All Discussions Tagged 'layman' - Integral Post-Metaphysical Spirituality2024-03-29T09:28:03Zhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topic/listForTag?tag=layman&feed=yes&xn_auth=noEJACULATION & BROCCOLI: A Phased Evolutionary Definition of "Metaphysics"tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-11-19:5301756:Topic:590542014-11-19T19:01:28.177ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>PREAMBLE</strong></p>
<p>The leading cause of death for males in the civilized world is (arguably) <strong>prostate cancer</strong>. Several medical recommendations exist to help to prevent this abominable scourge that is slaying my gender in droves. Prominent among these recommendations is broccoli (and similar vegetables) whose chemicals are uniquely nourishing and supportive to cells in this region of the body. And ejaculation. Men who ejaculate…</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>PREAMBLE</strong></p>
<p>The leading cause of death for males in the civilized world is (arguably) <strong>prostate cancer</strong>. Several medical recommendations exist to help to prevent this abominable scourge that is slaying my gender in droves. Prominent among these recommendations is broccoli (and similar vegetables) whose chemicals are uniquely nourishing and supportive to cells in this region of the body. And ejaculation. Men who ejaculate more frequently, it turns out, do not leave tiny clumps and semen-derived crystals in their system. These unused objects weaken us and leave us statistically more vulnerable to degenerative diseases in this region of the body. </p>
<p>This is only one of many pieces of modern data which directly opposes the old spiritual notion that we should "conserve" the release of our sexual fluids. The old notion is <em>metaphysical</em>. </p>
<p>The sense that spiritual improvement and health are likely to be related to conservation and purity seems to be based on a mixture of legitimate insights & cultural ignorance. Most metaphysical schemes have (something like) "conservation" at their heart. </p>
<p>Metaphysics usually believes in an initial condition of natural or divine perfection, or authenticity, which is corrupted by the world and squandered by our bodies. Our duty is to return to the source and protect our purity. As Nietzsche observed (I'm paraphrasing) "<em>The quintessential metaphysical assumption is that qualities must originate in things that are like themselves -- never from their opposites</em>."</p>
<p>He also said: <em>We will never be free of God as long as we have faith in Grammar</em>. One of the meanings of that sentence is that our sense that a subject must condition a predicate (that "doing" must be done by a <em>doer</em>). </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>WHAT IS "METAPHYSICS"?</strong></p>
<p>These two notions -- that qualities depend upon their original condition & that prior intentional agents are required in order for activities to occur coherently -- are hallmarks of metaphysics. To them we might add that totalizing activities of the mind, which propose to fix the universe in a single interpretation that will never be out-of-date, are also dangerously metaphysical. But these are very high-level investigations! For most people metaphysics means something more basic, simpler. It means, perhaps, the acceptance of angels, ghosts, voodoo, crystal power and the mythological tales of ancient books. All these entities were used almost like science (physics) by our ancestors. The seem like metaphysics only in comparison to modern rationality. And modern rationality itself can be subjected to high-level abstract complaints about the lingering metaphysical assumptions in its grammar, cosmology, etc.</p>
<p>An integral definition must operate equally well at the "levels of the Spiral". Thus we cannot take up a fixed position in the usual sense. While we hope to make philosophy and spiritual practice into something which can live (and flourish) beyond the criticism of explicit and implicit metaphysics we have to explain how our position operates equally well in every cultural operating system. Here is a simple way to do that:</p>
<p></p>
<blockquote><p><strong>(INTEGRAL) METAPHYSICS:<span style="text-decoration: underline;">The array of entities which previous cultural operating systems did not feel it necessary to prove</span>.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p>Each "level" of socio-cognitive system enfolds its predecessors. Thereby it observes that they believed <em>too much</em>, accepted too many unjustified things. It stands out to the new system, very obviously, that its necessary precedents included types of entities which inhibit the expansion of consciousness, empathy & understanding. Any integral notion of metaphysics must affirm the phase-like structure of organic relativity.</p>
<p></p>
<p>So:</p>
<p>The <strong>Aboriginal Cultural Operating System</strong> treats as "metaphysics" whatever implied humanimal beliefs are not provable in the dreamtime-clan system.</p>
<p>The <strong>Barbarian (Village/Horde) COS</strong> includes Aboriginal "totem & taboo" in its definition of metaphysics. The shamans, chiefs & matriarchs who have discovered that emotional-muscular self-assertion can violate the hypnotic boundaries established by Lore & Elders must then experience that lore as unsubstantiated. The animal or half-animal spirits can be dominated by rebellious human gangs and subordinated to the to local man-god.</p>
<p>The <strong>Traditional COS</strong> includes Barbarian entities in its definition of metaphysics. The local humanoid gods are understood as unsubstantiend, misperceived -- ontologically exaggerated. They may be treated as demons, saints, etc. but their deityhood is unjustified before The Great Law. </p>
<p>The <strong>Modern COS</strong> includes mythic-orthodoxy in its definition of metaphysics. This is the popular notion of metaphysics. The Great Chain (One Legal Order) appears unsubstantiated, merely presumed. </p>
<p>The <strong>Pluralist COS</strong> includes implied modern assumptions in its definition of metaphysics. Many basic points of modern reasoning appear to preserve uninspected patterns which resemble orthodoxy. Singularity. First Cause. Cause & effect. Doers. The "right way". Realism. All these become dubious, yet to be confirmed.</p>
<p>The <strong>Integrative COS</strong> includes pluralistic presumptions in its definition of metaphysics. The alterity and apparent limiting influence assumed by ecologists, revisers, sensitives, tolerators, etc. is not necessary what it seems. Its nature is called into question. The implications of contextual shifts and multiple lenses are not as ontologically obvious as the pluralist feels them to be. Etc.</p> RELIGIOUS BUBBLES: Generative (en)closures vs. "Traditions"tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-09-22:5301756:Topic:584102014-09-22T17:18:32.932ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p></p>
<p>Generative (en)closures are like assholes -- everybody's got one. </p>
<p>These "magic bubbles" are ubiquitous and universal. Cells, selves & groups of all sorts are energetically engaged in establishing themselves as unique fields of relatively amplified coherence. These fields are partially set apart from their surroundings by a permeable membrane of physical acts, subjective impressions, communication systems and shared spirit. </p>
<p>Yet of all the myriad modes of…</p>
<p></p>
<p>Generative (en)closures are like assholes -- everybody's got one. </p>
<p>These "magic bubbles" are ubiquitous and universal. Cells, selves & groups of all sorts are energetically engaged in establishing themselves as unique fields of relatively amplified coherence. These fields are partially set apart from their surroundings by a permeable membrane of physical acts, subjective impressions, communication systems and shared spirit. </p>
<p>Yet of all the myriad modes of generative (en)closure we find ourselves especially interested in the "sacred" versions of culture. That means we are primed toward events, spaces, objects and forms of practice-communities that are conventionally associated with <em>religious traditions</em>. </p>
<p>However we cannot take these traditions at face value. Why not? Because all they have meaning that meaningfulness is not the particular style associated with the rather loft "integralesque" and complicated vantage point from which these sorts of discussions may issue forth. What cans the notion of a "religious tradition" mean to us?</p>
<p>Knowing the incorrigible habits of integralites, we can predict that such traditions must appear, eventually as metaphorical zones of heightened cultural coherence which are experienced distinctly through the cognitive apparatus of each major developmental layer of human consciousness. </p>
<p>So let us take a quick peek:</p>
<p><strong>AMBER</strong></p>
<p>Conventional popular terminology operates a set of associations which connect these linguistic acts with the mentality of orthodox/supra-tribal/believer-sects. For such people (within us) the production of religious bubbles is normalized into "traditions" which are based upon confessions of membership and the affirmation of standardized nation-like symbolism. </p>
<p>We immediately see that this is the orthodox meaning of famous "traditions" inherited predominantly from nationalistic, racial, sectarian city-state / agricultural-kingdom phases of history... including parts of the world still largely involved in this reality. So Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Shinto, Hinduism, etc. are a vision of generative (en)closures operating at this level and for this type of world. </p>
<p><strong>ORANGE</strong></p>
<p>Modern "enlightenment" mentality typically investigates the abstract mechanism-objects which may appear in the mind under various different names. This extra-cultural consciousness already seriously undermines the conventional assumption of religious bubbles as traditions. It supposes that every individual, regardless of their geographic and ethnocentric origin, is free to select from the big "menu" of normally presumed traditions. And we already begin to require those modifiers such as "seems like" and "almost" (which will become even more necessary at more complex layers) in order to fully clarify the experiential acts which are establishing generative (en)closures of the sacred-group type.</p>
<p><strong>GREEN</strong></p>
<p>Pluralism begins by alternating between realities. It therefore revalues apparent alternatives, folds in the obvious examples of minimized or excluded "others", and quickly moves to begin appreciating the inter-contextual effects operating at the semantic boundaries between interpretations. It proliferates alternatives and meta-models while deconstructing its options into creative sub-components. Here we require quotation marks around the word "tradition" and expect that a variety of Christianities, Buddhisms, Islams, etc. are holding hands with an indefinitely unfolding mixture of neo-archaic, quasi-fictional or hyper-individualistic attempts to performatively enact a religious bubble. The general ambivalence toward the hegemonic idea of a "tradition" arises quite naturally when our consciousness begins to emphasize background ecosystemic networks and the surprising world of unseen ingredients.</p>
<p>Here the definition of a tradition can only be a kind of game-piece in co-creative exchange. Linguistic habits, divergent states of consciousness, the activation of "neurosomatic brain circuitry" and the rise of the relaxed/sensitized universalist ethos requires that: <em>Traditions are "whatever" WE say they are.</em></p>
<p><strong>TEAL</strong></p>
<p>Integrative approaches to religious bubbles must take over and newly explain the complementary validity of the previous phases. It is no longer good enough to imagine that traditions are anarchic mutual constructs any more than it is acceptable to pretend that popular group-designations represent monolithic "traditions" (or even easily comprehended sets of sub-traditions). </p>
<p>A twin task emerges here. We must enfold and validate the previous layers while also asserting a new coherent scaffolding of organic-functional & trans-structuralist "types" which form the REAL traditions.</p>
<p>Religion here must be a temporalized spectrum of transrational tantric wholism dependent upon synchronization, creative appropriation of apparent incommensurability, and and advanced dialectical sensibility. </p>
<p>We assume that different modules/lines of development probably form the basis for a categorization of types of religious bubbles -- enacted in all quadrants and perceived distinctly at each layer of socio-cognitive reality. These basic types are the valid "traditions" when viewed from this level but they must be held alongside the embrace of non-pathological junior levels as well as held open for any degree of pragmatic usage among people whose temperament or prior-level conditioning leaves them instinctively skewed toward inherited styles.</p>
<p><strong>RECAP</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>If we start with <span style="text-decoration: underline;">traditional Traditions</span> and unfold one extra functional layer we discover the tradition as "options" -- modernism. </li>
<li>A further growth & migration reveals that these options do not pre-define our alternatives. They can (and ought) to be unpacked to reveal an indeterminate manifold of alternate options located between, within or off-to-the-side of the hegemonic menu.</li>
<li>Finally (sic) we peer down at all of this from a dizzying height and become struck with the need to re-establish the functional power of traditions on the basis on the alternative manifolds. </li>
</ul>
<p>Um, what?</p>
<ul>
<li>Traditional consciousness presumes a totalized core -- or "real nature" -- of a religion. Often this is associated with a book-dogma or particular famous passages therein. </li>
<li>Modern consciousness wants to know what these different <em>tradition-machines</em> do for different individuals. </li>
<li>Postmodern consciousness wants to include everything and thereby discovers a sliding scale of identities between all the normal and abnormal options. However this <span style="text-decoration: underline;">sliding scale</span> does not acknowledge the anchoring parameters which enable it to operate.</li>
<li>When those are enfolded a new set of structures appears as the justification of previous forms and suddenly we are required to <strong>re-group</strong> <strong>all the groups</strong> according to perspectival and enactive ingredients.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>THE SLIDING SCALE</strong></p>
<p>What do I mean by a "sliding scale" between alternatives? Consider the following two examples:</p>
<p>A cult of Medieval Buddhists practiced meditation in a very interesting fashion. They called upon a compassionate Buddha-of-Light by Name. He had once walked upon the historical earth but now lived in a heavenly afterworld. By getting right with this figure your soul could be reborn in this heaven. Here the grace of illumination is rapidly and easily attained. </p>
<p>Not only does this sound a lot like what we normally mean by "Christianity" it was also noted by Zen Master Hakuin that a profound, insight and hard-practicing Name-Praying Buddhist should be considered to be doing Zen.</p>
<p>The Christian monk named Eckhart prayed to the Virgin Mary in a special way. He made his mind still and empty like a virgin's womb so that an all-pervading and nameless wisdom-power would naturally flow in, impregnating him with a new self -- a "christ" who would feel, see and understand via the christ-mind. That sounds a lot like Zen Buddhism. </p>
<p>Very Buddhist Christianity. Very Christian Buddhism. </p>
<p>Our pluralist consciousness learns to situate people on a sliding scale of alternatives between these major blocs. But we must ask whether or not those blocs are sustainable? If these traditions are so various as to include each other in most practical ways then of what use are they as the reference-group at all? Why situate the sliding scale between them? Why not look for better grouping? Why not look as a zoologist would look -- and not a record-keeping of names would look.</p>
<p><strong>DHARMA & PRACTICE</strong></p>
<p>Nothing is lost when a post-traditionalist deconstructs and (except for pragmatic and respectful gestures) dispenses with the connection between religionized cultural sub-fields and received nominal religious typologies. Just as no magic is lost when we add a rational-technical understanding of the miracles of nature... although our pre-rational sentiments may contract uneasily in the face of such a shift... fearing to lose their bearings on what is most valuable. </p>
<p>So practices, which form the core (or, in some versions, the totality) of a religionized cultural sub-field, persist perfectly well without old-fashioned categorization. In fact they may themselves be the basis, when understood as perspectival and "developmental line" methods, of a superior classification system. </p>
<p>The dharma or logos is understood in traditional models as something like a fixed book of wisdom to be affirmed and ritually duplicated. At more complex levels we may view it as more akin to a bio-electronic conversation. A certain set of the potential algorithms of the universe correspond to the underlying maneuvres which are elaborated as the skills, probings and insights whose total pattern-attractor, including its potential for surprises, constitutes the spiritual and religious and "set". It can be engaged from within any local organismic, energetic or historical setting but, obviously, only in the degree to which those forms permit that generative conversation to occur. Initially some glimpses and experimental practices are more possible than others. Although as they produce depth, growth, coherence and divergence-convergence they tend to look more and more like the whole dharma. Given an unconstrained situation and indefinite time we can suppose that this fractal will eventually regenerate its basic attractor shape. However in contingent circumstances this only goes so far and therefore a great plethora of differences is apparent as the obvious fact. </p>
