Integrationism and Cultural Renaissance

[Bodhisattvacat]

Schiller has defined beauty this way: the accord between reason and
sensuousness. And indeed, when one looks at a forest, a dolphin or
through a telescope at a galaxy, one sees the celebration of both
reason and sensuousness - a celebration, indeed, of the reason and
sensousness of the universe of which these things are a part. A maple
that has been chiseled to perfection over millions of years is a
celebration of everything that made it - the elegance of the four
forces, the power of the sun, the incredible life-supporting
conditions of planet Earth and the environment it inhabits. It may be
possible, assuming agreement with those who do not believe in theistic
creation, to claim that these forces are blind; but that makes the
process and the result still more miraculous.

Hegel spoke of universe as being a result of dialectical refinement of
opposites - as consciousness taking form in opposite forces which,
through synthesis with one another, refine toward spirit. He claimed
that all of history has been a result of this synthesis, and the
intended result is to bring everything toward optimal state. Whether
or not that is true, the more the opposite forces work with one
another intelligently the more beautiful is the result. When two
opposite forces - forces such as male and female; forces such as
business and government; forces such as genius and structure; forces
such as reason and emotions - fundamentally comprehend and respect one
another, and understand also their own nature as well as the
legitimate parameters of their own role, they arrive at a synergy that
makes far, far more than is either force acting alone. The result is
synthesis. A product. Not spirit, not heaven, but rather something new
and beautiful that is greater than the sum of its parts.

This then is the mechanism of cultivation of beauty according to
Schiller, as well as the mechanism of achieving the best of history
according to Hegel: integration, reconciliation and recombination of
existents. And indeed the applications for this approach are nothing
short of universal. For capital and labor that work in understanding
and mutual agreement with one another, as in the case of the Clinton
economy, produce far better results than capital and labor that work
against one another, as in the case of the Industrial Revolution. It
likewise produces better results than slave economy or Communist
state, in which one class dominates the other. Indeed it produces
results far more satisfying to both worker and capitalist, results
that produce the beautiful fruit of peace and prosperity, as well as a
better product. A marriage in which the emotional and sexual feelings
of people for one another accord with values of the relationship, and
vice versa, is a beautiful relationship, one in which both partners
blossom as does their love. And a mind whose emotional and rational,
as well as ethical and aesthetic, aspects accord with one another is a
beautiful mind. In all cases, the best synthesis has been
accomplished, using the mechanism of the human thought to arrive at
the best outcome vis-à-vis the components from which the synthesis is
made.

It is known from science that after the Big Bang were formed the four
forces. It is known also that light exists in a spectrum of colors,
with their union together forming the white. This is consistent with
Plotinus concept that the One, or the primal unity, which he equates
with God, emanates existents in a multiplicity of dimensions, which
existents then struggle and refine among one another to produce the
world in which we exist. In other words, the primal unity turns into a
multiplicity in order that the universe can exist as a reification;
which multiplicity can be consummated, through a dialectical
synthesis, to arrive at a product that is better than anything that
has existed before. Once consummated into a product, a unity –
consummation – has been achieved, and divine harmony is restored, with
a product created out of the components that would not have possibly
existed before.

But the Hegelian model is only partly complete. After all, it is not
only through synthesis with its opposite that a thing is improved, nor
is there at all times merely a single measurement variable determining
the quantification. Life can be represented far more as a
multivariable system in which there are multiple axes of measurement,
and as such there are multiple dimensions along which value can be
quantified. Best results are achieved, I posit, through synthesis
along all these dimensions, arriving at an integration that reconciles
and consummates all forces that are at hand – a multidimensional
dialectic; a creative unity from a multiplicity; a high-minded,
creative solution that unites the components into a product; what
Steven Covey referred to as synergy.

That it is given to us as shapers of the social universe in which we
live to create products of all existents through creative synergistic
synthesis and reconciliation along the dimensions of multiplicity, I
call the philosophy of integrationism.

