The wisdom needed to "rise above"
normal human limitations
Your Purpose
To promote unity and world peace by helping
1) individuals transcend biases
2) groups transcend ideology
3) nations transcend rivalry
If you care about unity and world peace, this is your call to adventure! You likely are sensitive the the ongoing ideological chaos of our modern culture wars. You likely see that our culture wars could become something much worse if not managed properly. Many people, like you, see the problems in society, but they adopt a fatalist perspective towards it, thinking that, as an individual, they play such a minor role that their efforts are meaningless. They may even believe that God or the laws of physics have destined things to be a certain way and that we are powerless to resist this fate! But something within you speaks a different message. You believe in the power of the individual to change the world. The spirit of a hero is within you - you refuse to give up or give in! You believe that each individual exists as a node within a network, and that changes at the individual level can propagate through the network to make the whole system better, or worse. If you have the heroic desire for unity and world peace, then welcome aboard! Lets join forces to see what our combined efforts can accomplish in this world!
I am not an expert in philosophy, I merely have a passion to help humanity in any way I can. This passion guides me to study all of the material that I find relevant to the problem of harmony, which is how to achieve the harmony that maintains unity and world peace. Based on my investigation into this problem, I believe the transcendence needed to "rise above" our human weaknesses will require an upgrade in our collective understanding of the three branches of philosophy -
1) metaphysics (fundamental truths)
2) epistemology (fundamental method of evidence)
3) axiology (fundamental values)
Spiral Dynamics
(metaphysics)
Integral Theory promotes a Spiral Dynamics model for understanding the evolution of culture and consciousness. This model provides some helpful insights into how we can help people transcend from one stage to the next. I'm no expert on Spiral Dynamics, but we can explore these ideas together! Perhaps these ideas show a pathway for humankind's transcendence towards peace and harmony.
Resources to learn about Integral Theory / Spiral Dynamics:
Dialectic vs Debate
(epistemology)
The dialectical method is rational debate minus emotional bias towards your own position. The dialectical method is a humble search for truth via debating different points of view. Any attempt to "destroy" the other persons position is in violation of the dialectic method since it appeals to emotion and the intention is to destroy rather than build. The dialectic method treats your interlocutor as a partner not as an opponent. We are partners in finding truth together by bouncing our ideas off of each other in a way that challenges the ideas, not each other. We must promote the dialectical method over cruder types of debates if we want to transcend.
Transcendence via
Dialectical Synthesis
Terms
-
Thesis - argument for an idea or claim.
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Antithesis - counterargument to an idea or claim.
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Synthesis - the combination of ideas or claims to form a new argument.
Steps in the Hegelian Dialectical Process
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Thesis - confidence in a claim based on one perspective
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Antithesis - doubting a claim in the face of a new perspective
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Synthesis - confidence in a new claim that transcends the former perspectives and finds a way to unify the ideas from a higher perspective
Synthesis is almost like a chemical reaction that combines ideas that are fighting with each other into a new form that makes them superior to their divided former forms.
Example of a Hegelian Dialectic
Value Conflicts
(axiology)
Facts can be true or false. But values are a lot more complex. Facts involve solvable problems, like - works vs broken. Values involve unsolvable paradoxes, like - good vs good. When your body has multiple values, the desire for sleep, work, nourishment, exercise, and play; which choice is right? You can't have all of them at the same time! What happens when you have a trolley problem? Which "good" path should you save?
What happens when two "good" options get polarized against each other? What happens when one side values safety and the other side values adventure? What happens when one side says "liberty" is the highest good, even at the sacrifice of equality; but the other side says "equality" is the highest good, even at the sacrifice of liberty? What happens when one side values collective wellbeing (at the cost of individual rights), and one side values individual rights (at the cost of collective wellbeing)?
We need a synthesis of polar "goods" rather than a defeat of one "good" in favor of another "good".
In this video, the yinyang of opposites are characterized as opposing forces (values) symbolized by the eastern dragon and the phoenix. When these forces battle, they eventually merge into a synthesis, where the strengths of the eastern dragon are combined with the strengths of the phoenix, and it evolves into the new form of a western dragon. This is a symbolic reminder that the goal of our cultural debates should be unity not destruction.
But how can we unify our values if they are contradictory? As Hegel and Inoue Kazumi insinuate, we must look at conflicting values from a higher vantage point in order to reconcile them.
For example, if we look at safety vs freedom from the perspective of wellbeing, allowing harm (opposite of safety) hurts wellbeing, but allowing control (opposite of freedom) also harms wellbeing. So then we have to do the hard work of measuring which impacts wellbeing more severely. With this new equation, we can calculate the right balance of safety and freedom.
Value Systems
Spiral Dynamics Interpretation
Value Synthesis
Value conflicts have two ways of being resolved, either via synthesis or by violence. In order to have a synthesis, you must first open your mind to the possibility that there is something to learn from the other position. If the "thesis" and the "antithesis" vilify each other with black and white dichotomous thinking, then it will be very hard to achieve a compromise.
If some caveman was operating out of a "beige" philosophy of selfishness, they might view a philosophy based on "love" as immoral weakness and a betrayal of life. In order for the caveman to transcend, he might need to stop strawmanning "purple" and attempt to steelman the "love" philosophy.