<p><strong>RELIGIONIZED CULTURAL SUB-FIELDS</strong></p>
<p>Spirituality is the work for personal coherence. Religion is the work for cultural coherence. It entangled, organizes and weds the various genres of social, biological and psychological collective activity in order to fulfill the intrinsically rewarding goal of production apotheotic "renaissance-like" degrees of surplus meaningful and aesthetically unique group empowerment. Because of its wholeness orientation (since we are looking at this phenomenon from a wholeness-level of understanding!) it is supposed to be a generic process working with the general background of civilization in any contemporary epoch. However in practice it appears first (and sometimes only) as sub-zones within the general condition of the culture -- and obviously we mean the total sapient culture of the planet and not the rather meager of local linguistic and thematic geographies. </p>
<p>So religionzed cultural sub-fields of intensified coherence, exhibiting the flavor of religiosity for the current civilization, arise by means of insightful and effortful compliance with whichever of the dharmic algorithms (practices!) can be instantiated effectively in its circumstance. These pools, insofar as they are operating with the same background civilization, are resonant with each other. They may therefore merge by "complement" or "progressive mutual approximation". </p>
<p><strong>ADDENDUM</strong></p>
<p>In addition to this striated vision of religious bubbles we must be aware that multiple types of bubbles may operate with largely overlapping sets of symbols and referents. This is because the actual activity of generative (en)closing, like that experience of a layer of consciousness, is anchored in the style of the context -- the holding -- and not exactly the content which is affirmed.</p>
<p>This is especially pertinent when it comes to social discussion. We have to make two critical distinctions: <strong>active vs. neutral</strong> (or even degenerative), <strong>sacred vs. topical</strong>.</p>
<p>1. The former implies that any communication (which reinforces a boundary by referencing it) might be vibrating with the freshness of new meaningfulness OR basically a mechanical reiteration. For example, the perpetuation of the signifier "Christ" may in one utterance operate to help continue the vitality of a particular religious bubble or it may be indifferent to such a function -- used without spirit in a manner whose effects are primarily (if not totally) inert relative to the establishment of the membrane around a field of cultural coherence.</p>
<p>The slogan "no one is neutral on a moving train" reminds us that non-progressive or non-resonant embodiments of zone-establishing signifiers quickly move from the status of placeholder to the status of underminer. Not carrying it forward frequently operates as if it were destructive. And yet it may use apparently the same symbols or rituals, etc.</p>
<p>2. Our second distinction requires that we tease apart the production of "talk bubbles" from "religious bubbles". Clearly there may be all kinds of overlap but it is not necessarily the case that a particular generative (en)closure is being established when it seems to be appearing in discussion and shared thinking. People frequently manipulate conversation TOPICS in order to discuss other topics which are urgent, titillating or nearby. </p>
<p>Just as any critical discussion of a thinker's positions may be quite valid while not actually pertaining to that person's ideas in any legitimate or comprehensive fashion, and just as the shadow of a celebrity can occupy a place in the politics of cyberspace which has little to do with their actual nature or positions (frequently unknown to the people discussing them) we can find this same pattern of "ghosts in the system" in the study of religious bubbles as well. </p>
<p>Therefore, at minimum, we need to make sure that we do not mistake the transactional economy of conversation -- whether populist, academic or apparently "devout" -- for the symbolic and cognitive processes which support the establishment of a generative (en)closure of the religious-group type. They may or may not be the same in any given instance. A great deal of hesitation is required in front of apparently obvious topics. Even those who appear supportive (and are therefore readily embraced and affirmed) may be supporting a phantom that simply bears an identical name in the discourse.</p>
<p>Hopefully this is all the beginning of a fruitful conversation...</p> The Postmodern Godtag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-09-04:5301756:Topic:580322014-09-04T18:05:28.802ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p>Here are the notes from the Christmas Wiki's entry on <a href="http://doowikis.com/m/Ec2ImSHFms" target="_blank">Postmodern Religion</a> as a follow up to the thread on Modern Religion. It a little more sprawling and unruly as we might expect from a complexity-oriented and still-emerging form of social context and human consciousness.</p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial; color: purple; font-size: 12pt;"><strong>the postmodern god</strong></span></p>
<div><p><em>Any concept or…</em></p>
</div>
<p>Here are the notes from the Christmas Wiki's entry on <a href="http://doowikis.com/m/Ec2ImSHFms" target="_blank">Postmodern Religion</a> as a follow up to the thread on Modern Religion. It a little more sprawling and unruly as we might expect from a complexity-oriented and still-emerging form of social context and human consciousness.</p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial; color: purple; font-size: 12pt;"><strong>the postmodern god</strong></span></p>
<div><p><em>Any concept or intuition of Deity appropriate to the Postmodern (pluralistic, or "meta-") cultural operating system.</em></p>
<p>The Postmodern God embodies an understanding of Divinity and Religion that expresses the characteristic sentiments and comprehension styles of postmodern individuals and communities. Such styles are commonly associated with the following concepts: <em>pluralism, "green meme" values, planetary multiculturalism, ecological & digital networks, multidimensionality, the "game-like" mutual creation of identity, deconstructionism, irony, virtual reality, psychoanalytic society, the linguistic turn in philosophy, relativity & complexity, etc. </em> Religionization of culture -- whether formal or informal -- is operative at this particular level when it is distinguished by some or all of the following elements:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Sacred Perspectival Diversity </strong>- The utility of multiple perspectives (and the unfathomed or apparently incommensurable space between them) exceeds rational pragmatism and begins a sacred principle. Therefore there is a tendency to treat monolithic truths as relatively unholy. <em>Interperspectival Context</em> functions as an invocational 'name of God'. </li>
<li><strong>Holy Vagueness </strong>- Although "almost religious" is already authentically religious at the Modern level of Society, the Postmodern view takes it one step further -- finding transcendental potency within the "almostness" itself. God-or-Whatever becomes one of the most common affirmed religious invocations. The generic, colloquial and virtual aspects of reality revealed by meta-cognition are progressively recognized as key facets of holiness. The <a href="http://doowikis.com/m/UVyt8dH27y">metaphysics of adjacency</a> begin to emerge. This growing awareness and valuation of the "nearly" is accompanied by "as if" beliefs. Religion becomes self-consciously flexible as its agents adapt to the "performative" holding of their enactment. At previously levels this ambiguity and incompletely would be experienced as insincerity or a diminished intensity but that is no longer the case at postmodern and higher. </li>
<li><strong>Re-Invention of the Self</strong> - shape-shifting, transformation, self-authoring, choosing your own "faith" and "identity".</li>
<li><strong>Archaic Revival - </strong>return of aboriginal, barbarian and paleolithic habits of religion -- tattooing, psychedelic, nature immersion, wilderness retreats, ancient diets, shagginess, shamanism, etc. </li>
<li><strong>Gender Rebalance</strong> - return of the feminine (including the body, sex, nature & the unconscious) as well as experimental and developmental play which remixes and reclarifies sexual roles.</li>
<li><strong>Organic Networks</strong> - expectation that both the universe and the organizations of religion should be more like electronic or biological networks than fixed mechanical or pyramidal structures. </li>
<li><strong>Groove Retrieval - </strong>the attempt by individuals to have their creative, trans-rational flow re-established.</li>
<li><strong>Acceleration</strong> -- the jump to light speed; sense of imminent transformation; evolution into incomprehensible light beings, etc.</li>
<li><strong>Evolving Truth-Epochs</strong> - paradigms; different dharmas for different phases of history; </li>
<li><strong>Ultimate Deity Teams</strong> - the chief gods & avatars are understood as a mutually supportive community of alternatives.</li>
<li><strong>Power of Belief itself </strong>- "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you believe in SOMETHING" -- as well as the many doctrines of the reprogramming of reality through intention, expectation and the potency of belief. </li>
<li><strong>Open-endedness - </strong>the apparent incompleteness, incommensurabilty or indefinite status of reality applies even to the Ultimate Reality and its bio-cultural machinery of sacralization.</li>
<li><strong>Appreciation of Chaos and Complexity</strong> - fractal beautify and infinity more sacred than linear perfection or "tidy" notions.</li>
<li><strong>Multiplicity & Idiosyncracy </strong>- manyness becomes holy and roots itself in the peculiar authenticity-attempts of individuals.</li>
<li><strong>Syncretism </strong>- a retro, historically-savvy, multicultural environment necessarily is stylized by the interblending and re-appropriation of apparently diverse and exotic elements.</li>
<li><strong>Ecology & Ingredients</strong> - the broader background is anchored in the experience of seeing into the parts of things; cells and biospheres; health and vitamins; galaxies & quarks; deep time & tiny archeological particles.</li>
</ul>
<p>A normal response to the Postmodern Deity (which is to say: typical, level-appropriate postmodern religion whether sophisticated or informal) tends to embrace all sentient beings & systems within a sacred attempt to improve the sensitive, multidimensional health and pleasure of the World. It requires periodic psychological, physical and social forms of "therapeutic embrace" and bio-energetic arousal to the point of synchronicity. Also regular encounters with the mystery of the edge-of-thinkability. Any form of religion exhibiting these elements should be considered as Postmodern. And anyone embracing these must be considered as an active participant in modern-level religion. </p>
<p>It is common (but also quite superficial and premature) to view the Spirit of Postmodernity in opposition to the notion of DEFINITE religion and a SINGULAR God. However those are versions of religion applicable to mythic and to some degree <a href="http://doowikis.com/m/QE8aleycXT">modernist religion</a>. </p>
<strong>The 7 Limbs of Postmodernist Religion </strong><br />
<p>We may say that there are four main Modernist "religious perspectives". These are: <em>Neo-Paganism, New Age, Interfaith Monotheism, Entertainment Cults, "Western Buddhism", Sacred Ecology & Digital Transmutation Movements</em>. Once we have understood that these are forms of Religion (i.e. that none of them, regardless of their attitude toward mythic religiosity, constitutes an anti-religious stance) then we are empowered to inspect the basic religious characteristics of Postmodernity.</p>
<p>This general platform of religion became common in the 19th century but is not unique to the world formed by print literacy & international industry. In fact rational religious agents were central players in the history of faith from the Axial Age onward. There are many ways of describing and intuiting the rational, natural and absence-like power of the Chief Deity. Buddhists frequently discussed An-Atman (the non-present Great Spirit). Egyptian priests spoke of Osiris being vacant from his throne -- wandering unseen in the underworld. And Christianity has long been characterized by the motif of "God's Death" and the rolling away of the stone to reveal that Christ's tomb is mysteriously empty.</p>
<p>Such images feed into and describe a general layer of religion. It can be seen occurring almost interchangeably within the following common forms: </p>
<div><strong>1. Neo-Paganism</strong></div>
<p>Wicca, Neo-Shamanism, Reformed Druidism, Asatru; Geomancy; Forest Bathing; Wilderness Raves. Sacred Body Art. Orgiastic rites. Intoxication, sexuality and the holiness of natural locations become standard religious practices.</p>
<p><strong>2. The New Age</strong></p>
<p>Theosophical, psychic; metaphysical revival occasioned by preliminary East/West esoteric fusion. Often with a strong reliance on the pluralism-friendly, altered-states traditions of Vedic yoga & philosophy from India.</p>
<p><strong>3. Interfaith Monotheism</strong></p>
<p>Socially progressive & "inter-religiously friendly" versions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam. Also Baha'i, etc. </p>
<p><strong>4. Entertainment Cults</strong></p>
<p>Humor & Fantasy sects. The production of religious sentiments and rituals from the content of books, movies, etc. As well as humorous and reversal religions like the Discordians, The Church of Satan, The Church of the SubGenius, etc. It can be readily observed that "hollywood stars" and "internet celebrities" function like the pantheon of demi-gods in pagan civilizations. Into this group we must also put hobbyists who take their modern hobby (e.g. the sacred allure of classic cars) to the next level (e.g. building a replica out of butter, sending the car to the bottom of the ocean with a live camera on board. Postmodern religion is commonly characterized by informal and temporary circles of free-sharing and in the context of entertain cults this often takes the form of surrealistic open and the mutual affirmation of personally pleasing remixes, modification and transfigurations of a shared pools of content. It also includes sacred transformational symbolists -- i.e. figures like Madonna, Lady Gaga and others who publicly communicate charged content with little regard to its signification and who frequently manifest re-invention, costume change and self-transformation.</p>
<p><strong>5. "Western Buddhism"</strong></p>
<p>The combination of right-brain practices with capitalism-friendly form of private spirituality, zen for effectiveness, etc. Yoga for health and beauty. Increased creativity through neurological yogas. Stress-reduction. The aesthetics of color and energy. The aesthetic experience of "boggling" the mind with apparent paradox and counter-intuitive notions that extend reality indefinitely in mere potential. The holiness of "alpha waves" and other resting, self-aware, creative brain states. </p>
<p><strong>6. Sacred Ecology</strong></p>
<p>Gaia & eco-crusades. The Living Web. Organic prices and "green taxes" as a form of tithing. Symbolic social "recycling" rituals and the attempt to gain blessing through "conservation" and "minimization".</p>
<p><strong>7. Digital Transmutation Movements.<br/></strong></p>
<p>AI, cyber-immortality, being information, becoming-light, technological transmuation. Sacred "concerts" in which entheogenic chemicals are combined with patterns of digital sound to orient the nervous system into digital space and the sense of trans-bodily immortality.</p>
</div> Gross, Subtle, Causal & Nondual are NOT State-Stagestag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-09-01:5301756:Topic:580202014-09-01T20:09:57.687ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p></p>
<p><em>Stimulated by a conversation in the Integral Life forum I entered into a period of private pondering which produced the following 17 points. They are, I would argue, quite consonant with the basic scaffolding of Integral Theory although obviously somewhat divergent from the usual, casual or populist-Vedantic communication of that theory.</em></p>
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<p><strong>1.</strong> "States" can refer to many things but this term becomes frequently misleading when applied to the 4…</p>
<p></p>
<p><em>Stimulated by a conversation in the Integral Life forum I entered into a period of private pondering which produced the following 17 points. They are, I would argue, quite consonant with the basic scaffolding of Integral Theory although obviously somewhat divergent from the usual, casual or populist-Vedantic communication of that theory.</em></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>1.</strong> "States" can refer to many things but this term becomes frequently misleading when applied to the 4 implicit ontological domains (gross, subtle, causal & nondual) -- even if we are consider them as "states of access to realms" or "alternate bodies") </p>
<p><strong>2.</strong> <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Each basic domain exhibits its own 4-quadrant reality</span>. There are subjective, objective, intersubjective & collective-structural (configurational) aspects in each of the 4 domains. Gross, subtle, causal & nondual domains unfold outward in singular, plural, inner and outer dimensions, expanding in circles of increasing complexity, inclusion and profundity. This can be mapped.</p>
<p><strong>3.</strong> Each structural stage or layer of development, along any line, stabilizes a progressive degree of the integration of these 4 domain-genres of experience. </p>
<p><strong>4.</strong> Meditations of all kinds (not only "witnessing" meditations) move identity temporarily from less coherent to more coherent degrees of functioning. They do not move upward through levels of gross to subtle to causal to nondual (although that appearance is understandable).</p>
