`` As if - the explanation of Emergence

Love - What survives of Us


There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so - William Shakespeare - Hamlet


Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind - William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream


Index


  1. The Mechanism of the Iconic Aesthetic

  2. Routes to Love

  3. What survives of Us

  4. Music is the Best

  5. Moral Theory and Love

  6. Human Rights

  7. The Final Anlysis

The Mechanism of the Iconic Aesthetic


Love is 'More than a feeling'; love is something we create, and at the risk of sounding like King Lear's daughter, I aim to shed some light on the nature of love.


Love is a four letter word, and that is just too small to really carry the full meaning of something that is so big and important to every aspect of life that it has many, many, ways of being enacted in life. In fact, it is a similar word to 'life', with similar breadth, and just as life always includes its opposite, death; love must always contrast with hate. The big difference though, is that hate is not inevitable, rather it is the alternative end of a spectrum of attitudes that encompasses as many possibilities as the artist's palette has colours. The one thing that love and hate do have in common is that they both have a pre-requisite of knowing something, however inaccurately, about the target of that love or hate. This means that the mechanism is somewhat the same for both attitudes - it must have what the philosophers call Intentionality .


The knowing of a thing has to be accompanied by an aesthetic, a manner in which the object is known, for example; I may know a person as a friend, closely, but possibly not intimately, and there will be numerous attitudes involved, where I appreciate many of their qualities, but simply tolerate some other habits that may be a part of their character. But there are things we do as friends that make the relationship worthwhile. In essence, I forgive the traits that I find less appealing, and enjoy the good times with them.


As a counterexample; with an enemy the difference is that the attitudes are reversed; I don't forgive them, and don't enjoy encounters with them. This much is broadly the scope of it, and while in the middle of this spectrum sits a kind of unaware taking for granted, much as we would the earth beneath our feet, usually, at either end stands potential for overwhelming and even obsessive levels of involvement with people and other things, that can be life-altering in their intensity.


The aesthetic, endows the relationship with a moral quality, as a positive good, or a negative bad, and as a scalar - giving it some quantity. The knowing of the object in the relationship gives it an accuracy that either is, or is not, to some percentage. This makes the aesthetic comparable to an electric charge, with attraction and repulsion as concomitants, while knowing imparts something akin to gravity to the relationship. This latter is particularly true when we consider Stockholm syndrome, and see that unless there are truly aggravating circumstances, familiarity breeds an attraction, not contempt.


While relationships, with anything, have this appearance of scientific parallels, in order to understand what love is we really need to look at how and why knowing occurs. What things motivate us, and what is it that really happens. There are, of course, many states, actions, and skills, that enable love to flourish, such as romance, caring, communication, and forgiveness, but while these help create love, and may be loving, they are not love per se. I claim that love is the objective truth of shared awareness. It is the honest bickerings of siblings growing up together, just as much as it is the shared joy of parents at the birth of a child, or their first steps, or even their conception. For shared awareness to occur it is an essential pre-requisite that there is knowing.


Knowing anything, as seen through the lens of Iconism, may originate in any of Virtualism's four relational categories; the elements [and their fractal of emergent combinations]. The becoming of knowing, literally acquiring knowledge, is a process of learning, and that may take place with tuition, intuitively, by inspiration, and in the school of hard knocks. These are just other ways of saying air, water, fire and earth. But learning is a process of change, and change is always an adopting of some new state. Even when we start with air and end with air; when we just take in an idea along with sensory perceptions, as we learn we change our minds, by gaining and discarding parts of our mind, and with conscious changes, parts of our beliefs. That is, consciousness changes more than our mind, it alters the balance of our memories, of the foundation of spirit that gives us the majority of our character.


The full gamut of potential change is mapped by the entire mandala of the Zodiac, so we may enact any one of the twelve planets [chakras], or remain within the realm of one elemental pattern. Each kind of change builds its own type of relationship, and while the route to consciousness may vary, ultimately every attitude on the rainbow of love must incorporate that elemental fire that is the truth of accurate conscious knowing. Once conscious as fire, the relationship has spirit, and so has become an eternal flame, whatever becomes of the players involved. The reconstructions of mind that can be guided by that fire, that we'd call remembering, make air, i.e. more mind.


