat is going where it’s going no matter what, so I don’t really have to do anything special. I can move around on the boat if I want, but we’re gonna get there regardless so I can just chill and let things happen”.
It’s kind of a paradox since I am, from all accounts progress-wise, not chilling, yet it feels like the work and understanding is just kind of building on its own, and I happen to be privy to it.
One more point in favor of seeing both individuals and society as collective units 1️⃣
In one view of good and evil, the latter is purely the privation (lack) of the former. In my own conception of this, everything that *happens* is ultimately good, but proximate minds have different impressions of it that are misaligned from perfect perception, hence the presence of apparent evil in the world despite a perfect creator God.
In my view, it is not that a force that complies with a desire to be forced is necessarily evil, but rather that forcing you downstream of the root reason of your misaligned desires does not actually *do* anything. You would still be in just as much foundational sin as before, and in fact it might be harder for you to be edified because your sin is hidden from yourself due to not being allowed to be visible. Have you ever met someone who was forced to not make a certain class of mistake, and very bitterly wishes they could have been allowed to make it? One of my ministers spoke of someone at seminary who confessed that he wished he grew up in a non-Christian home so that he could have slept around more.
In my Calvinist worldview, it is necessarily always the will of God that is being carried out. When you will that your hand moves up and your hand moves up, it was not ultimately your will that decided your hand would go up; it was God's. (I give the example of a paralyzed man willing that his hand moves up.) And so, it is not always our will that is being expressed. But having one's will be expressed to one's apparent detriment is essential to seeing that there is actually some kind of right and wrong.
We can also see how the hack to this is that if your will is that the will of God shall be done, then your will shall always be done through your surrender.
But there is also a fun aspect of Calvinist doctrine where literally no one who is not called to God can themselves by their own will want to be aligned to God. This doctrine is called total depravity (the T in the acronym TULIP).
The other letters in the acronym:
- Unconditional election means that when God calls us to him, there was absolutely nothing we did to merit this calling.
- Limited atonement means that God (Jesus) died on the cross on the cross specifically to atone for the sins of those who are meant to be called to him.
- Irresistible grace means that if God wills us to accept his grace submit our wills to his, we cannot fight against it. It is not so much kicking and screaming to heaven, but being made unable to even want to kick and scream.
- Preservation of the saints means that the list of those in the book of life was written since the start of time, and so there is full double predestination of those who go to heaven and hell.
Note, I do not think that actually believing all of this without qualification is necessary to being a Christian. But I think that this theology is firm and ontologically precise enough to be useful for teaching seekers to the faith.
I've been seeing this on my timeline. Haven't read it yet, but I just posted a note that links to a comic that mentions an upward spiral a few strips later.
What do you make of the idea that "history arcs toward justice" as a parallel to Buckminster Fuller's ephemeralization? Something like "things keep getting better because it is the path of least resistance". If what we are IS "good" and forever compelled to change there's no evil in it regardless of whether we buy in...Of course lacks the sense of accelerating collapse of the downward spiral.
It's for people who are afraid of not believing in what you are told to believe and who work in offices thinking about other people thinking. Like the monk vs the knight
IMO they do exist, you just exclude them by definition because someone somewhere might not want it.
How about you want to keep on getting healthier/richer, or you didn't want or want it but it's a "pleasant surprise" and your enjoying it, but you have no control over it and don't understand why? Like your stock savings accelerating further in the market.
And in a more purely defined way, taking 'upwards' as 'increasing energy'. An uncontrolled upward spiral is an explosion, 'going viral' on social media, compound interest or other chain reaction.
This is suuuuuper interesting to me. Feels true in practice, although it gets weird when it's like "I *want* this force to push or change me, without my approval".
- Does that make me evil?
- Is a force that complies with my desire then evil?
Underneath those questions is maybe: Can anything *good* come from evilness? Can it be possible to learn agency through experiencing a lack of agency intentionally?
this is easier to resolve by seeing the individual human as a collective of competing desires/wills
when I am sitting on the couch bored & doomscrolling, and my friends push me to go out or go to the gym, what's happening there is part of me has a desire for that fulfillment of going out. But it doesn't have enough energy to take the action, because the other parts are distracted / getting a reward (social media dopamine)
In that state, I am misaligned (the parts want different things and they are pulling in different directions, expending energy but not moving). Not too different from a divided country
From here we can identify multiple aligned states for this system (either I stay at home but I am fully engaged in something nourishing, or I get up & out). You may get there via a "necessary evil" (external force overriding your will). But that's "evil" because it's an external dependence (a good entity doesn't want you to depend on it, it wants you to be able to take care of yourself. Unless you "merge" but that's a different topic)
The ideal way to get there would be via internal alignment. Recognition that the current state is suboptimal for all parts and conceding one way or the other.
these are great questions, thank you!! I think it'll inform future posts in this series
Absolutely! I think internal alignment (or coherence) is probably the biggest blocker preventing people from discerning good vs. evil automatically. So creating pointers to identify where alignment arises, and memetically sound (AKA effective) methods of returning to alignment, are my current top priorities.