<p><strong>5.</strong> Meditation progresses through an increasingly familiar sequence of inter-phases between a starting point and the culmination threshold (whether it is reached or not).</p>
<p><strong>6.</strong> Meditation begins with the current circumstantial degree of coherence at your current structural stage (including its degree of integration of the 4 basic domains).</p>
<p><strong>7.</strong> Meditation moves through progressively stable and comprehensively coherent inter-phases which intensity proximity to an absorptive (or else <em>epiphanic</em>) threshold which indicates the ego's current tolerance for experiential coherence.</p>
<p><strong>8.</strong> Progressive inter-phases of meditation are increasingly integrated (temporary) blends of the 4 basic domains.</p>
<p><strong>9.</strong> The <em>epiphanic limit</em> of your tolerance for coherence occurs at the emergence boundary of your next structural stage.</p>
<p><strong>10.</strong> Each subsequent structural stage exhibits more and more of the overall pattern of development through the temporary inter-phases of domain integration. Thus the structural layers sequentially reveal a more complete picture of the journey along the stage-stages (inter-phases) toward generic epiphanic coherence.</p>
<p><strong>11.</strong> Emergent structural stages unfold or elaborate implicit (but radically minimal) involutional pattern potentials which initially inhabit relatively separate (pre-integrated) domains.</p>
<p><strong>12.</strong> Previous integrators have laid down "morphic grooves" which make higher degrees and more expansive spheres of integration more probable/accessible.</p>
<p><strong>13.</strong> Meditation oscillates between, or rapidly traverses, elements of all 4 domains -- organizing them to produce "higher state-stages". </p>
<p><strong>14.</strong> Meditation with a mystical focus upon the "witness" tends to progressively emphasis the causal domain and its effects. However...</p>
<p><strong>15.</strong> Meditation with subtle energy tends to initiate conductivity (either ascending or descending-ascending) through the frequencies, qualities and functional spectrum of the "chakras". And meditation done by bodily manipulations tends to produce health and capacity.</p>
<p><strong>16.</strong> The emphasis on movement from the gross identity concerns through subtle forms to causal identity and then supra-causal absorption represents a particular emphasis relative to a particular class of meditation methods and a particular temperament of meditators and theorists.</p>
<p><strong>17.</strong> The transcend-and-include mechanism is associated with a Transcendental Subjective Potential -- presumed to radically enable conditional subjectivity to transform itself by enfolding its previous patterns as objects and subsequently identifying with an expanded ego. However the notion that this Transcendent "virtual something" is the "I-I" or "I AM" tends to typically emphasize the Causal domain form. Yet it is equally associated with each of the other domains. Thus certain styles of embodiment, qualitative energy and in/difference can also operate the mechanism of integration. </p> The Modern Godtag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-08-22:5301756:Topic:576932014-08-22T17:01:37.688ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p><span>Hi. This is Layman Pascal. I was just tinkering with my Christmas Wiki entry on the <a href="http://doowikis.com/m/QE8aleycXT" target="_blank">Modern God</a> and realized that it might be interesting content for general post-metaphysical discussion. Although it deals only with religion at the level of modern ("orange") consciousness it can still clarify a lot about the overall situation of religious awareness at post-mythic stages of development.…</span></p>
<p><span>Hi. This is Layman Pascal. I was just tinkering with my Christmas Wiki entry on the <a href="http://doowikis.com/m/QE8aleycXT" target="_blank">Modern God</a> and realized that it might be interesting content for general post-metaphysical discussion. Although it deals only with religion at the level of modern ("orange") consciousness it can still clarify a lot about the overall situation of religious awareness at post-mythic stages of development. Enjoy...</span></p>
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<p><span><strong>The Modern God:</strong></span></p>
<p><em>Any concepts or intuitions of Deity which is appropriate to the Modern/Rational cultural operating system.</em></p>
<p>The Modern God is primarily characterized by (a) natural order (b) absence. </p>
<p>A normal response to the Modern Deity embraces all humanity (all individuals) within a sacred attempt to rationally improve inner and outer world-conditions while periodically submitting to Cosmic Wonder. Any form of religion exhibiting these elements should be considered as Modern. And anyone embracing these must be considered as an active participant in modern-level religion. </p>
<p>It is common (but also quite superficial and premature) to view the Spirit of Modernity in opposition to the notion of God. This is most likely the historical result of an over-attachment to the concept of the Mythological God which persist within the struggle to free ourselves from ethnocentric dogmatism. It is also has roots in the failure of many Modernists to acknowledge their particular style of religious and to produce many conscious "priests" or "consecrators" responsible for specifying that God must meet Modern Rational standards. </p>
<p><strong>The Problem of Post-Mythic Religion</strong></p>
<p>A developmental model of history and psychology observes several stages of adaptation beyond mythic-membership consciousness -- which is common to traditionalist, dogmatic & believer-patriotism society. More complex cultural operating systems are typically referred to as Rational (modern), Pluralistic, Wholistic & Transpersonal. And while it is not unusual to encounter people whose values and cognitive capacity are rational, pluralistic or higher, the general impression of Religion still remains locked into its mythic definition. </p>
<p>One notable element of this problem is the widespread difficulty in the "developed world" of engaging in profoundly sane and transformative relationship with Ultimate Reality in the 2nd Person (i.e. as a Divine Other). This continues to strike many modernists as an inherently dangerous relic of mythic nationalism. Even many spiritual practitioners feel that this has no place in higher forms of consciousness. </p>
<p>A general (but obviously not total) developmental arrest of the Concept of Religion & the Relationship-to-God confronts us. Religion remains largely stuck, in the popular consciousness, among groups of mythological claimants and seems unable to make a widespread transition into the good conscience of the modern world. Although this is changing. Such changes require a basic shift in our sense of God and Religion such that they can be understand as viable elements of Modernity and not merely the inheritance of mythic orthodoxy.</p>
<p><strong>The 4 Limbs of Modernist Religion </strong></p>
<p>We may say that there are four main Modernist "religious perspectives". These are: <em>Deism, Atheism, Agnosticism & Aprolepticism</em>. Once we have understood that these are forms of Religion (i.e. that none of them, regardless of their attitude toward mythic religiosity, constitutes an anti-religious stance) then we are empowered to inspect the basic religious characteristics of Modernity.</p>
<p>This general platform of religion became common in the 19th century but is not unique to the world formed by print literacy & international industry. In fact rational religious agents were central players in the history of faith from the Axial Age onward. There are many ways of describing and intuiting the rational, natural and absence-like power of the Chief Deity. Buddhists frequently discussed An-Atman (the non-present Great Spirit). Egyptian priests spoke of Osiris being vacant from his throne -- wandering unseen in the underworld. And Christianity has long been characterized by the motif of "God's Death" and the rolling away of the stone to reveal that Christ's tomb is mysteriously empty.</p>
<p>Such images feed into and describe a general layer of religion. It can be seen occurring almost interchangeably within the following common forms: </p>
<p><strong>Deism</strong></p>
<p>Deity is the Unseen Source of Rational Natural Order. The Name of God is -- the Universe. Both Pantheism (God IS Nature) and Divine Reason may be placed here. Hegel & certain Ancient Greeks proposed that the "Nous" (Rational Spirit) is the God who progressively orders human History and brings patterns to light. It is a science-friendly, progressive & Wonder-ful Spirit.</p>
<p><strong>Atheism</strong></p>
<p>There is Natural Order but Deity appears non-existent. The Name of God is "No God" or "Chance & Progress". </p>
<p><strong>Agnosticism</strong></p>
<p>God is an Unknown Fact -- an uncertainty. The Name of God is "I don't Know" which leaves us facing the apparent Natural Order with a wonder-like embrace.</p>
<p><strong>Aprolepticism</strong></p>
<p>God is not the kind of thing which can be rationally asked about. The Name of God is: "It makes no sense to ask". The observed natural order of the universe and the rational mind is such that propositions about God, positive or negative, invoke that which cannot appear.</p>
<p>To clarify the modernity-appropriate forms and concept of Religion we must clarify and emotionally affirm the common elements of all these "modern, rational, individual" attitudes.</p> A First Swipe at Pseudo-Ferrertag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-08-10:5301756:Topic:574752014-08-10T16:47:39.854ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p style="text-align: center;"></p>
<p>Hi. I'm the Layman Pascal. </p>
<p>And, look, I'm no expert on Ferrer (pictured below from his early TV work). However a few of his points agitate my nostrils and get my goat. I love that goat! To say these words, even in silliness, is something like praise. Why? Because one is seldom irritated by positions unless they stand close enough to one's own sentiments -- they are <em>same enough to be different</em>. </p>
<p>Or maybe Ferrer isn't even…</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"></p>
<p>Hi. I'm the Layman Pascal. </p>
<p>And, look, I'm no expert on Ferrer (pictured below from his early TV work). However a few of his points agitate my nostrils and get my goat. I love that goat! To say these words, even in silliness, is something like praise. Why? Because one is seldom irritated by positions unless they stand close enough to one's own sentiments -- they are <em>same enough to be different</em>. </p>
<p>Or maybe Ferrer isn't even standing there? I am not a comprehensive student of his nuances. I am clearly speaking "against" the partial, hypothetical argument of Somebody-Who-Ferrer-Superficially-Makes-Me-Think-Of. That guy's positions, presumably, do not characterize the total depth of Ferrer's understanding -- nor should they. We are dealing with Somebody who is vaguely Ferrerish in certain respects. To deal with Ferrer I would have to become Ferrer!</p>
<p>So what is an over-generalization of this mysterious Somebody's positions? Basically that some (or most) <em>integrative approaches</em> to religious pluralism maintain a non-objective privileging of certain religions above others. Or else they tend toward a reductive, merely psychologizing, elimination of the transcendental-ontological element upon which religion depends. And that, further, the future of religion may be approximated by envisioning one or more outcomes based on the interactions or cessations of "religions".</p>
<p>Nothing could be further from the truth... </p>
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<p><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Jose_Ferrer_in_Crisis_trailer.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Jose_Ferrer_in_Crisis_trailer.jpg" class="align-center" height="236" width="300"/></a></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>1.</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>True Religious Diversity vs. Diverse "Faith-Traditions"</strong></p>
<p>We should all try to remember the difference between types-of-religious-activity & historically-nominated "popular faith-traditions". Integral thinking requires that we dis-embed the former from the latter. </p>
<p>That does not mean that there is no role for the study of what are conventionally called "religions" nor that we should fail to be generously-hearted and politically pragmatic in honoring their representatives. Those who say they are Wiccans (and of whom it is said "They are Wiccans!") need not be insulted or trivialized by an attitude which denies Wicca-hood the status of a basic religious categorization. But at the same time we should be honest with ourselves.</p>
<p>Honesty means taking a stand with our actual position. A relativist enters into a performative contradiction when she denies that "no absolutes" is an absolutist stance. It is inauthentic. Likewise it is inauthentic for modern, post-modern and integrative thinker-feelers to allow ethnocentric, tribal and merely conventional naming of "religious traditions" to be the starting point of our study. We must begin with the evidence of those people who meet our own standard of "really religious" and -- before allowing categorization to occur -- tease them apart from those who merely say (or are said to be) members of this or that group due to their social association with a particular set of symbols and a superficial similarity of practices. </p>
<p>We should understand that a deeper and more functional set of primary categories of religion, and of our basic sense of religion, are required. The various sub-types of Yoga (a word with almost the same etymology as <em>re-ligio</em>) are one example of a categoreal system much closer in spirit to integral analysis -- for we observe that their are messianic anticipations in Islam, prayerful heavens in Buddhism, Zen forms of Christianity, and many other obvious movements which counteract the conventional distinctions. This evidence should not be ignored or minimized in favor of the merely popular tendency to think in terms of known religions -- whether half a dozen or several hundred. </p>
<p>When integral thinkers deal with Buddhism or Christianity or Wicca or anything else they (by the implication of the basic elaborated components of integral thought) should be envisioning, <em>inter alia,</em> levels, lines, quadrants & the "faces of God". These are the primitive perspectival components upon which typology and therefore group designation should occur. </p>
<p>This is analogous to the idea that Membership is not democratic. Democracy is demands a participatory body of individuals whereas "state, party or geographic membership" formally resembles pre-modern social organization. This is only one area in which we go astray in the very concept of analyzing "problems of democracy" without clarifying that they are the non-democratic elements in the political system. Likewise our analysis, no matter how advanced, of religion will run aground and stagnate insofar as we permit non-religious phenomena to occupy the status of religious phenomena. Basic distinctions of this kind must preceded the use of "religious traditions" as a conceptual tool or else the entire enterprise is misled and misleading no matter how brilliant and sympathetic we may find it to be.</p>
<p>An integral vision, for example, treats a Christian person with <em>formal operational cognition and orthodox emotional investments in their cultural imagery, who is co-generating Divinity through a second-person lens</em> as <span style="text-decoration: underline;">far more equivalent</span> to a Buddhist person doing the same thing as either are in comparison to the next arbitrary person who confesses to subscribe to the same "belief and ritual system".</p>
<p>The epitome of integrative approaches in general demands a pre-clarification of the diverse referents operating behind common signifiers and then a grouping on that basis prior to analysis. This is the heart of Wilber's approach which we find in areas such as his requirement that one of the 4 or 5 main signifieds of the signifier "spirituality" be specified prior to any theoretically (i.e. not merely evocative, populist) analysis.</p>
<p>What's more, the complaint that any given integrative thinker is privileging this or that tradition (e.g. Advaita, Zen...) depends upon our assumption that such traditions are valid referents within integrative thought -- rather than merely convenient and politically pragmatic illustrations. We over-emphasize their significance by assuming that their status can be over-emphasized. It is analogous to the situation of people remaining patterned by the symbols and culture through which they initially accessed higher states of being. Once they have acknowledged that this is the case we must treat their peculiarities of phrasing in a different light -- as implying a more general phenomenon through their personally-experienced forms of habit. This should not cause us to overreact as though they were specially citing these forms.</p>
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<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>2.</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Religion is the Social Correlate but not the Social Extension of Spirituality</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">We have been exploring the idea that <em>beliefs, the dialectic between believers & non-believers, membership, orthodox mysticism, pre-rationality, conformity,</em> etc. are not notable characteristics of religion per se but rather -- when seen through a developmental lens -- predictable characteristics only of religion at the socio-cognitive worldspace which is itself characterized by those elements. And to that observation we should add the idea that religion is not merely the social extension of spiritual insights and experiences. We should not be privileging "spirituality" in our quest to understand religion any more than we should be privileging the intersubjective social organization patterns of traditionalist consciousness. </p>