Routes to Love


But is it Art? Some things masquerade as love, but are they?


NB. Bear in mind that in the following the use of planet names is to label processes that are not just astrology, but are also descriptions of ways that we can be. They are our chakras, and they are us channelling the gods - truthfully these are all the same thing.


Starting with the fire of spirit

The outer planets are all fueled by the fiery spirit of truth. That truth will be the facts of the matter, even if only one's own personal truth, and as it's said - 'the truth will out'. Facts are hard to deny, whether they are the laws of Nature, or the power of love.


Pluto makes earth, but that means making a difference, and material change has little to do with love, unless accompanied by other factors.


Neptune makes water, as a change to the self that being water is a heart-shaped hole that creates a feeling. That may be experienced as compassion, or nostalgia, but can also be symptomatic of addictive behaviour. Either way, it may prompt a desire for love, but is not the actual thing.


Uranus makes air, usually as remembering facts, also as realizing facts, so Uranus is always a possible factor in bringing a love to mind, but Uranus is content with knowing, and has a rather academic stance that of its own is not enough to be love.


Because each of these three is fuelled by fire, they should properly be seen as the slaves of love. They must implement love's bidding, and that can be seen when we act in accordance with love. But remember, love is a spectrum, so they are also present when we act out of hatred.


Starting with the earth of the body

Earth is difference, the two sides of the coin, and changes from difference


Chiron makes it water, feeling what is, and as with Neptune, the reshaped self may feel something, in response to difference in Chiron's case, usually material changes, and simply by being different. When Chiron acts we crack, and so the light enters in. Or, it can. The space is not love, but it is necessary to let love in.


Saturn makes it air, sensing what is, so while Saturn gives information, sensory data, Saturn on its own can't bring love, although it can inform us about what we may love.


Jupiter makes it fire, an immediate consciousness of what is. Much like the stubbed toe or sexual climax, Jupiter races from reality to consciousness, via the self, but unhindered by it. Jupiter gives an immediate judgment on difference, but while that may produce humour and generosity, its roots in difference may allow for love, but do not necessarily lead to love, because true love requires a degree of shared experience, so how we do Jupiter counts for a lot.


Starting with water of emotion

Water, the shape of self, one's heart, is fundamentally a chalice, an empty cup that gives us the goal of filling it. Every single one of us is a hungry gorge, a lonely hunter, dependent on the love of others to feel whole.


(External Website) More poetry about the nature of the Hungry Heart


Mars makes it earth, wanting to make a difference, to separate and compete, so while Mars will do, that doing cannot be love unless it is built upon by something else, such as the action of Jupiter.


Venus makes fire from the desire of water. The planet of love accomplishes her task by identifying the object of desire and incorporating it into the self, in the space that Venus wants to fill. Her natural effect is to be positive, but when filtered back through the mind, Venus makes judgments in the manner of Jupiter, and so internally can be quite fickle.


Mercury makes air from the wanting of water, which is a placing in the mind of questions, hence a natural curiosity, but as with other air creations, it is not love.


Starting in the air of mind

The air of the mind, what we know for whatever reason, is not always conscious, but it does contribute to our consciousness by altering the overall balance of our mind, the heart of which will be aware consciousness.


The Moon makes it water, creating the chalice to contain our heart's desire, from our veritable heart itself. But, the Moon, however nurturing or motherly it may make us want to be, does not in itself manifest love, only the desire to love.


The Sun makes aware conscious fire from the self of the mind, and does so because mind has a centre, a heart, and because that heart is identical with whatever it forms an icon of. That icon is the conscious awareness of our heart's desire at any given time.


The Earth, planet Earth, makes it elemental earth, and allows whatever is in our mind to manifest as changes to the reality of our environment, if we act to rearrange the present. But although potentially inspired by love, or even leading to love, when there are other involvements. Mere practicalities are not in themselves anything to do with love.


In a perfect world, all of the planets [chakras] would align, and each connect to its partners in unison. But such a dream is unreal, as each planet must function appropriately of its turn, in accordance with the others. In doing so, the whole dance produces a trail of truth, amplified at times by conscious awareness, and occasionally lifted to the heady heights of objectively shared experience. The ways of love are then to be found in this process, but love is not the process itself.