It is normally held that reason and emotions are opposites to one
another. I have heard people say frequently that their thoughts and
their feelings told them different things; this of course is typically
due to ideologies and injunctions shaping their reason to act against
what their emotions tell them, or else due to forces shaping their
emotions into distorted shapes. To people who say that emotions are
not to be trusted, the correct response is: Make yourself trustworthy
to your emotions, and they will trust you. Practice rational-emotional
integration. Practice reconciliation between the sensuous and the
rational, starting with an approach toward the emotions that is
understanding rather than judgmental. Talk to your emotions and let
them talk back to you. Build a relationship with your emotions based
on mutual acceptance and understanding in partnership for happiness,
and not one based on rejection and perpetuation of abuse. And thus
arrive at an integrated character, a character in which reason and
emotions are in accord.

The same is to be told to people who distrust sexuality. Sexuality is
a subset of nature, and sexuality that feels itself wrong is a
sexuality that is inhibited, whether through traumatic experience such
as incest or rape or through poisonous ideologies such as Puritanism
and the Wolf-McKinnon-Dworkin "feminism." Complex emotions surrounding
sexuality reflect the complexity of both nature and civilization, and
the honorable solution is not to blame the medium, as many do, for the
problem, but rather to understand the facts of life well enough to
undo the emotional damage of traumatic experience and undo the mental
and psychological damage of traumatic ideologies to forge these
emotions into something beautiful, developed, cultivated and benign -
into something, that is, that produces poetry and art; into something
that is both loving and life-supporting; into something that accords
with developed reason; into something that is - beautiful.

Since ethics determine what we value and aesthetics determine what we
like, happiness is dependent upon our ethics and our aesthetics being
in harmony with one another. That is, for a person to achieve inner
peace, there must be an area of intersection between his values and
his likes, and he must live at that subset. The greater that area of
intersection, the more the chances there are for happiness; the
rational and the emotional, or the ethical and the aesthetic, have to
possess a way to intersect, or else happiness becomes mathematically
unattainable. Inhabiting the region of ethics without aesthetics is
grim joyless duty and obligation, and living there results in ongoing
misery. Inhabiting the region of aesthetics without ethics is the
forbidden pleasures, and going there results in guilt. Where ethics
and aesthetics intersect, is happiness.

Sri Aurobindo stated that the sum total of ethical endeavor is to live
one's life beautifully. In view of his perspective, as in view of the
previous, it is incumbent upon people to cultivate integration between
their ethics and their aesthetics, with that which is aesthetically
pleasing being understood and then either valued or altered – and that
which is valued either being made palatable to the aesthetic sense or
dismissed. In this injunction, is the ultimate recipe for integration
of the ethical and the aesthetic – a moral code demanding upon the sum
total of man's activities to aim at beauty in all its forms and to
lead, through mechanism of man's activity, to formation of a beautiful
world – beautiful in its physical, relational and human aspects. It is
thus a recipe for integration and happiness. When Beaudellaire said
"Make life beautiful, make life beautiful" he was giving an ethical
and not merely aesthetic injunction. It is, in my view, a very
workable ethic; one that is applied with greatest of success in Paris,
San Francisco, Barcelona, Florence and many places around the world.

The person who is attracted to another person without valuing her as a
person commits a theft – a theft of failure to compute value. He fails
to morally value what he aesthetically likes and, having through
whatever methods acquired what he has sought, proceeds to hurt her
instead of doing the thing that honesty would demand – value and
cherish her. The most common example of this is the case of the men
who are attracted to glamorous, artistic women, but value in a woman
the opposite traits – the traits of servility, humility and
traditional values. If this kind of man marries the kind of woman to
whom he is attracted, he (and to a far greater extent she) is bound to
living in misery, as her personality would be the opposite of what he
values, and he would seek to eviscerate her. If such a man marries the
kind of woman he values, he would be sexually unfulfilled and most
likely seek adulterous relationships. For a happy relationship to take
place, the man must alter either his values or his likes until he
either finds a way to value the kind of woman to whom he is attracted,
or else finds a way to like the kind of woman he considers the
paragons of moral virtue. The most common alternative – of marrying
the glamorous woman, and then trying to destroy her personality and
self-esteem in order to bludgeon her into compliance with the
traditional wife role – is miserable for him and, in my view, criminal
due to the amount of agony it inflicts upon the woman.