<p style="text-align: left;">In the initial acceptance of standard "religious traditions" as units of organization we risk pathology -- which is the hijacking of more complex layers of integration of understanding by the patterns of less complex or less integrated systems. When an organism serves geology instead of life it is pathological. When a modern, post-modern or integrative soul using ethnocentric "believer-based" notions of religion there is likewise a problematic risk. However there is another risk which is not pathological in this same sense. It results from a failure to differentiate between the core of religious activity and the core of spiritual activity. This is a common conflation in people who feel that a great deal of pragmatic spiritual wisdom and practice is under-emphasized by putative "religious organizations". It represents an attempt to heal religion (or, more accurately, to skew it toward actual religious activity) by insisting upon the greater inclusion of the spiritual dimension of individuals within cultural activity. However it is this inclusion of a genre of experience into the general cultural field which constitutes the core of religious activity.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Once religion has been differentiated from "claimed membership" and "local symbols and terminology" we encounter a phenomena that operates irrespective of the overly casual distinction between the secular & the sacred. We have encountered something which is equi-valid in those areas where we say, half-jokingly, that one operates his love of food, fly-fishing or home decor "religiously". These and other naturally occurring religious phenomena must join with the authentically religious instances within faith-traditions to provide the natural scientific basis of a theory of religion. Ultimately this is, more or less, convergent with terms like "renaissance" or "civilization" or "cultural flourishing". This should not surprise us. As soon as we are post-orthodox in our approach to religion we are studying something which has no special connection to its linguistic label -- just as a zoologist's interest in frogs takes for granted that the word "frog" is not specially connected to the natural phenomenon they are studying.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">RELIGION therefore more closely resembles the successful cultivation of excess bio-cultural coherence -- or "meaningfulness" and "edification" -- from within any aspect of the general social field of the contemporary epoch. The notion of contemporary is key. Nostalgia for previous phases of the degree-of-religiosity-of-culture all too often dominates and hijacks discussions. The affirmation of the religionizing activities of ancient Romanized Jews bear only the most tangential relationship to what religion means today. If it mean something in the present moment "back then" then it means something equally in the present moment today. We must not let the study of religious history be conflated with the study of religion no matter how many regressive and merely nostalgic elements rampantly assert themselves as the social standard-bearers of religion. One might even argue that the prominent of such sentiments is a sign of the misunderstanding (and therefore the inadequate production) of actual religion in our epoch.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Generally speaking people are much more inclined to accept contemporaneity as a feature of individual spiritual experience than of religious activity. Perhaps they even look forward to a time when "religions" incorporate more of today's spiritual attitudes and practices. However this view is slightly askew. It obscures the perpetual contemporaneity of religion itself.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Religion should not be viewed as the social activity of spiritually-active individuals but rather as the social correlate of spirituality. That means that processes of spiritual development (i.e. the progressive integration of sub-personalities, energies and states to create depth and an excess of feeling-attention over the contents of cognition) within an individual are paralleled socially by the progressive integration of genres of human activity to produce novel aesthetic depth and a (spoken or unspoken, conscious or unconscious) sense of surplus resonance which is the self-apotheosis of otherwise secular/pagan society.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">In this view of religion -- which I have outlined and clarified in numerous places -- we can assume a modernity-appropriate set of definitions. This appear initially idiosyncratic but quickly fit organically into place as they rehabilitate classic religious terminology without unnecessarily relegating its meaning to prior time periods or the Other-Who-is-Presumed-to-Believe. We look down upon or contextually around such things and require a definition that is consonant with our actual viewpoint -- one which also actively undermines our allegiance to inadequate forms. For example: an <strong>infidel</strong> is someone who believes in the existence of "believers vs. non-believers" -- regardless of what side they imagine themselves to be on. That is to say a person whose contextual assumptions about religion are insufficient for the current world situation and thereby do not participate in "christendom" in its broad contemporary sense. </p>
<p style="text-align: left;">This operates very harmoniously with the widespread practice of meeting people and affirming our lack of "believership" prior to discussing our ideas, allegiances, sentiments and experiences. In a global context most authentic religion is exchanged under the holy sign of uncertainty or denial of fixed allegiance. But this should be taken as a specifically religious situation and not as "agnostic" or "spiritual but not religious". Those notions maintain the pernicious habit of over-weighting outdated membership-clans as the primary referent of religious discussion.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>3</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Religious Pluralism</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">But I would go ever further -- extending this principle into the assertion that religion is a noun with no plural (i.e. more like "Life" than like "lives"; more like "style" than like "fashion fads"; more like "water" than like "lakes"). On this basis we examine examples of religious activity as extensions of the general concept rather than trying to approximate the general concept from traditionally asserted examples.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">In fact there is even <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em>a subtle narcissism in the concept of religious pluralism</em></span>. </p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Why? Firstly because it operates on a definition of religion which capitulates to narrow (more narcissistic) cultural pools as if outdated tribal and ethnocentric worldspaces were a legitimate "given" from which to reason about the general and future possibilities of religion. Secondly because it imputes an unnecessary and peculiar notion that honoring diversity in religion equates to affirming our culture's popular discourse about who the religions are (i.e. what "names" we have heard about). And thirdly because it perpetuates subtle hegemonic and isolationist aggression that reside within conventional political and academic forms of discourse on the subject of so-called "different religions". </p>
<p style="text-align: left;">In opposition to these and other linear models of religion I would suggest a metaphorical fractal -- in which a basic pattern attractor is being re-formed from differing intitial circumstances by the reiteration of a particular procedure. Human religion, although variable and emergent, roughly constitutes a comprehensive whole which is progressively approximated by ongoing religious development starting from any particular cultural pool.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Neuro-biological and anthropological studies (which can neither be removed from the essence of religion nor can they claim to comprehensively elucidate it) demonstrate the general universality of the functions in human bio-spiritual organisms which are used in various situations to generate religious experience and forms. While not all of them are used in any given local context that is not reason to assert the essential variety of these contexts. The religious "phonemes" from which local language might derive comprise the actual human alphabet regardless of the styles and differences which WE have come to conventionally associated with this or that group. </p>
<p style="text-align: left;">This becomes apparent when we deal with supposedly aboriginal groups whose religious terminology is often left in its natural mythic state (Great Spirit, etc.). What shines forth is the colloquial, universal functions separated from the particular names and sub-cultures which have sprung in particular geographic and historical regions. In fact the perpetuation of the toxic (anti-humanist) custom of non-translation of religion terms maintains an exotic allure which exaggerates the diversity of the variable local and partial expressions of the basic human package of "religious enactment machinery". </p>
<p>We should be thinking of religion as though we were discussing the biological realities of the reproduction of children and not the relatively superficial matter of local sexual customs. Focus on the customary elements maintains false and ultimately unjustified patterns of division which are used to maintain inter-cultural antagonism and subtle hegemony. </p>
<p>The typical habit, for example, of not translating the word "Allah" into English may appear as either respectful or conventional but it subtly alienates THEM and denies them our colloquial comprehension of their ultimate signifiers. Maintaining exoticism isolates us and ostracizes the Other. But when we release this pernicious habit we find that almost the entire basis for discussing the plurality of religions vanishes.</p>
<p>We observe that the tendency to identify "a" religion with the local geological, racial or historical grouping which provides the cultural context in which basic human religionizing functions were partially enacted is one that both denies full dignity to that group and refuses the basic understanding which leads to the appropriate production of religion today from out of our current colloquial and total cultural context.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>4. </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>"Looking Down on Each Other"</strong></p>
<p>We need not impute hegemony to either mutual recognition or evaluative comparison. The notion that religions typically "look down upon each other" is narrow. The majority of this is merely the contingent effect of comparing religious form derived in tribal and ethnocentric contexts and mistaking that level (i.e. below the current context) for a characteristic of religion. That is to say the matter is not simple. To discuss "looking down" means avoiding the self-involved trap of treating this as a monolithic negative phenomenon to be minimized. The diverse sources and potential positive and negative version of "looking down" must be elaborated between religions and also where such normal inter-type antagonism are perpetuated in religious studies. Where ought it to be maintained as a mechanism of flourishing? Where ought it to be undermined as the inertia of pre-rational, pre-humanist bias?</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>5. </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Implicit Divine Univocal Plurality</strong></p>
<p>Unity is a grouping-into-one. It requires the retroactive presumption of prior multiplicity (i.e. there was a "set" which got grouped). However prior multiplicity shares a common element of "manyness" which operates in certain respects as if it were a non-monistic One. We see that plurality occupies or converges into the "spot" that is announced in various traditions as their apex encounter with transcendental unity. This is the appropriate location of plurality in religious study -- and not at the false and merely conventional socio-historical level of "different religions". </p>
<p>The supposition of an indeterminate Divine Other (with whom we co-enact equi-valid transcendental formats) has <span style="text-decoration: underline;">two main problems</span>:</p>
<p><strong>a)</strong> It mislocates the Divine Univocal Plurality as though it were in a relational "elsewhere" which can be contacted. This risks nihilistic thinking by attributing a void, non-existential status to the ontological Divine. While it may not assert this directly, it tends to provoke the sense of negotiating with a pre-existing "it" who is located elsewhere. The vision of this negotiation constitutes a seductive opportunity to conceive a proto-metaphysical Other in distinction to the manifest world or else a specific nebulous entity within the cosmos. The unthinkableness of such a scenario ought to eliminate it from our thinking -- even though, clearly, no higher vision can operate without some assimilation of the boundary-of-thinkability. It is simply that the implication of an "other side" to this boundary is problematic.</p>
<p><strong>b)</strong> It serves to explain -- and thereby reinforce -- the essentially irreligious notion of religion as a field of alternative validities which are fantasized in response to superficial differences of phraseology and divergent political belief-claims. </p>
<p>The first situation is false until the implicit, intrinsically divergent-convergent and transformationally secular nature of the sacred is made explicit. And the second problem remains in effect until all terms grouped as "religious" are entered into a single, non-exotic language context and understood as valid relative to the implied background worldspace in which its major cultural elements are arising AND all of this is comprehended akin to a fractal unfolding of partial and progressive variants of a common existential, neuro-biological and spiritual syntax which generates novel relgionization at the site of coherent de-genre-fication within any "secular" situation.</p>
<p></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>6.</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Levels of Complexity of Religion are not Devaluations</strong></p>
<p>The multiple "turnings of the wheel" in Buddhism provide an illustrative example of how people do not imply, via the claim of additional more complete layers, any reduction in the status of other versions of religion. The Greater Vehicle of Lord Whitesnake (nagarjuna) and later the Tantric and other forms of Buddhism articulate an expanding hierarchy of inclusion which does not diminish the perceived ultimacy of Siddhartha's teachings or status. This should be taken as a general fact that the proponents of layers of complexity whereby manifestations of religion can be compared and evaluated are in no sense demeaning or diminishing each other. </p>
<p>To postulate that nonduality traditions exceed, all other things being equal, traditions which affirm the merely Unconditional or Mythic-Astral forms of Divinity merely makes a claim about the relative level of syntactical comprehensiveness implied by the languaging AND the developmental observation that one understanding tends to emerge out of another -- but not vice versa. There is no sneaky devaluing necessarily implied by this and one might equally seek the source of such devaluing in the psychology of the one who interprets the structure in that fashion. Perhaps he who smelt it dealt it. </p>
<p>Even such phrases as "highly dubious equivalences" suggest a pre-existing bias which mislocates essential religious diversity in the surface diversity of asserted traditions -- which I would insist is the least significant aspect for religious study. </p>
<p></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>7.</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>The Mutually Supportive Styles & Interior Levels of Religious Pluralisms</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Ecumenical pluralism is correct. Or not. All the styles of pluralism are styles which admit to more or less depth, more or less comprehensiveness and coherence -- depending on who is holding them at any given time. </p>
<p>Just as the religious function in human affairs (the general function which combines human affairs) depends upon the perspective and capacity of individuals and is not directly correlated to to their nominal inclusion in an asserted social faith-category but, rather, dependent upon hidden styles and layers of structure, so to are the various formats of "religious pluralism" also available to every kind of approach. </p>
<p>It makes no sense -- in this sense -- to distinguish participatory co-enaction of ontological spiritual truth in relationship to an undefined Spirit from things like ecumenical, soteriological or post-modern religious pluralism. Those categories either do not strictly apply (or else are used simply as markers to assert parameters which are required in order to isolate a particular layer/phase of understanding within the pluralistic mode). </p>
<p>We may say that an integrative pluralism requires (as per soteriology) a diversity of redemptive states whose existential ambivalence toward phenomenology and ontology must be taken as a clarification of the qualitative and functional nature of the operation involved in such transformative possibilities. We may say that (with post-modernity) a grammatical analysis must underlie a pluralistic theology. We may say (with ecumenical pluralism) that the recognition of types of religious activity must be set apart from linguistic and social categories (i.e. who is a Christian). </p>
<p>These are not refuted possibilities of pluralism but elements in the general set of requirements for establishing coherent religiosity in a pluralistic or post-pluralistic epoch. </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>8.</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>The Future of Religion</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>As for the future of Religion? </p>