Wow, awesome, yeah this covers it fully in my eyes (and also very curious on the merging topic).
now we just need to solve the rest of morality 😄
(actually there's still plenty of work to do in “applied alignment” once a piece of theory is cracked. And that's the part I'm most excited for. People trying it in their lives, in their companies, in their small towns, in their friend groups, and reporting back. Very similar kind of bottom up scaling & open experimentation that the Fractal folks/Tyler Alterman are doing IRL)
😁
Nice, yeah, as one of my friends said (roughly paraphrasing): “It feels like there are maybe 100,000 of us, and we’re all on the same boat. The boat is going where it’s going no matter what, so I don’t really have to do anything special. I can move around on the boat if I want, but we’re gonna get there regardless so I can just chill and let things happen”.
It’s kind of a paradox since I am, from all accounts progress-wise, not chilling, yet it feels like the work and understanding is just kind of building on its own, and I happen to be privy to it.
One more point in favor of seeing both individuals and society as collective units 1️⃣
In one view of good and evil, the latter is purely the privation (lack) of the former. In my own conception of this, everything that *happens* is ultimately good, but proximate minds have different impressions of it that are misaligned from perfect perception, hence the presence of apparent evil in the world despite a perfect creator God.
In my view, it is not that a force that complies with a desire to be forced is necessarily evil, but rather that forcing you downstream of the root reason of your misaligned desires does not actually *do* anything. You would still be in just as much foundational sin as before, and in fact it might be harder for you to be edified because your sin is hidden from yourself due to not being allowed to be visible. Have you ever met someone who was forced to not make a certain class of mistake, and very bitterly wishes they could have been allowed to make it? One of my ministers spoke of someone at seminary who confessed that he wished he grew up in a non-Christian home so that he could have slept around more.
In my Calvinist worldview, it is necessarily always the will of God that is being carried out. When you will that your hand moves up and your hand moves up, it was not ultimately your will that decided your hand would go up; it was God's. (I give the example of a paralyzed man willing that his hand moves up.) And so, it is not always our will that is being expressed. But having one's will be expressed to one's apparent detriment is essential to seeing that there is actually some kind of right and wrong.
We can also see how the hack to this is that if your will is that the will of God shall be done, then your will shall always be done through your surrender.
But there is also a fun aspect of Calvinist doctrine where literally no one who is not called to God can themselves by their own will want to be aligned to God. This doctrine is called total depravity (the T in the acronym TULIP).
The other letters in the acronym:
- Unconditional election means that when God calls us to him, there was absolutely nothing we did to merit this calling.
- Limited atonement means that God (Jesus) died on the cross on the cross specifically to atone for the sins of those who are meant to be called to him.
- Irresistible grace means that if God wills us to accept his grace submit our wills to his, we cannot fight against it. It is not so much kicking and screaming to heaven, but being made unable to even want to kick and scream.
- Preservation of the saints means that the list of those in the book of life was written since the start of time, and so there is full double predestination of those who go to heaven and hell.
Note, I do not think that actually believing all of this without qualification is necessary to being a Christian. But I think that this theology is firm and ontologically precise enough to be useful for teaching seekers to the faith.
I've been seeing this on my timeline. Haven't read it yet, but I just posted a note that links to a comic that mentions an upward spiral a few strips later.
What do you make of the idea that "history arcs toward justice" as a parallel to Buckminster Fuller's ephemeralization? Something like "things keep getting better because it is the path of least resistance". If what we are IS "good" and forever compelled to change there's no evil in it regardless of whether we buy in...Of course lacks the sense of accelerating collapse of the downward spiral.
It's for people who are afraid of not believing in what you are told to believe and who work in offices thinking about other people thinking. Like the monk vs the knight
IMO they do exist, you just exclude them by definition because someone somewhere might not want it.
How about you want to keep on getting healthier/richer, or you didn't want or want it but it's a "pleasant surprise" and your enjoying it, but you have no control over it and don't understand why? Like your stock savings accelerating further in the market.
And in a more purely defined way, taking 'upwards' as 'increasing energy'. An uncontrolled upward spiral is an explosion, 'going viral' on social media, compound interest or other chain reaction.