What survives of Us


What will survive of us is love - Philip Larkin - An Arundel Tomb


There will always be a difference between how love is, and what love is. Between the phenomena that occur between people, that are expressions of love, and the actual nature of the thing itself, i.e. love as either just an idea in our minds, or as a reality, or as a form of consciousness [hence of truth].


Love is based on a foundation of a consciousness of some other, and that otherness must even be found in oneself. The confusion arises because just about everything else is also a relationship of consciousness. This may sound like panpsychism, and to an extent it is, but someone may stand close behind me and I may not see them, so this kind of relationship does not help to explain the bright fire of knowing.


Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir recognised the mechanisms at work during love and sex; mechanisms that position individuals as both subject and object, and which both give and demand in the same instant, i.e. love wants to be loved in return. But really, many kinds of relationship exhibit that same mechanism, what is so special about love? Any artist shows themselves through their art, i.e. they emit photons, one way or another, and those photons are then either directly, or indirectly recieved by some audience [depending on the presence of artefact, or not.] What makes the lover different from the artist is that the lover not only asks to be seen, but asks that the viewer shows themself with similar intent. The artist usually makes no demand of the audience, other than for their attention, and sometimes their money, but never anything more personal. The nearest thing is maybe fellow actors, and fellow musicians, who during performance make a demand on their co-performers to reciprocate in the manner of a lover, i.e. to show something of their self in their side of the performance, and thereby create authenticity.


To love is to know with one of a particular group of awarenesses. The Ancient Greeks were good at identifying those things that we sweep under the carpet of a four-letter-word.


To love as a parent may be confused with loving in the romantic sense, and vice versa, and when this happens - when parent or child makes the mistake of demanding inappropriate consent that cannot be freely given, nor freely denied, then the relationship is misused and the objective person becomes abused to some extent. This can also happen in work relationships, as much as in romantic or familial relationships. In fact, whenever there is inequality of power within a relationship, then there is potential for abuse. So what, if anything, makes romance any different from any other kind of relationship?


The abusive relationship is one that restricts or removes the agency of one individual in that relationship, permiting agency only to the other individual. As a consequence there is no possibility of sameness of the shared experience. The imbalance creates difference, and difference is separation. where that exists there can be many things, but there cannot be the truth that is necessary for true love. That truth only exists with sameness, and hence in balanced, equal relationships.


The thing about romantic love is that there is a vast difference in the level of revelation that is usually expected, and this in equal measure from both sides of the relationship. Here, romantic love is, I think, unique, in that the level of revelation is ideally equal to the self-revelation that naturally occurs, or should occur, between any individual and their own self, i.e. the self-knowledge, and self-acceptance of an enlightened individual is the ideal to aspire to in love between two individuals.


The mechanisms of these relationships, can I believe, be aptly described with the terminology of Astrology, so we'd see the natural power imbalance inherent in family and career relationships, where there exist reciprocal bonds that are inherently unequal, and so which convey power. These would be called 4th and 10th house relationships, in Astrology. There are also 7th house relatiionships, and in these equality is absolutely necessary for them to function successfully, and romantic relationships fall into this category. The danger for romance is that it slips into either imbalance that is either family or career.


There are, of course, family relationships of near equality between siblings, and one great advantage of the sibling relationship is that it is, especially in earlier years, one of the most open and honest kinds of relationship. With siblings there are no holds barred, they may fight like cats and dogs at times, but this honesty tends to lead to a closeness that produces a lifetime of love, even if in adult life the level of honesty becomes somewhat reduced.


It is worth noting that relationships of the family and career kind are seldom exclusive in the way that romantic relationships are traditionally thought to be. However, as far as romance goes, exclusivity may be more of a cultural phenomenon, as it is not always the norm, and although the practicalities of polyamory may be offputting for many, the prevalence of affairs does rather suggest that the potential for love to be multi-valent between parents and children, and between siblings, is often repeated within adult romantic relationships.