<p>The options (triumph of one faith, hybrid of many, mutually changed mutations, spirituality without religion, etc.) are merely a scattering of points which collectively produce a vague description of what the generic religionizing tendency and skill-set of human beings is already doing. In that sense it is both fairly accurate but also NOT a set of alternatives. </p>
<p>Since there are no multiple religions we do not look forward through the lens of combinations, dominations or relinquishments. Such outcomes and remixes are demonstrations of the cultural circumstance of the emerging world but must be carefully teased apart from religiosity. </p>
<p>When people take turns making dinner, this does not amount to a new phase of the human digestive process. The workings of digestion are largely distinct from changes in the kitchen. They inform a more or less healthy adaption to whatever resources we have available to consume but are not thereby entered into particularly new situations or combinations of old situations. </p>
<p>The patterns of stylistic interaction between "traditions" and "claim-groups" are <em>relatively insignificant epiphenomena</em> to the religious activity of human beings -- both that which gave rise to past religious validities and that which is current producing today's and tomorrow's validities. Just as in the past, the majority of this activity passes un-nominated. It is "secular" so to speak because it is (a) not necessarily an object of religious assertion (b) rested in functions which modify the vitality of today -- vitality which is commonly excluded by those groups which seek to reject actual religion in favor of the nostalgic commitment to an outdated and exotic religiosity.</p>
<p>Religion is active now under the guise of secular meaningfulness reaching for depth and surplus coherence outside of conventional cultural categorizations (which are historically and for the future) indicators of non-religiousness. And, yes, some of this activity occurs within individuals and groups who fancy themselves or politically identify as "religions" -- but they are by far the junior partners in religion. Religion has never waited upon the name "religion" but is actively only where uplifting re-connection and trans-genre cultural integration permits bio-psycho-social and interpersonal evocation of excess coherence at any "level" and in any "zone" of being. </p>
<p>Today "spiritual but not religious" is a popular, cautious name for today-and-tomorrow's religion. Such phrasing is uniquely suited to a world wherein claims about religion invoke danger and stress. However the up-raising of our current bio-cultural experience, via the integration of genres and the flourishing of spiritual in real time, goes on irregardless of belonging to a "tradition" or not. </p>
<p>The activity of religionizing inevitably begins with partial expressions (i.e. of some subset of religion) emerging from the cultivating of local culture -- but always in reference to the general understanding of the cultural background.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>epilogue</strong></p>
<p>Although I (and we) share most of Ferrer's vision for the kind of religiosity we would like to see in the future we must temper that with three things:</p>
<p>(a) a de-emphasis on "religions" as the primary example of human religious activity and the replacement of outdated (contemporaneously inauthentic) definitions by modern and post-modern understandings.</p>
<p>(b) a clarification of the distinction between religion & spirituality -- where we understand this gap to mean more than simply the fact that spiritual activated individuals also happen to have social effects upon others. </p>
<p>(c) a cautious intellectual hygiene which is vigilant for any implied metaphysical or nihilistic facets to our vision</p>
<p></p> A Comprehensive Definition of Religiontag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-05-30:5301756:Topic:565412014-05-30T16:39:29.781ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><em>What is the essence of Religion? </em></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><em>What are the elements of its fully realized form? <br></br></em></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><span><em>How does this appear at each major phase of historical complexity?</em> </span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><span>This thread <span style="text-decoration: underline;">solicits feedback</span> about notes I am currently tinkering…</span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><em>What is the essence of Religion? </em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><em>What are the elements of its fully realized form? <br/></em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span><em>How does this appear at each major phase of historical complexity?</em> </span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span>This thread <span style="text-decoration: underline;">solicits feedback</span> about notes I am currently tinkering with. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><span>......................</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">Hi. Last month I working to elucidate my oft-stated remarks about "mythocolloquialism". That is my fancy-fun word for the culturally deleterious effects of non-translated terms ("adam" in the Bible, "hippocampus" in the brain, etc.) and the persistent necessity to revitalize colloquial language by clarifying its trans-temporal and authentically mythic (generic) dimension. Sounds great? Well, this project was spontaneously enfolded by more general articulation on all facets of the true Religion. </p>
<p dir="ltr">So this post presents my notes for the appendix to what I am calling <em>This Whole "Religion" Thing</em>. My hope is that you will suggest any elements which may be missing from my list of essential aspects of fully-realized religion. And also any quibbles or suggestions regarding the elaboration of these elements in the different "levels" of development.</p>
<p dir="ltr">My orienting presumption that <span style="text-decoration: underline;">religion cannot be rationally or authentically defined on the basis of a summary reaction to those parties which conventionally identify themselves as "religious"</span> in an organized or traditional sense. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The fact that they inhabit a perspective which strikes themselves as valid is no obstacle to <em>our</em> definition of religion according our own complexity -- provided only that our definition includes, and accounts for, theirs alongside many other definitions. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The active form of integrative meta-theoretical (or Dionysian) understanding must propose its own understanding rather than remaining merely or exclusively concentrated in reactive evaluation and critical appraisal of definitions associated with less comprehensive viewpoints.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I will be editing this opening post in response to feedback and my own ongoing thoughts and thereafter I will compose my appendix on its basis. So without further ado:</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">..................................</p>
<p dir="ltr"></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>RELIGION is characterized by the following key elements:</span></p>
<p><span><span> </span></span></p>
<ul>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Theology</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Mythology</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Spirituality</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Embedded Rituals</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Ethical Mobilization</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Presumption of Inclusion</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><strong>Edification Agencies</strong></li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Bond-deepening Practices</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Aesthetic Cultivation</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Divine Communion</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Exploitation of History</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Cultural Convergence</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Theory of Group</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Transpartisan Politics</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Responsible Theory of Mind</strong></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><strong>Supra-Economics</strong></li>
<li dir="ltr"><strong>Anti-Fragility Praxis</strong></li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Consecrations</strong></p>
</li>
</ul>
<p><span><span> </span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><em>Not all religious phenomena demonstrate all these elements -- just like not every nutritious meal contains all the nutrients needed to survive. Yet every "religionizing" cultural field expresses many of these and increasingly tries to approximate the full form of religion in so far as its circumstances, intelligence and health will permit.</em></p>
<p><span><span> </span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Let us examine these crucial elements in slightly more detail:</span></p>
<p><span><span> </span></span></p>
<ol>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theology</strong> involves:</span></p>
<ol>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Philosophy of Terminology</span> <span>- Every religion has some idea about the appropriate definition of</span></p>
<ol>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span>an Apex Signifier (often but not exclusively called “God” in English)</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span>the nature of Religion,</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span>the condition of enhanced productive alignment with an experiential bio-cultural field</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span>Infidels (agents not aligned with the field or its ethos),</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span>Heretics (aligned agents who profess or are tempted by arguments which insufficiently or misleadingly describe the edifying power of the field</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span>Devils (intolerable agents who operate “as if” they were intentionally motivated to break hearts and bodies, to annihilate themselves and others, to injure their cultural field and ruin the promise of the biosphere).</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><span>A self-referential conservation about "how we talk about our religiousness".</span></li>
</ol>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Theodicy</span> <span>- a coherence-repairing set of notions which emotionally secure the individual and collective positive relationship to the cosmos in the face of horrible disruptions, trauma, inherent suffering & evil. The popular inquiry "How can God permit Evil?" is only one style of this general attempt to secure the religious coherence of psyche, society and cosmology.<br/></span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Theogony</span></span> <span>- a set of basic principles for discussing the origin and status of the value-laden universe.</span></p>
</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Mythology</strong></span> <span>- the poetic, therapeutic, artistic-entertaining & colloquial communication and contemplation of generic</span> <span>qualities</span> <span>and symbolic psychophysical powers. <br/></span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Spirituality</strong> <span>- the promulgation of particular self-developmental inner practices for individuals and the inclusion of various profound or self-luminous achievements associated with "grace" or "method". <br/></span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Embedded Rituals</strong> <span>- the assimilation (not creation!) of emergent social rituals, values and energized customs. <br/></span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Ethical Mobilization</strong> <span>- the incitement and/or organization of values-based public actions designed to amplify the influence of a bio-cultural ethos and improve the efficacy & qualitative effects of the socio-technological habits of a cultural field. Notably including:</span></p>
<ol>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span>protests</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span>political strategy</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span>martyrdom</span></p>
</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Presumption of Inclusion</strong> <span>- the active and voluntary habit of anticipating the essential goodness, trustworthiness, participatory membership, functional relatedness & extra-sectarian citizenship of all persons within your understanding of the general cultural background.</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><span><strong>Edification Agencies</strong> - Individuals, cultural-subtypes, institutions and artificats who specialize in generating, amplifying, securing, embodying, clarifying, templating and reminding people of the religionification potentials of their total cultural field.<br/></span><ol>
<li dir="ltr"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Priests</span> - Individuals who are moved to specialize in the theory, experiment and practice of religionizing the existing cultural field. A set of "pious" types ranging from the very creative to the very predictable, from the very harmonious to the very challenging and disruptive, and from the participant mode to the guru-mode. Of special note are their activities presiding over organic social rituals, offering suggestive sermons and clarifying the definition of "piety" appropriate to the current historical moment (in keeping with ancient trends). </span></li>
<li dir="ltr"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Prophets</span> - Forecasters who either provide rational/intuition anticipations of events related to the religionization of the cultural field OR provide warnings of the culturally-degenerative outcomes of current impious activities.</span></li>
</ol>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Bond-deepening Practices</strong></span> <span>- strategies and routines for creating, strengthening, refining and deepening the supportive and productive interpersonal creative relationships that flourish within the existing cultural field.</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Aesthetic Cultivation</strong></span> <span>- the cultivation of the “emergent aesthetic peculiarity” of the group, epoch & worldspace of the contemporary cultural background.</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Divine Communion</strong> <span>- the notion, invitation and methods (culturally communicated) of creating intensified resonance between individuals and the "excessive peak coherence" of the total bio-cultural field. Generally involving</span> emotional attentiveness (heart focus) to the intrinsically rewarding surplus dimension (“spirit”) which haunts a cultural field as a result of the effective integration of its component genres. Religion enfolds various individual transcendental possibilities (in first, second and third person modes modulated through various conceptions) and draws them into alignment with the a superlative intensity that is culturally hinted at in all "renaissances" and socially anticipated by the place-holder function of apex existential symbols. </p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Exploitation of History</strong> <span>- a maximally accurate interpretation of known historical data that is subordinate to an optimistic (empowering/hopeful) narrative that implies the</span> <span>inevitability</span> <span>of the arising of the current religionizing field and anticipates the superlative telos/attractor state towards which it is unfolding.</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Cultural Convergence</strong> -</span> <span>the active transdisciplinary attitude that intentionally operates across all social domains.</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Theory of Group</strong> <span>- an implicit or explicit theory of c</span><span>ollective intelligence</span> <span>demonstrated as a style of group organization and decision-making; principles of group intelligence describe the systemic dimension of what cultures feel as 'fair' and 'just'. <br/></span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Transpartisan Politics</strong></span> <span>- enfolding, incorporating, creatively underwriting and exceeding the left/right polarization, masculine/feminine duality & major active enfolded cultural levels present during the advanced standard worldspace.</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr"><strong>Responsible Theory of Mind</strong> <span>- a doctrine which integrates the major prevalent contemporary notions of intentionality and challenges people in the direction of the integrated hybrid. A way of taking over and making productive the natural intention-projecting capacity of human minds.<br/></span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><span><strong>Supra-Economics</strong> - Religion can only occur where the material foundation of life is more than adequate for survival. The (relative) physiological flourishing of individuals and the abundance-balance of the overall economic infrastructure either enables or disables the production of integrative experiential surplus. The economic manifestation of religion has the following key concerns:</span><ol>
<li dir="ltr"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">payment of religious figures</span>; support and/or aggrandizement for yogis, monastics, priests, theologians, philosophers, religious organizations.</span></li>
<li dir="ltr"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">public & private sponsorship of higher cultural projects</span>;</span></li>