In the "selfish" philosophy, beige values life. But when he looks at the "familial love" philosophy, he sees the sacrifice of life to protect the family. At first it seems like love betrays life. But when you look at the value conflict from a higher vantage point, the family is necessary for the propagation of more life. So, while purple seemed at odds with beige's value system at first, by looking at purple from a different angle, purple is better at accomplishing beige's goals. This new synthesis allows the beige value of "life" to by married to the purple value of "love" in that both are accomplished via the family's propagation of more life. Beige's value on "life" expands with the synthesis. Beige can transcend to purple without totally sacrificing beige.
When one transcends to the yellow stage of spiral dynamics, that is when you realize that every color evolved for a reason. Every temperament, every behavior, every superstition, every ideology, every culture, every nation evolved for a reason. There must be something good about these things or they wouldn't survive the test of natural selection. Yellow begins to steelman every color and every ideology. Yellow understands that there might be game theoretic pros and cons to every phenomenon. By taking each phenomenon seriously, yellow can begin to identify the pros and cons of each value system. Once pros and cons are measured, then the quality of value systems can be organized into a hierarchy. But even better than finding the value system at the top of the hierarchy, yellow can construct new value systems by combining the benefits of all the value systems, generating a new leader of the value system hierarchy.
Unfortunately, this is much easier said than done. Identifying axioms, measuring the pros and cons of every ideology, organizing them into a hierarchy, generating new optimal value systems is an extremely complex project. This is the challenge of our era. Can we synthesize? Or will we devolve into violence. Technology has advanced so far that this world can no longer endure the threats posed by weapons of mass destruction. Violence is not an option. We must create the yellow synthesis or bust. We need as many minds focused on these problems as possible. The more that our collective intelligence is focused on this project, the better chance we have of making it through this bottleneck in our development. We need as many people as we can get to transcend into yellow.
Transcendence
Definition of Transcend:
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to go farther, rise above, and beyond normal limitations - in a way that is more important, better, or greater in scope than what came before
Transcendent = transcend + ent
Causing, promoting, or doing a certain action
Therefore, "Transcendent Philosophy" is a body of wisdom oriented around promoting ideological transcendence - trading lower quality perspectives for higher quality perspectives. In the context of psychology, it is helping people rise above individual prejudices and irrational biases; in the context of sociology, it is helping groups rise above tribal prejudices and hate; and in the context of geopolitical diplomacy, helping nations rise above nationalistic biases, resentments, and rivalry.
Transcend Revenge
Whether it be individual conflict, tribal conflict, or national conflict, there is a bias to view the world in terms of "heros" and "villains" which fundamentally impairs our ability to resolve conflict, and only makes it worse, as each time we enact "justice" on the villain, we create further evidence in the villain's mind that, actually, WE are the villain.
Christianity, at the time of Jesus, was attempting to solve the cycle of revenge. Jesus advocated "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." I believe that this advice solves the cycle of revenge because your good actions debunk their narrative that you are a villain. When your love for them is so palpably obvious that they cannot deny it, they will be forced to begin treating you as good as you are treating them, or else they must admit to themselves that, in fact, they have become the villain.
Once the cycle of revenge has been broken, then the cycle of friendship can begin - the natural result of our instinct for reciprocity.
Anti-Transcendence
The biggest obstacle to transcendence is transcendence resistance. There is a natural emotional structure within the human psyche that attaches itself to its biases. Perhaps the bias is connected to a sense of self-identity. Perhaps the bias is connected to confidence in an operational model of reality. It makes evolutionary sense that we don't want to discard our models of reality casually, since we need them in order to survive. Half of the battle might be convincing someone that a new perspective does not threaten their identity. The other half of the battle might be persuading them that a new perspective represents a more useful model of reality than the one they already have. If discussions are not handled properly, they can trigger the backfire effect which further entrenches someone within their current ideology. A related phenomenon to pay attention to is the opposite of transcendence - detranscendance, as coined by Transcendent Philosophy (see de- - Wiktionary). Detranscendance would be the phenomenon where a Spiral Dynamics higher culture reverts to a lower culture. Intimations of detranscendence can be found by cultural regressions to religious fundamentalism, to power-based nationalism, or race-based tribalism. These will all be important areas of investigation going forward.
Transcendent Function
"The transcendent function is a natural process, a manifestation of the energy that springs from the tension of opposites, and it consists in a sequence of fantasy-occurrences which appear spontaneously in dreams and visions."
~Carl Jung, "Jung" by Gerhard Wehr, Page 206
Carl Jung long ago realized that the idea of a dialectic synthesis was not only a social phenomenon (between interlocutors) but was also a psychological one. As he argues, the transcendent function is an inner dialectic between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. From a layman's perspective on neuroscience, the inner dialectic process seems like two areas of the brain trying to communicate with one another. These two opinions might have a conflict. The neurons must find a way to resolve the conflict in order to psychologically move forward. The brain eventually figures out the right neural pathways to resolve the conflict, and it builds a new internal network pathway for resolving these conflicts going forward. It will be interesting to see how an investigation into neuroscience might aid our attempts at collective transcendence.