Romantic love then, is unique, except for relationships such as doctor-patient, or therapist-client, maybe, in that full revelation is a requirement, if the relationship is not to founder. But those professional relationships are akin to career relationships in being one-sided, which I think, leaves romance as the only relationship that requires the balance of equality, and that dynamic is as true on the scale of the sexes as a whole, in society, as it is for the individuals within a couple, or a marriage. Without equality, no honesty is possible, and without honesty, no love is possible. Honesty in this case means genuine self-revelation [much easier to retain if maintained from the beginning], and whatever is kept secret undermines the truth in true love. We can see this in the Mandala, if we look at Libra as the abstract of the 7th House, we see that being an air sign the first decan is water, followed by fire and then earth. In relational terms, this equates to therapist in the first decan, lover in the second, and doctor in the third, although these nuances really only come out in smaller divisions than the decan. The decan really represents a still quite abstract water from air, fire from air, and earth from air, i.e. feelings about thoughts, truths about thoughts, and actions about thoughts.


Hate is another such four-letter-word as is love, one that has the same mechanism as love, but is an inversion. In some ways love and hate are a kind of momentum, in that they lead us towards, or away from, the thing that is loved or hated, but because these two attitudes include a caring about the good, or the bad, that may be for the one we are concerned about, the relationship is complex and does not hold a simple consequence in the way that gravity, or logical thinking does. Sometimes we will avoid a loved one for their own good, or encounter a hated one to fight them. This illuminates emotional thinking, somewhat, because the thought that attaches to emotion has another momentum, over and above simple logical response. The thought+emotion has a drive that may make us act against our own interest, in order to act for or against the interests of someone we love or hate.


In the final analysis, both love and hate have the same two distinct sets of relationships. Firstly the relationship to the love/hate object, which may, or may not, be entirely true - most likely is not so. This is an external relationship, hence is objective. The second set of relationships form the attitude, one of love or hate, or something in between, and this is internal, so is subjective. So true love entails both a loving attitude that is subjective, together with a perfect consciousness of the beloved, which is objective. So to love someone truly is to carry them within us. The same can be said for hate. Beyond that mechanism, there is also the possibility that differences exist between the two lovers, and from the paradox of unresolvable difference must emerge something new; so we could also think that 'true love' might involve the manifestation of that emergent difference - probably most frequently as children.


Music is the Best


Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music - music is the best! - Frank Zappa - as spoken by Mary, in Packard Goose, from Joe's Garage Acts II & III


It is, I think, impossible to properly understand love, without first understanding what it is to be an individual in our world. Equally, we cannot know ourselves until we know love, and what to do with it.


Knowledge and Wisdom

Remember, elemental earth is more than material reality, it is all difference, and so facts in action are where truth becomes real, i.e. fire becomes earth.


Knowledge is an awareness of how the manifest has an abstract, i.e. it is being in possession of the facts of the matter, and facts are always about the relative differences between things, i.e. this is so much bigger than that, etc. Knowledge then is elemental air that comes from the reality of whatever the topic is, and those facts [fire of earth] have become a part of you as air. Knowledge comes from sensing reality, so acquiring knowledge is a process, an alchemy, that is Saturn, i.e. air from earth.


Wisdom is also an awareness, hence rooted in air, but of the truth of things; of how the abstract becomes manifest, i.e. how the true facts govern what can then happen. Wisdom then is more than simply knowing what something is factually; wisdom is the bright consciousness of how the facts will control the future; the outcome; how things will go. Wisdom then, allows us to predict what will be, without having to sense what is. Wisdom gives us fire from the reality of whatever the topic is, an alchemy, that is Jupiter, i.e. fire from earth. Jupiter gives us the confidence of being on top of things, and so contributes to our happiness.


The Mandala is a guide to wisdom, a compass, because it encompasses all abstract possibilities.


Truth and Beauty

Wisdom knows some of the possibilities of what is. Truth, on the other hand, in the strictest form, is identity with a thing.


Beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder, that is that our sense of beauty is a subjective, and therefore individual thing.


Love and Music

As seen above, Frank Zappa tells us 'information is not knowledge', and that 'knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, and love is not music - music is the best!' This is so because when two individuals, as otherness to each other, both discover some form of love for one another, there is then the possibility that the attachment that is love, together with the difference that is doing, and the interchange that is questioning, together with all the processes that make these things conscious and felt, etc. ... there is then the possibility that something new may be created, and whatever that is, it is [in its abstract form] music.