<li dir="ltr"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">active promulgation of supra-economic values</span>; constraining, utilizing and improving the material patterns which produce ideological effects on the hive-mind of the community.</span></li>
</ol>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><strong>Anti-Fragility -</strong> Religion, in order to operate as the heartiness and progressive elevation of a cultural field, must be able to perpetuate itself and its members in world of unpredictable surprises. It recapitulates the nature of Organic life in its capacity to assimilate, feed upon and grow strong through non-linear and chaotic interventions.<ol>
<li dir="ltr"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Systemic Anti-Fragility</span>: The spiritual, aesthetic and moral forms of religion should be able to update themselves to emergent social moods and new technologies. It must entrench itself in ways that are intensified under conditions of social stress, uncertainty, ambiguity. It must encourage cultural forms which are redundantly over-prepared for inevitable surprises and perturbations of the cultural field. Subjectively, Religion must become something that appears to authenticate itself under conditions of traumatic rupture of social experience.</li>
<li dir="ltr"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Personal Anti-Fragility</span>: Religion must encourage (by ritualization, demonstration, discussion and attitude) individuals to engage in habit-thwarting, anti-comfort, strengthening exercises. Our bodies, minds and hearts languish if they are not periodically strengthened by adaptation to distinct low-level stressors (e.g. fasting, group enthusiasm, silence, stillness, mild self-torment, vertigo, empathic distress, intellectual confusion, frustrating inter-type interactions). And the moral promulgation of heuristic "wisdom" which clarifies robust or anti-fragile life-choices (avoid debt, turn the other cheek, befriend your enemies, etc.) must be considered an essential part of personal anti-fragility praxis.</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li dir="ltr"><strong>Consecrations</strong> - the encouragement of creative and standardized practices of consecration. Notably<ol>
<li dir="ltr">creation or capture sites, settings and sanctuaries to produce something like a Sacred Topology.</li>
<li dir="ltr">enshrining, through behavior, of shared excessive symbols</li>
<li dir="ltr">creature of caption of Sacred Events in the life-history of individuals, couples, sub-groups and the total cultural background.</li>
<li dir="ltr">promulgation of "blessing" and "empowering" activities</li>
<li dir="ltr"> </li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
<p></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><strong>HUMANIMALS</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><em>FORAGING / SCAVENGING / HUNTING / SIMPLE TOOLS & FOUND OBJECTS</em></p>
<p><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theology</strong>: These are </span>pre-articulate, or barely articulate, human beings so it is almost impossible to describe a theology or grammar of their religiosity. The abstract grunt, the parental or body-like imagine of numinous self-power, the notion of "something else" may be said to populate the communicable logic of spiritualized proto-human society. Their theodicy is inseparable from the physical fabric of being. Animal life does not strongly distinguish its awareness from suffering and imperfection. And its cosmogony may be considered as the visceral sense simply "showing up". The obviousness of Things <span style="text-decoration: underline;">is</span> the origin of things. </p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Mythology</strong>: T</span><span>he halo effect. An exaggerated aura may surround material, natural and animal experiences. An implied sense of Super-animals. The compulsive power of certain plants and places. <br/></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Spirituality</strong>: The mood at burial sites; the subjective engagement of </span><span>sacred leaping; honor the predator with cautious alertness and sober memory; sitting still in body trance; basking; alertly sustaining watchfulness for prey; OCD as worship.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Embedded Rituals:</strong> The religious life of dawn humanity permeates and is virtually indistinguishable from the cultural resonances of</span> <span>hunting, eating, sleeping, mating, aging, dying.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Ethical Mobilization</strong>: Alert the pack to danger; encourage fleeing and fighting. Make marks on things and show them to other. Extend acts of revenge or respect over long periods of time. Martyrdom in the form of periodic risk to save the young and injured and in events of suicidal self-relinquishment in the face of depressing failure of the ethos of the pack. <br/></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Presumption of Inclusion:</strong> Eating and surviving together</span> accomplishes a bond that runs deep. The born members and the acquired members of a pack merge fairly easily provided the stronger members do not become overly stressed or insane.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Bond-deepening Practices:</strong> G</span><span>rooming and sleep proximity establish deeper connections; sexual pleasuring; food sharing;</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Aesthetic Cultivation:</strong> The "style" of humanimal religion is accomplished rather minimally by factors like</span> <span><em>breeding choices</em> and <em>adaptation (overcompensation) to local environmental patterns</em>.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Divine Communion:</strong> They</span> <span>sink mindlessly into pleasure, rest and pride which is at once a biological and low-level cultural event.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Exploitation of History:</strong> Special spots are returned to or avoided. Habits are demonstrated to children including tool-use. Trips are make to locations where old things of good or bad importance occurred. Burial zones may be used to indicate the past persistence of the pack.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Cultural Convergence:</strong> T</span><span>he imperative of the body colors and combines with all activities.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theory of Group:</strong> Establish collective intelligence through</span><span> visual organization of pack roles. Keep pack roles flexible by adjusting them according to physical bonding and tussles. Use freak outs to alert others of danger. Pacify any upset dominators that you care about. Use a “cool” alpha member to extend visual confidence by keeping their stress out of sight. Use boastful, strength-honoring betas to broadcast claims.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Transpartisan Politics:</strong> B</span><span>oth those who strongly identify with language and those who maintain a cynical distance from the semantic content of “words” are included as full pack members.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Responsible Theory of Mind:</strong> </span><span>“it” happened.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><strong>Supra-Economics</strong></span>: Food sharing.<br/></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Anti-Fragility</strong>:</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Consecrations:</strong> S</span><span>omber moods, burial grounds, affirmative and uncanny free dance.</span></p>
<p><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><strong>ABORIGINALS</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><em>SETTLEMENTS / LORE / MIGRATORY HUNTER-GATHERING CLANS</em></p>
<p><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theology</strong>: The term "Great Spirit" is associated with indigenous concepts. As is the "dreamtime" statement of bio-cultural ethos. Notions of the "Eldest" or "Ancient One" transpose the awakening awareness of matured psychology into the supreme signifiers. These are people who live very much by what is now called hypnosis or superstition. Violation of entrained habits and lore of the clan, and the unpredictable but familiar impulses of biospheric powers are the source of evil -- they can be pacified sometimes but must ultimately be incorporated through sacrifices. A distant creation moment is foreign to such psychology but a dim sense of the arising and vanishing of ancestors places them on a small section of a great circle resembling the seasons. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Mythology</strong>: The animal and plants are whispering or singing the world into exist from a sideways time in which the living, dead and unborn are continuous. Symbols are alive like portals into another world. Names are things become confused and co-resonant. The intuitive response to qualities in the natural world is a necessary form of logic for survival.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Spirituality</strong>: T</span><span>rance repetitions, contemplation of sacred symbols, follow nonlinear prompts, heed ancestral voices, eat magic plants, surrender into ecstasy,</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Embedded Rituals:</strong> H</span><span>unting, childbirth; burial. Sacrifice. Propitiation. Communion with Nature Powers. Problem solving by use of random chance. Group use of relaxant drugs.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Ethical Mobilization</strong>: E</span><span>xpress group pleasure or displeasure through “charades” routines of approval/disapproval; the elderly going off to die on ice floes. Making dangerous efforts to preserve purely symbolic aspects of social life. <br/></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Presumption of Inclusion:</strong> W</span><span>e are all children of the Great Mother, etc. Man is conceived as a unitary type of being which makes each human being venerable in a certain sense and established in well-understood kinship with the natural world.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Bond-deepening Practices</strong>:</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Aesthetic Cultivation</strong>: Get branded. E</span><span>stablish song-lines; style hair; mark experiences on objects. Repeat the evocative effects of spontaneous emotional-verbal glossolalia.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Divine Communion</strong>: R</span><span>eturn to natural dream.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Exploitation of History</strong>: T</span><span>he shared dreamtime of all the natural beings embraced the ancestors and exists in a great cycle of return no matter what.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Cultural Convergence</strong>: M</span><span>ake jokes (integrate different stressful activities with generic humor). Everyone follows lore. Stay close together, brand each other in common ways</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theory of Group</strong>: O</span><span>bey the stories and elders; hypnosis keeps a culture going.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Transpartisan Politics</strong>: L</span><span>ore & counsel of elders (stories) are accepted by all as an currency of thought which unites disparate options.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Responsible Theory of Mind: </strong>I</span><span>ntentionally should be projected into all types of beings; animism; negotiation with nature is responsible.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><span><strong>Supra-Economics</strong></span>: Gifting rituals; ownerless trades; use of resources imposed upon by story-telling and insights born of trance states.<br/></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><span><strong>Anti-Fragility</strong>:</span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Consecrations</strong>: Making the M</span><span>ark; forbidding certain foods, acts or locations; to trance upon; journeying to sacred sites.<br/></span></p>
<p><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><strong>BARBARIAN</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><em>VILLAGERS / NOMADIC RAIDERS / OWNERSHIP / TOOL-MAKING & TRADE</em></p>
<p><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theology</strong>: This involves associating the Apex Term with the a</span>potheosis of Village Characters -- Great Chief, Great Hunter, Great Witch, Great Mother, Great Seer; similar villages (visually, racially, strength-wise) are heretical; dissimilar peoples are infidels. Evil appears to be the fault of weakness, competing tribes, or the failure to honor the Gods and Order of the Village Horde. It will persist until they are vanquished by strength and boldness in the honor of our emblems. In the beginning the Great Heroes rescued the world from Original Chaos and Titanic Dangers.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Mythology</strong>: C</span><span>ompeting families of quasi-human villager-roamers operate all qualities with violation magic. Totem is secured by original taboo of the strong. Muscular and emotional demonstrations of etheric forcefulness both exemplify and organize the qualitative psychophysical "powers".</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Spirituality</strong>: L</span><span>one journeying; the shaman's hut; the primal rave; battle trance; the ecstasy of victory; the deep appreciation of vertical differences (proto-altitudinal contemplation)</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Embedded Rituals</strong>: In</span><span>ter-tribal competition is made sacred; calendars enfold the village's year; drug taking is systematized; copulation is assimilated into public magic on behalf of private enterprises.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Ethical Mobilization</strong>: Protests are invented as a political tool. The shaman voices the religious concern to the chief. Berserkers are an example of "hero" as martyr to the cause of the tribe's glory. The flagrant suicide of individuals overwrought by the behavior or circumstances of the tribe. <br/></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Presumption of Inclusion</strong>: V</span><span>illagers are honorable until proven weak; family ties are bestowed upon genetic and non-genetic alike; whoever generally looks like us and is not "pathetic" is given the benefit of the doubt.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Bond-deepening Practices</strong>: S</span><span>haring spoils, making treaties, self-expression and feasting ceremonies,</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Aesthetic Cultivation</strong>: T</span><span>otems of the tribe set a style in motion. Locally tradeable goods and the colors of the landscape form an aesthetic template. Artists are beginning to emerge and their "violation" of existing patterns is tolerated. The faces and postures demonstrated in inter-clan gathering and shamanic psychedelic voyaging direct stylistic evolution; successful tools are used massively and enshrined. the predilections of “big men” and “assertive matriarchs” guide the village's style.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Divine Communion</strong>: The</span><span> emotional-physical ecstasy of battle is an invocation of the Great Chieftain. Drugs and trances that involve pushing deeply into the primal well of Emotional Force are presumed to be Ultimate. The mindless state which releases chaos in the service of the Highest Totem is a communion with the convergent surplus of the established culture. To embrace and be embraced by the excessive (and culturally mediated) power of the natural world.<br/></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Exploitation of History</strong>: O</span><span>rder was established by the arising of the Human-friendly Powers who gave pattern to the world and by fighting on their behalf we sustain it; if we fail it fails and we will be replaced.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Cultural Convergence</strong>: The village life provides a container for all the disparate human energies. <br/></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theory of Group</strong>: F</span><span>orm villages and "fraternities" around totems; use mob intelligence; follow experience and visions; make use of weirdo-advisers; go raiding and divide spoils by loyalty and demonstrated prowess; seek private counsel between genders and public counsel among men.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Transpartisan Politics</strong>: S</span><span>haman and Chief operate as team; best warriors and matriarchs try to achieve volatile consensus; argument and contest and public charisma are used to assimilate intelligence from various sides of issues; everyone speaks up about decisions involving whole village; muttering rebuffs bad decisions; Protests are invented .</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Responsible Theory of Mind</strong>: O</span><span>nly a few agent-like Great Powers in the natural world have full intentionality and have arranged to share it with human beings.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><span><strong>Supra-Economics</strong></span>: shamanic figures use demand, loyalty and uncanny effects to place themselves prominently in the "distribution of spoils" economy. "big men" invest in totems and self-expression festivals. trickle down & slavery are advocated as general enrichment schemes.<br/></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><span><strong>Anti-Fragility</strong>:</span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Consecrations</strong>: Glorification through gift-giving; use of masks to make event holy; village environment as field of empowerment; declaration of festival days and sites; sacred private spaces and property begin in earnest.<br/></span></p>
<p><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><strong>TRADITIONALISTS</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><em>PATRIOTIC-SYMBOLIC AGRARIANS / CITY-STATE / SECTARIAN OLIGARCHY-KINGDOMS</em></p>