Love that is just love is all very well, but love that creates [when two things come together], that is music.


God is Love

When I was back there in primary school, St Peter's C of E VC, in Portishead, we used to sing a hymn that included the lines:


God is love, he's the care, tending each, everywhere.


and continued:


God is good, God is truth, God is beauty, praise him.


But religions of the Biblical kind, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, also tell us something along the lines of:


Vengence is mine, saith the Lord.


So we have a mixed view of God, as both lover and abuser, yet we are also told that God forgives us, and we should do likewise. Not only that, but they also make the claim that God created everything. Any rational person would, I think, have to conclude that God, if 'he' exists at all, is something of a gaslighter. Not only that, but the 'love of God', as described by religion, is an abusive kind of love, so really it is just as well that God is a fiction.


So what is an ordinary person supposed to do when faced with so many contradictory claims about the ultimate, yet hidden, power - the very thing that they may have to face, as and when they get to meet their maker, if ever they do?


There have been many different responses to religion; in some it induces love, in others fear; some reject it altogether and go with Atheism and maybe Humanism. But taking a rational approach to religion maybe risks 'throwing the baby out with the bath water', so the rational person must really ask themselves: 'What is it that they can believe in?'


Virtualism has an Answer

Virtualism, as an extension of Emergence, gives us a set of answers that are hard to refute. Not only does Existence bootstrap itself, without any requirement for a creator god to have a hand in the process, but the ideals of goodness; of beauty, and love, as much as information, knowledge, wisdom, and truth - these all emerge from consciousness, that is; they cannot exist without individuals being conscious in the first place.


Omnipotent and omnipresent are some of the extravagant claims made on God's behalf, but can these be any more believable than 'god the creator'? The difficulty in deciding rests on the unpalatable fact that evil also benefits from these qualities. Evil shares the same world as goodness, and in fact, we see time and again that evil can only exist because it is supported by a skeleton of truth, beauty, and even love, such that evil and goodness are usually very difficult to distinguish from one another. Not only this, but when is goodness ever pure? When are our actions and motivations 100% good, and could we, even in principle, actually function like that?


Virtualism would lead us to a conclusion that, like music, God is what we create; that even if there existed some kind of proto-god; some kind of Promethean spirit, before the material Universe came into being; then such a being, the product of numbers and geometry alone, as looked upon by Euclid, would be a necessary scaffold on which Reality is built, and could in principle possess emergent properties, but that if this is God, that entity, while sharing in all the fundamental properties with us, is of such a nature [i.e. of spirit] that it must be added to by every single one of our human, and animal, conscious experiences. The rational mind would have to conclude that God is made in our image, as much as the other way around, probably more so, as we are the ones in possession of the amplifiers.


What Hope?

At this point, I'd maybe recommend listening to Frank Zappa's Dumb All Over, but music can be an acquired taste, so I will paraphrase: If we are made in God's image, and 'we are dumb', and maybe even 'a little ugly on the side', then God is likewise.


So what hope is there for us?: We can use our natural intelligence to brighten up the place, we don't have to race headlong into a future of global self-destruction, as we are doing at the moment. We could instead see that in life the management tool is politics, and that there are only two possible approaches to politics, one is to unify, and find strength in unity, and the other is to divide, and then someone will conquer, but it may not be you, nor even your side.


The main difficulty with politics is that, as with good and evil, the two sides share the same clothes, so it is difficult to distinguish the good guys from the villains, and sadly we are too often taken in by the villains. Here again, Virtualism can help us, because it is much easier to distinguish good from evil, and therefore the best way to vote, when we see that policies that separate one group from another are always evil, and policies that treat people equally and fairly are always good. For this reason it is necessarily true that the parties of the Right, the Republicans in the USA, the Conservatives in the UK, are actually always forces for evil. There are no two ways about it, if you vote for them, you are voting for separation and self-interest, so you are voting for evil. It is an easy mistake to make, because these parties dress themselves up in ideals that sound good on the surface, but deep down are divisive, and therefore just about as wrong as can be.