<p><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theology</strong>: The apex signifier is associated with the Great Monarch who rules the many tribes. The name and role of this figure are ascendant beyond the temporary form. Heretics defy the bureaucratically established kingdom-wide "common sense" interpretation of scriptural dogma. Infidels are the "believers" from rival city-state kingdoms. T</span>he Original Plan governs all even when you do not understand it; decisions are already made in the great book. In the beginning the One made the world and assigned all roles in advance to serve his ethical agenda. His subjects constantly fail and therefore deserve their misery which must be constantly offset by tribute payments moving up the hierarchy toward the Absolute Lord.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Mythology</strong>: A</span><span> courtly pageant of aristocratic super-beings under the overpowering presence of the Parental Monarch/s. Division of reality into Heavenly, Demonic and Middle-Kingdoms occupied by systematized and indexed entities who mythologically embody particular qualitative powers.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Spirituality</strong>: A</span><span>scending meditation, ascetic disciplines, mantra of divine names, formalized prayer,</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Embedded Rituals</strong>: For example: Christmas is moved to take over</span><span> Saturnalia, etc., spring festival, weddings, calendars, sex, name-givings, tribal friction becomes annual “sports” in the "capital cities". Going to War acquires patriotism and grave pageantry.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Ethical Mobilization</strong>: Building churches. Revivals. Missionary works begins. Deliberate education of the young in the religion begins. A</span><span>ttempts to influence power holders and secure the cultural ethos through alliances with barons. Public arguments about the moral significance of the scriptures begin. Martyrs who are willing to be tortured to death while professing the identifying statements and signs of the emerging religious field. Risking death under the symbol of the Faithful.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Presumption of Inclusion</strong>: W</span><span>e are all “the people” and God loves and supports us as long as we do not overtly oppose the inherited symbols or look too different. Equality before God. Equivalence of social roles in comparison to the Ultimate Role.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Bond-deepening Practices</strong>: O</span><span>bedience; loyalty demonstrations; sharing of phrases from the Great Book; pledges to the supreme symbol; working together in rural agrarian tasks; honoring the nationalist speech and eating customs; agreeing. The romantic splendor of marriage contracts is established and adorned with voluntary pledges of emotional depth and intentional heart-work.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Aesthetic Cultivation</strong>: T</span><span>he gilded style; Gothic combinations; the mixture of filth and luxury, the mingling of mud and furs, the mood of reaching toward the zenith of heaven; celestial and demoniac imagery working together; the shared righteousness of landscapes and fortresses. Demonstrations of national splendor; crowns, flamboyant styles, etc. Birth of the impractical "urbane" fads and fashions of the courtly life in legal society. Religion may incorporate ridiculous hats.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Divine Communion</strong>: P</span><span>ublic and private acts of surrender, acceptance and remorse and relinquishment of guilts, affirmation of the superlative nature of the Apex Mythic Being,</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Exploitation of History</strong>: T</span><span>he universe begins with the recorded history of the current cycle of the appearance of people like ourselves and proceeds as a series of successful or unsuccessful alignments with our fickle national-racial deity from whom all successes and torments flow. if we succeed there is prosperity but all the failures around us are from non-obediences to the “old fashioned” (traditionalist grandparents) interpretation of the dogma; either we get back on track or punishments will increase until the “end of our kind of world” occurs and only a few are saved in a metaphysical manner.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Cultural Convergence</strong>: T</span><span>he Great Book and the Layout of the Kingdom combines art, spirituality, politics, finance and war in the public space. Totalitarian fusion of genres. All types of literature and study are presumed to be One.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theory of Group</strong>: </span><span>Merge with your role; serve the inherited order or castes; gain sacred advice before making big decisions; keep group together through sacrificing painfully for its symbols; repeat the grandparents; overcome all subcultures to impose the national will upon the Meta-Tribe; organize in relational opposition to other Great Nations; homogenize to create progress (linguistic, racial, customs); enforce moral obedience upon children</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Transpartisan Politics</strong>: </span><span>Our “Supreme God” is affirmed by official statements and ritual attendance by leaders of all factions.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Responsible Theory of Mind</strong>: A</span><span>ll agency and intentionality (and empathy and justice) derive from the unitary Great Power who gifts it equally to all human beings who then use it better or worse relative to his official orienting instructions</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><span><strong>Supra-Economics</strong></span>: bureaucratic sacred taxation (tithing) & bribery of religious officials is normative; majestic sculpture and architectural investments anchor the ascending values of the community; priestly oversight is required to seal deals, initiate building projects or engage in to resource wars; oligarchs are interfered with and solicited by priests by many means - including advice, control of mobs through ritual, education of aristocratic children; lower castes are sanctioned and sometimes protected as "holy roles" and "essential equals in the eyes of God".<br/></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><span><strong>Anti-Fragility</strong>:</span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Consecrations</strong>:</span> <span>officially sanctioned magical rituals and role-investitures determine the well-being of individual and collective life; building of churches; fixing the calendars; establishing sacred sub-zones within cities and communities; meta-tribal pilgrimage sites linked to dogmatic texts; marking the Kingdom in opposition to chaotic nature and foreign powers; superlative ornamentation of role-spaces (the royal bedchamber, the graveyard, the pillar of the law). Very importantly the rise of sacred, rule-bound monastic communities and fortifications.<br/></span></p>
<p><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><strong>RATIONALISTS</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><em>METROPOLITAN HUMANIST-MATERIALISTS / CAUSAL-MECHANICAL THINKERS</em></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><em>NARROW INDIVIDUALISM</em></p>
<p><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theology</strong>: God is now the</span> Great Maker-Mind. Dogmatists are Infidels but Infidels should not be put to death. Poor Scientists and the Factually Uninformed are Heretics. GOD appears under the aegis of the RATIONAL IMMATERIALITY. This one conception admits to a variety of functionally similar forms:</p>
<blockquote><p dir="ltr"><span>(a) <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Deist</span> - The Invisible Supreme God is the Intelligence of the Natural Order in its Predictable and Unpredictable Forms.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>(b) <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Atheist</span> - The Absence of a Visible God is the Rational Proof of the Supremacy of the Natural Order in Random and Non-Random Forms.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>(c) <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Agnostic</span> - It is Rational to Accept the Unseen Determination about the God of the Natural Order.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>(d) <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Aprolepticist</span> - We Rationally Cannot even think to accept or non-accept or be undecided about an Unseen Origin of Natural Order.</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Evil is produced from the failure to understand and achieve. One must thwart the gods and history in order to prevent catastrophe which lingers inherent in the misunderstanding of the Great Machine. But since we will always fail a little we must learn to be "philosophical" about life in order to secure benign conscience under the conditions of the Divinely Natural Order. An inexplicable and vastly ancient Beginning to the mechanical unfolding of cosmic and human events; a designer of the System.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Mythology</strong>: I</span><span>nsubstantial, non-personified qualities and categories metaphysically organize material realities that are bound by cause and effect; rational identities populate the universe and are bound by consistent “game rules” of the cosmos.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Spirituality</strong>: A</span><span>nalytic meditations, pondering, study of Reason, separation of consciousness from roles, steadiness of mind, intensification of personal being,</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Embedded Rituals</strong>: C</span><span>ivic holidays, family visits at holidays, elections, sporting seasons, industrial-commercial festivals, summer holidays, weekends, getaways, private funerals, graduations, retirements. These all arise and must be enfolded into the rising ethos in order to function religiously. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Ethical Mobilization</strong>: D</span><span>ecency revolutions, surrender to the public outbursts of sensible protesters. Not running a tank over Gandhi! Taking time to listen to sensible complaints. Taking risks to prevent rash and irrational responses. Explorers martyr themselves to "discover the truth" or "stand up to herds". Free press risking death. Dr. Frankenstein risking the monstrous. <br/></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Presumption of Inclusion</strong>: O</span><span>ne man, one vote; innocent until proven guilty; existential equality; basic capacity for meritorious and successful action is extended to all regardless of their caste and role. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Bond-deepening Practices</strong>: W</span><span>rite your own vows; educational fraternities; shared trips; investigation clubs; conferences; international meetings;</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Aesthetic Cultivation</strong>: M</span><span>odernism/futurism in art, architecture, writing; the invention of the narrator, subjectivism and impressionism in painting, the style of rising revolutionary achievement; imperialism. The spirit of Star Wars. Metropolis. Reagan’s “Morning in America”. Warmth. Special Icons: the straight shooter, the rising entreprenuer, the inventor, the explorer, the secret agent, the rebel against small town life. Growth of "wives and mothers" beyond the family.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Divine Communion</strong>: L</span><span>iberating wonder of poetic-rational expansive of the worldcentric cosmos and the victories of “the enlightenment”. the private communion with Natural Splendour; omnipresence and victorious absorption into REASON.<br/></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Exploitation of History</strong>: A</span><span> long history of pre-human and a short history of human history is wondrous but largely ignorant and superstitious under the earthquake of modernity sets us free or a significant historical example of a caring, rational progressive individual who puts sectarian divisions, mythic priests and kingdom rules aside brings a universal and sensible moral message.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Cultural Convergence</strong>: R</span><span>ationality, individual freedom and/or experimental science must organize all aspects of life as we awaken from the dream of historical indoctrination and childish misunderstandings.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theory of Group</strong>: M</span><span>odular, hierarchical industrial model of increasingly rewarded managerial individualists; corporate model; non-sectarian oligarchy; all’s fair in keeping with game rules which we should try to modify in our favor; progress or die; provide stability for employees. Achievement of Promotion and quantitative reward are used to modulate the importance of individual input.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Transpartisan Politics</strong>: B</span><span>icameral legislatures, dialectical courtrooms, rules of debate and the spirit of reasonable mutuality guarantees solutions even among the disparately minded.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Responsible Theory of Mind</strong>: O</span><span>nly rational persons have intentional agency. It is irresponsible to attribute this to other creature or to forces of nature.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><span><strong>Supra-Economics</strong></span>: sale of sacred objects, tourist-darshan, evangelical entertainment, guru-consultants, religious authorship; negotiated legal protections for religious enclaves; charitable giving; advocacy for the poor; conversion and education for excluded minorities; arrangement of visiting and living in alternative international economic zones. <br/></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><span><strong>Anti-Fragility</strong>:</span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Consecrations</strong>: a bottle smashed on the bow of the maiden Titanic; mass-distribution of the ritual-official power to "open" buildings and "start" projects; the sky-scraper and uniform suit; the financial and military support of giant scientific projects; the flag planted on the moon; staging areas for space shuttle lift-off; monumental practicality and entertainments; the traveling professional stimulators (carnivals, USO shows, etc.), international darshan (world tourists to magic spots and exotic empowerments); holiness of the Great Facillity; the Wonder of the World sites; <br/></span></p>
<p><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><strong>PLURALISTS</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><em>COSMOPOLITAN CULTURE-SPLICING / SENSITIZED SELF-AUTHORING NETWORKS</em></p>
<p dir="ltr"></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theology</strong>: Alternatives are everywhere. The apex signifier takes whatever form or meaning you and your community would like. The components of "God" are in novel circulation. Preference and Value and enfolded into the concept. God persists as a </span>disputed term of perpetual, ironic and critical usage. Evil may or may not actually exist. Our feelings are interpretations but the consequences of removing negativity from our interpretations is unjustified. We must use health and meaningful life-choices to create a counterbalance to essential uncertainty and ambiguous finitude. Multiple universes appear to co-exist and create each other via somekind of relationship associated with the leap from Nothing to Something. A common creative void sustains co-created realities and multiple histories.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Mythology</strong>: M</span><span>ultiple forms of each essential power exist. You must find or invent the one that works best for you; all myths are “as if” forms of entertainment and potential instruction; myths interpenetrate and resonance in stories from various cultures and history periods including pop culture; creative personal mythology becomes an option; the line between inherited myth and novelty entertainment/art is mercifully blurred. The "as if" usage of mythological caricatures becomes standard.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Spirituality</strong>: M</span><span>indfulness meditation, flow states, right brain integration, self-creating, self-esteem, biospheric care, health-oriented prayer, energy work. Descending meditations are extra attractive. Kundalini, yoga, health-spirituality, neuro-buddhism, intentional thought styles. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Embedded Rituals</strong>: E</span><span>merging entertainment cycles, personally invented version of public rituals, celebrations of re-defining, criticism festivals, retro styles, decentralized events, ecological planetary holy days; alternative pride parades</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Ethical Mobilization</strong>: C</span><span>ultural sensitivity and ecology-over-modernist economy protests; inclusion riots; Martyrs oppose oppressive oligarchs; Advocates of the sensitive, meta-style engage in humorous acts of chaotic resistance; Self-confession and transparency takes on a spiritual dimensions. Gay pride parades in Palestine, etc. Abortion doctors risk their own lives. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Presumption of Inclusion</strong>: E</span><span>veryone who thinks everyone should be included is automatically included; tolerators are tolerators; all subjects can be studied; all races and religious are assumed included until proven intolerable.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Bond-deepening Practices</strong>: Sharing of</span> <span>daring, idiosyncratic, culture-challenging enthusiasms; be entertaining together; co-growth is idealized; learn to invent ourselves together; integrate “PR” into life through strategic relational communication styles; rebalance masculine and feminine in communication and life-roles.