If you don't believe me on this matter, just look at the issue of Gun Control in the US. This year, as I write this near the end of March, 2023, not yet 90 days into the year, there have been over 130 mass shootings in the USA. Democrats are over 90% in favour of stricter gun control, whereas Republicans are only 24% in favour. This tells you that Republicans do not, on the whole, care much about their fellow humans, and this is because they regard those shot as 'other', and mass shootings something that happens to other people. This is divisive thinking, and hence is evil. I find it deeply ironic that most of these Republicans would consider themselves to be good Christians, yet how can they be with their support of such evil? If Jesus did return, as many of them hope, the first thing that he'd do is campaign to repeal the Second Amendment.


Sarah Palin

One tool that can also help us distinguish the good from the bad, is astrology. Although it can take some experience to distinguish one from the other, and often there are counter examples. However, a clear example came my way today, in the form of politician Sarah Palin, and the actor Christopher Eccleston. They have similar birthcharts, and unusually have a conjunction of Sun, Mars and Saturn. These planets traditionally denote the most malefic qualites in a person. Christopher openly admits to self-hate and depression, and it is maybe not surprising. Sarah, on the other hand, in her time as governor of Alaska, simply expressed hatred for others by closing down many hundreds of state programs aimed at improving people's lives. By contrast, kinder leaders, such as Vladimir Zalensky of Ukraine, and Joe Biden, have a conjunction of Sun and Venus, the traditional benefic planet of love.


Want and Like

Remember, elemental air is more than just mind, it is all parts that form the subjective self.


Being like some other, or liking some other, is the same thing; it is to contain that otherness within one self in a positive manner. The indiscerniblity of self and other make the inner self one and the same abstract truth as the abstract of the other, whatever that may be. The key point is that the truth of likeness is fire, and that the sources of likeness are the parts of the self, i.e. air. Hence becoming like is creating a consciousness, a truth, and so is the alchemy of the Sun, i.e. fire from air. Hence to like something, we must first be aware of it, and conscious of it.


Where the air of likeness is attached to the rest of the self in a positive manner, the likeness is accepted and generates welcome feelings, however, where the likeness is held within us with the negative attitude of difference, it is not accepted, and we know all about this because it generates unwelcome feelings. In this way, how we are like creates our feelings, one way or another. This is the alchemy of the Moon, i.e. of water from air, and it is our feelings that tell us how we regard our likeness to otherness, both in others, and in our self. One curious feature of water is that it is both our whole and our heart, this means that it is very difficult to maintain a loving attitude when presented with hate, and vice versa; we generally can only feel one thing at a time, because we only have one centre, although that centre may be complex and emerge from a number of feelings.


The nature of the self, being subjective, is to be incomplete; it is impossible for one thing to be all possibilities. That which we are not, we lack, i.e. we are in want of, in the old fashioned sense of want, meaning to lack. Hence it is in the nature of water to want, to build abstract relationships rooted in the gaps within the self. These gaps - the shape of water - are formed most distinctly by the edges of the self, of what we already are and so do not lack. The gap is a vacuum; a kind of a mirror image; a photographic negative; a mathematical complement, of the self, and because nature abhors a vacuum, the want wants to be satisfied. This may be achieved by gaining knowledge - air, as with the alchemy Mercury, i.e. air from water, so Mercury questions; or from establishing actual difference by winning, losing, dividing, and so on - earth, as with Mars, i.e. earth from water,; or finally by gaining consciousness of the other - fire, as with Venus, i.e. fire from water, by taking them on board in a process of cathexis, and consequentially either loving or hating that new part of your self.


Moral Theory and Love


I recently listened to a Jeffrey Kaplan [University of North Carolina @ Greensboro] video covering A.J. Ayer's and George Moore's takes on morality and subjectivism. Unless I have misunderstood, I believe both Ayer and Moore to be mistaken.


Ayer introduces the idea of Moral Words, meaning that there are two ways of looking at morals, as morals per se, and as moral ideas, or words about morals. The whole question revolves around can the ideas expressed by the words actually be true or false, or are they just sentiments about those moral positions.


Moore then says that we have genuine moral disagreements, but that there is agreement on the moral outcomes, such that when there is disagreement, if subjectivism is correct, then one party is saying that they like the moral, while the other is saying that they dislike it, there is no factual truth about the moral. But that is the whole point about moral subjectivism - it is all subjective, there is no objective truth or falsehood about the rightness or wrongness of the moral in question. The opinion itself will be an actual opinion, but not one backed by some Kantian categorical imperative.