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Aesthetic Cultivation</strong>: T</span><span>he “green” style of cities and propaganda, return of intensified ambiguous tragedy, rainbows, unfolding biological imagery; splices; multi-channel style, explicit and hyper-ironic entertainment, participatory electronic style, scruff, half-professional; half-public style, Dune/LOTR clothing; Emergent archetypal favoring of “the exotic revolutionary of inclusion” (Gandhi, MLK), the casual enthusiast, the ragged technological conqueror, the cryptoanalyst (snowden, marx, derrida, zizek, the hacker); ethos of play, analysis and very sophisticated flowing acceptance of disturbing content.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Divine Communion</strong>: awesomeness, cool, mind-boggling, popular zen/taoism, the magical expansion thrills of paradox, surrealism, infinities, loops, sudden multiplicity, the buzz of endlessness, the restoration of neo-pagan methods for entering culturally-significant naturalness; psychedelic epiphany; the decentralized peak-and-flow experiences as alignment with "whatever is beyond". <br/></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Exploitation of History</strong>: N</span><span>aturalness followed by natural humanity and then rise of imbalanced humanity culminating in industrial mind/body split and then the Great Paradigm Shift begins to restore our natural diversity and holism and private ease and exploration. The "paradigm shift" and "expressing oneself authentically" as echoes of a future-oriented spirituality in which we attempt to overcome the sinful divide between ourselves and our "self-authored Real selves".</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Cultural Convergence</strong>: T</span><span>ransdisciplinary experiments, creation of novelty hybrid genres, infiltration of institutions by political correctness, democratic quotas, enforced gender balancing.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theory of Group</strong>: C</span><span>onsensus cooperation, concern sharing, P2P networking, free information, voluntary reimbursement; unionize; establish “class consciousness”</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Transpartisan Politics</strong>: P</span><span>artisan becomes dirty word, cooperation idealized, moderate progressive majority drives both sides; intentional understanding and kindness extended to the Other in general -- despite provocative offense.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Responsible Theory of Mind</strong>: S</span><span>ensitive extension of intentionality to all human subgroups and many types of organisms.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><span><strong>Supra-Economics</strong></span>: eco-tithing; rise of studios/weekends as sites where sacred practice is promulgated; distributed micropayments; advocacy for progressive economic systems; sacred status of local/organic; imposition of authenticity/well-being standards to divide the sea of commercial products and services; participation in festival economies & surges; priest-therapists; spiritual sensuality services; demand for authenticity, creativity and play in establishment of legitimate socio-economic "roles"; advocacy for the status of all under-represented parties in the economic infrastructure; alliance of churches with safety/growth nets. <br/></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><span><strong>Anti-Fragility</strong>:</span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Consecrations</strong>: Improvised, Hyper-personal & Interfaith rituals. Inclusion of excluded elements in blessing rituals. Idiosyncratic holy places; shared holiness of "leading edge entertainment"; the sacredness of "other places" (off the beat track, peculiar, authentic); localness as decentralized principle of sacred topology; the Sacred "Commons" as a increasing concern; encounter groups; spiritual friendships; loose, flexible and voluntary experiments in establishing sacred space.<br/></span></p>
<p><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><strong>INTEGRATIVE</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"><em>MULTI-LEVEL COHERENCE / PLANETARY-COSMIC HUMANISM (SAPIENTISM)</em></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;"></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theology</strong>: </span>“God” names the unitarian implication of apex value experience coordinating multiple quadrants and ontological states. Evil is.... The principle of creative novelty is ongoing, there cannot be a First Cause or Beginning of Time but the current scientific story of emergent cosmic evolution is an adequate frame for social storytelling.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Mythology</strong>: S</span><span>pirit has been constantly trying to manifest through evolutionary surges particularly in the person of spiritual philosophical agents who set the “forms” which make the grooves easier.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Spirituality</strong>: <br/></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Embedded Rituals</strong>:</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Ethical Mobilization</strong>: the subtle martyrdom of sacrificing one's values to affirm the forms of other levels; sacrifice to secure multiple value systems and types active in any solution; risks on behalf of establishing missing balance; mobilizations which understand a way beyond the selfish/altruistic alternative; <br/></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Presumption of Inclusion</strong>: A</span><span>ll sapient beings at all levels of development are already “on side” and all sentient being are worthy to receive love and gratitude and compassion. The nondual interpenetration of the dual means that one must intentionally affirm pre-inclusion in general and attempt to bodily and emotionally enter that reality regardless of adversarial force. Disjunctions are perceived as the form and essence of conjunctions.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Bond-deepening Practices</strong>: W</span><span>isdom conversation in the meta-sangha beyond our personal work and our tradition’s statements,</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Aesthetic Cultivation</strong>: bio-futuristic, auric, erotic, trans-genre, post-ironic<br/></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Divine Communion</strong>: </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Exploitation of History</strong>: T</span><span>he notion of evolution and emerge evolves and emerges as Spirit reveals itself in endless new forms in which we are responsible participants in a great story of “layers” and complexity. Emergent telos of self and society as locus of meaning.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Cultural Convergence</strong>: I</span><span>ntegral theory, multi-line intelligence, cosmic planetary styles,</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Theory of Group</strong>: P</span><span>ersonal/intersubjective balance, conscious relationality, collective peak experiences, holacracy; establish skills- consciousness; participatory rather than membership; graduated post-majoritarian decisions; internal profiling is necessary.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Transpartisan Politics</strong>: </span><span> “integrative hybrids”; challenge pluralists by pointing out their failure to achieve their goals due to their rejection of traditionalist and modernist attitudes; voluntary practice of adopting and integrating the viewpoints of one's adversary; selection of issues which can be sustained at multiple levels of understanding; </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Responsible Theory of Mind</strong>: S</span><span>ubjective interiority includes ‘as if’ intentionality in varying degrees of intensity from minimal cosmic background through different types of species and in different gradations within human communities.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><span><strong>Supra-Economics</strong></span>:</span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><span><strong>Anti-Fragility</strong>:</span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><strong>Consecrations</strong>:</span></p> Is Non-Duality a State?tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-05-20:5301756:Topic:562852014-05-20T17:22:03.890ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p style="text-align: center;">IS NONDUALITY A STATE?</p>
<p>(a) <strong>YES,</strong> the general appearance of nonduality in human experience takes the form of a temporary access to an experiential condition that cannot be reduced to material, subtle or causal realities. This "state" means access by embodied consciousness to an everpresent ontological factor that is approximated by the terms "prior happiness", "being-becoming", "trans-infinite" and "generative samedifference".</p>
<p>(b)…</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">IS NONDUALITY A STATE?</p>
<p>(a) <strong>YES,</strong> the general appearance of nonduality in human experience takes the form of a temporary access to an experiential condition that cannot be reduced to material, subtle or causal realities. This "state" means access by embodied consciousness to an everpresent ontological factor that is approximated by the terms "prior happiness", "being-becoming", "trans-infinite" and "generative samedifference".</p>
<p>(b) <strong>NO,</strong> the very concept of nonduality is that of transcendence itself. It is unconditional and cannot be located in a particular condition, moment or form of experience. It is not a state but an "interstate". It is part of the architecture which permits states to be both differentiated and combined and therefore must be classed as distinct from them.</p> HOW POST-RATIONAL POTENTIALS AGGRAVATE PRE-RATIONAL HABITStag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-04-22:5301756:Topic:557802014-04-22T17:31:19.050ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<blockquote><p>How do post-conventional possibilities stimulate, confirm and empower pre-conventional structures of thought, feeling and action? This is the question around which integral studies is subliminally congealed...</p>
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p>In my text on <a href="http://laymanpascal.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/bibleofmetatheory2-0.pdf" target="_blank">THE RULES OF METATHEORY</a> I make the quasi-controversial claim that Integral Theory (loosely interpreted) has a special kind of…</p>
<blockquote><p>How do post-conventional possibilities stimulate, confirm and empower pre-conventional structures of thought, feeling and action? This is the question around which integral studies is subliminally congealed...</p>
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p>In my text on <a href="http://laymanpascal.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/bibleofmetatheory2-0.pdf" target="_blank">THE RULES OF METATHEORY</a> I make the quasi-controversial claim that Integral Theory (loosely interpreted) has a special kind of "special place" in contemporary higher level philosophy. Such post-pluralistic endeavors, I claim, always have the joint character of convergence and divergence. In their convergent mode we temporarily exploit populist models so that a "generic metatheory" can be tested, expounded and forced forward -- and there are a number of decent reasons to treat Wilber-ese as the current manifestation of this limited and pragmatic facet of our ongoing work. One of those reasons is simply that the <strong>pre/trans fallacy</strong> remains the catchiest, simplest & most well-known articulation of the problem to which this thread is devoted: <em>how post-modern potentials confuse and entrench pre-modern sensibilities.</em></p>
<p></p>
<p>The very premise of an "integral altitude" is partly forced into existence by the regressive and undifferentiated elements within the post-modern, pluralistic, relativistic and sensitive cultural operating system. Its inability to adequately distinguish itself from more primitive forms of consciousness is an ongoing driver of the need for an additional layer of social psychology.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Using the phraseology of this forum we might ask the question thusly: HOW AND WHY DO SPIRITUAL ENACTMENTS AND DEPTH-OBSERVATIONS TEND TO REINFORCE METAPHYSICAL ASSUMPTIONS IN MANY PEOPLE?</p>
<p>Obviously we can, and should, approach this central problem from many angles. The one which provoked my thread-creating activity today began from observations of facebook users and "players" of digital games. It is clear that people are excessive (if not addicted) to electronic feedback loops in which they receive <em>quasi-arbitrary "reward symbols" which have no real life value</em>. Whether it is the points, coins or powers you acquire in your online gaming or the "likes" received for sharing content in virtualized social networks there is a tendency to become highly involved in the meaningless economy of meaningless exchange.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Now here's where it gets on topic! Are these exchanges meaningless? Don't they have a real value in sustaining people's communal ties, plugging people into each other, establishing credibility and potential commercial connections? Yes. Those are all "post-modern" observations. They are appreciations of the <em>possibility</em> of network logic and structural co-enactment. Yet the computer mounted camera watching your bored, lifeless face as you click "like" or watch your false "credits and bonus points" get compiled does not tell us a story of advanced sensibilities. This is dull activity and basically narcissistic immersion in the most trivial and abstract dimension of social activity has its roots in very primitive functions. Really it is no different that feeling better when someone smiles at you or compliments you. This seems innocuous when it is positive but -- as the wise have always complained -- it enslaves you to the general process of social reactivity which may later be used to condemn or dismiss you. To receive praise through automatic feeling-mechanisms is also to surrender the right to be blamed and injured through that same mechanism.</p>
<p></p>
<p>So we might see many forms of "social networking", "value-based feedback" and "digital gaming" as ways in which the <em>potential</em> utility of advanced systems is harvesting and reinforcing very primitive mechanisms of individual submission and self-abnegation.</p>
<p></p>
<p>There is a strong parallel here to the way in which advanced states of consciousness reinforce naive traditionalist assertions and pre-scientific fantasies. And that, in turn, correlates to the way in which real knowledge of conspiracies and alternative physics fuels a pandemic of paranoia, stress-based anti-institutional fury and a regressive erosion of the principle of social trust.</p>
<p></p>
<p>A "close encounter" may be conceived as a post-rational peak event but why is it so often subsequently confined to pre-conventional, non-evidential and intellectually febrile visions?</p>
<p></p>
<p>How do pluralistic societies actually come to permit resurgent tribalism? How do post-nationalistic sensibilities encourage the corporate theft of the energy and regulations which sustain the well-being of the national ethos?</p>
<p></p>
<p>Why do the real possibilities of massless energy technology become discredited by the unthinking advocacy of people who lack the least bit of demonstrated scientific mood or cultural usefulness?</p>
<p></p>
<p>How does Heidegger turn Nazi?</p>
<p></p>
<p>How does the notion of "fair and balanced" impartiality come to characterize a media ecosystem in which facts and expertise are themselves rejected?</p>
<p></p>
<p>And ultimately: How has Divinity so often appeared as an anti-life, anti-progressive agency?</p>
<p></p>
<p>I haven't time right now to speculate on the answers but I would submit that the common premise of all these situations requires our most robust clarification. It is in some respects the root of metatheoretical ethics. It is certainly an areas in which many pertinent discoveries remain to be made.</p>
<p></p> Nietzsche's Jukeboxtag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-04-19:5301756:Topic:555682014-04-19T23:39:01.984ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p></p>
<p><a href="http://laymanpascal.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/nietzschesjukebox.pdf" target="_blank">NIETZSCHE'S JUKEBOX</a> has just gone up over at The Midriffs. It is a draft but if I didn't throw it up it might never get completed.</p>
<p>The text consists of an short essay on Nietzsche's understanding of the healthy, progressive "Dionysian" current in music and culture. Scholars who over-emphasize the cognitive line (and who therefore think cultural progress is primarily associated…</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="http://laymanpascal.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/nietzschesjukebox.pdf" target="_blank">NIETZSCHE'S JUKEBOX</a> has just gone up over at The Midriffs. It is a draft but if I didn't throw it up it might never get completed.</p>
<p>The text consists of an short essay on Nietzsche's understanding of the healthy, progressive "Dionysian" current in music and culture. Scholars who over-emphasize the cognitive line (and who therefore think cultural progress is primarily associated with concepts) often undervalue Zarathustra, Ecce Homo & the attacks on Wagner. Yet to read Nietzsche's writings he considers these not only his senior works but also the most illustrative of his major project -- elucidating the redemptive aesthetic which accompanies advancing human culture and empowerment.</p>
<p>Accompanying this text is a playlist which can be listed to online (<a href="http://grooveshark.com/#!/playlist/OVERPLAY/96568322" target="_blank">OVERPLAY (grooveshark playlist).</a> Each song or fusion-of-songs has been selected not for its listening pleasure but to illustrate a facet of the Dionysian Spirit. An exegesis of each song if found within the text.</p>