It is all much clearer when put in terms of Virtualism

If the moral itself is objective, then it is categorical, and moral issues are truly about rights or wrongs, that is; in the sense of being 'the same as' morals that exist objectively, albeit virtually as abstract [ideal] entities.


If otherwise, then the moral itself is only subjective, and the moral issue boils down to one of subjective right or wrong, and that cannot be more than opinion, or utility, or religion, or science, or agreement, i.e. there may be many reasons to justify a subjective moral position, but it must always be a mistake to claim that the moral itself is an objective fact.


Even if we were to claim that the moral was a God given law, either because God loves that stance, or because God is that stance in practice, we would still be appealing to a third party opinion to justify the moral stance, and while that opinion may be an objective truth about the third party, it is not necessarily true in all cases, as we may always posit a devil who holds a contrary opinion.


Quite apart from the moral questions, this issue has a relevance for understanding the nature of love. When It comes to love there are also questions of fact and questions of opinion, but I think that love is also a subjective thing, just like morality, unless we make it objective by sharing it, i.e. reciprocated love, and shared experience makes love objective between two or more individuals.


An attitude to the other, whether it be a person, a dog, a food, a car, or even a moral, or a work of art - a song, is at root dependent on knowledge of that other. Where there is no knowledge, there can be no relationship of any kind. Although, here 'knowledge' is meant loosely, meaning more of an interaction that registers some presence, whether conscious or not; we may know about the other because it bumps into us in the dark, which gives only limited knowledge. That knowledge of otherness can even apply to parts of our own self, such as the way we react to certain circumstances - maybe we always get angry when we lose a game, or sad when we hear someone else's bad news - and then we may have attitudes to our own responses, possibly not liking our 'button pushed' reactions.


It is also possible that we have knowledge in principle [we could say 'in general'], such as may be the knowledge of our fellow beings as men, women, dogs, or cats, etc. in which case there is a kind of hollow knowledge, yet to be fleshed out by actual knowledge of an individual, rather as knowledge of their kind, which is the knowledge that informs prejudice and other generalizations, such as gender preference in sexual attraction.


Once we know a thing in some detail, we then must have an internal relationship to that knowledge. That relationship from the whole self, to the part of the self that is knowledge of this other thing, may then be what we'd describe as 'academic', i.e. simply an acknowledgement of mind to the facts of this other part of the mind's knowledge, or it may be emergent, may be of any other elemental kind - that emerges from knowledge in combination with other parts of the self, such as bodily reactions, e.g. 'it makes me feel sick!'


We may know the degree of differences, the ideas, the emotions and the facts of any matter, each of which would be a type of mental relationship to the knowledge of the other. Each of these is a subjective stance, or relationship, which in Virtualism we describe as air - air of earth, air of water, air of fire, or simply more air. These emergent steps go from being about the kind of relationship to the knowledge of the other, to an emergent subjective knowledge, which being emergent takes one to a next smaller sector in the Mandala, one of air. Then there is a new attitude of emergence in relationship to that air. In this manner knowledge of things, and one's attitude to those things, and then one's attitude to either the attitude itself, or even knowledge of that attitude, become increasingly personal and reflexive.


However, when experience is shared, then there is an element of objectivity that runs alongside the subjectivity of the purely personal experience. The objectivity originates in the otherness of the other, even though that objectivity presents as subjectivity to the other.


Hence, when experience is shared, the less than objectively real subjective thing becomes in part objective through the presence of the other, and in doing so becomes more true than the purely subjective.


This argument could in principle apply to any case, whether that be the relationships between individuals, the relationships of possession or use of real objects, the relationship of possession of knowledge of data, or narratives, or science, and the relationships of fact and truth. Even the relationship that one has with oneself becomes subject to this rule, because our self, as opposed to direct knowledge of self, becomes such knowledge through emotion and subsequent knowledge of that emotion. Subjective knowledge of a subjective self is still going to be internal to the self, remaining subjective, but in the transition from emotion to knowledge and vice versa, some new property emerges.


For the subjective to become objective though, it has to be shared.

The sharing can be of all elemental types, and may be positive or negative, emotionally, either 'ugh' or 'yay', in Kaplan's terms, and so will lead to either love or hate in the extremes, or something milder in between.


Morals then are no different from anything else, except that morals originate with ideas of good and bad, and these, being ideas fundamentally, start internally as subjective truths that cannot carry the factual truth of numbers, they cannot be objective, or rather, they cannot be objective in the face of opposition. However, if there is universal agreement [within the scope of some [potentially lesser] 'universe', then within that context the agreed upon moral is indeed universal, hence objective - up to that point. This makes morality voluntary, because if you were to be the only voice of dissent, your opinion on the moral issue in question would, by virtue of its difference from the rest of the opinions, prevent that moral truth from being actually universal.


Objective morality

There is, with Virtualism, a way to look at change as numeric relationship, in which case every action that is taken can be seen to include one or more morality factors. These factors are something akin to the speed of light, i.e. they are composed of a mathematical rotation that ranges from zero - morally neutral - all the way to 100%, i.e. total destruction, beyond which there is no further action that can be taken. The other consideration is how pretty are they?, No, it is how different are they. From a morality perspective, the issue is of the kind 'Do unto others', i.e. if you wouldn't want it done to you, don't do it. This translates as is the action internal or external, and does it treat them differently. Here we see the immorality of treating people as 'other'.


This way of looking at morality, as being an emergent property of change, if it is to be of any use, ought to be applicable to life, and ought at least to help us resolve some philosophical hard nuts, e.g. the Trolleybus Problem. It helps resolve the issue by highlighting the inherent immorality of Utilitarianism, and showing that life is incommensurable. We may still decide to follow a course of utility, but in doing so we should recognise the immorality present in our choice.


In recognising that the moral choice is rooted in destruction, but overlaid with a division between self and other, or not, it then comes down entirely to a question of hypocrisy; we may believe in such ideas as meritocracy, or plutocracy, or any other division of opportunity among people, but would we really want to subject ourselves to life's lottery knowing we could end up anywhere, or would we opt for a fair shake? Because there are no two ways about it, and it is gross hypocrisy to subject others to deprivation, if you are not a willing volunteer for such yourself.


Human Rights


Human rights cannot be god-given rights, any more than morals can be god-given morals. They are both of them of the same order of thing. The difference, generally, is that a moral tends to be proscriptive; of the Ten Commandments nine are proscriptive, and even 'Honour thy father and thy mother' is a bit dodgy, as it could be taken to mean don't disobey them. So really, none of these commandments are for your benefit, except when others don't murder you, etc.


Rights, on the other hand, are all permissive; you have a right to life, and many other things. We hold that human rights are what philosophers would call normative, that is; they should be followed universally, 'as if' they were objective fact, even though we know perfectly well that they are the creation of humankind. Rights emerge from the collective of people agreeing that they ought to be, and then they are an actual thing, as much as any legality is.


The bottom line on morality, if it is not yet clear, is this; destruction has a high probability of being a bad thing, and the ultimate destruction of death is, like the speed of light, unsurpassable - so don't kill. As for trolly bus problems, we'd have to be certain of the utility of each person involved, before we make a utilitarian judgement; perhaps it would be ok to kill Putin to end the war in Ukraine, and thereby save many thousands from needless death, but it would still be better to lock him up, if that were a viable alternative. It should be needless to say, but sadly it does need saying, capital punishment is always morally wrong - not only has it been shown to be no deterrent, also frequently the wrong person is convicted, but there is always a workable alternative that involves no killing.


The Final Anlysis


In the Final Anlysis the one and only thing that truly matters is that people, and that means you, and me, learn to love one another, and that means everybody and every living thing, which includes planet Earth..


If it is not clear by now, understand this; one day you will die, and when that happens what will count is whether you, in your heart, truly love. That is, do you factually see others as being the same as you, as being a part of you that you treat as yourself, or will you have failed to connect to others? Because if you maintain a position of otherness, then you place yourself outside, separate from everything. To put it in parable form, you shut yourself out of Heaven, and that is a place where you really and truly do not want to be.


What is more, you would be well advised not to leave it until the last minute. Love is an attitude that like all things requires practice to make it a true part of yourself, so start now.



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