The same is the case for women's attractions. It is common for women
to be attracted to the macho character, but to value in a relationship
the man who would treat them well. Now at the risk of provoking to
anger the entire feminine gender, good treatment of women is not in
the description of the Rambo character. He is most likely to see
himself as superior to women, to be violent, to be more loyal to his
buddies than to his wife, and to be prone to adultery, gambling,
drinking, flirtation and other behaviors that are devastating to the
woman emotionally. The provider character isn't much better, seeing
his wife as property and treating her as worse than property – as
property that had the insolence to possess a will of her own that can
at times disagree with his own, a will that by all means had to be
stamped out. A woman therefore needs to decide what she values and let
her values lead ahead of her likes – or learn to value what she likes
and stop complaining when they lead her to bad situations.

Both man and woman are at a disadvantage, due to historical errors
that pit the ethical and the aesthetic against each other. The
attitudes that create a rupture between the ethical and the aesthetic
– the attitudes that tell people that their nature is sinful, or that
there is no use for sensitive and romantic women, or that women are
irrational or evil, or that men are out to use women for sex – are the
attitudes that are responsible for such abuse. Effectively, they cause
a separation between the ethical and the aesthetic; which leads to
ugliness and suffering for everyone whose lives a person may touch. A
person whose aesthetics and ethics are contradictory to each other is
a miserable individual who inflicts misery on other people. Such a
person simply cannot be happy, and he would not bear for anyone else
to be less wretched than he.

St. Paul said that the wishes of the spirit and the wishes of the
flesh are contradictory to each other. I suggest that this is an
error; for as anyone who's been in love knows, love involves both a
spiritual and a physical longing – the feelings for the loved one and
cravings for her are both spiritual and sexual at once. A partner who
is both spiritually developed and physically beautiful evokes both
spiritual craving and sexual desire; and in the best relationships,
there is both spiritual love and physical affection at once. Spirit
and flesh are two distinct existents within the human being – and in
the best situations, the happy situations, the harmonious situations,
the two work in accord and in collaboration. In Schiller's beautiful
character, the two are in agreement with one another – and in
beautiful social covenants, both the emotional and the rational, like
the aesthetic and the ethical, are integrated using the mechanism of
the human mind and will into the best synthetic product.

The discordance between many people's ethical and aesthetic values can
be understood from the Platonist perspective. Nature abhors
redundancy. What we are attracted to, therefore, correlates typically
with traits that are different from our own. What we value, correlates
typically with how we have ourselves been reinforced. To both like and
value something, we have to recognize value in things other than what
is similar to us – we have to extend ourselves to embrace something
different from ourselves. Scott Peck said love is an act of extending
ourselves for the purpose of another person's spiritual growth; the
spiritual growth achieved here is likewise one's own, that of
integrating into one's personality an appreciation for something that
is not of oneself.

Needless to say, this does not result in easy peace but in dynamic
equlibrium, a state that constantly takes mental effort in order to
sustain. It results in a polarity, in a synergy, that makes the most
of both components. The process is an ongoing synthesis and
refinement; a Zarathurstra's acrobat bestriding the marketplace on a
tightrope, a juggling, until the synergy has been made complete into a
product and the goal – the consummation - has been reached. This is
how the multiplicity is unified and a product is shaped. True peace –
a state of ongoing synthesis and integration among dimensions of
multiplicity – a state of beauty - is therefore a dynamic process
involving thought and ingenuity. The other solution is that of one
side of the dialectic driving the other side into extinction; a war
solution, a domination solution, a lazy solution that fails to produce
a product and results in ugliness, waste of resources, unhappiness and
prevention of inputs from producing anything better than what they are
in themselves.

For those who do not like dynamism and want to seek stability, the
response is: Life is dynamic. Life requires a homeostasis, yes, but it
requires also constant motion and work in order to defeat entropy.
Life has to be both balanced and dynamic; within itself it has to
possess homeostasis and it has to move ahead. True maximization as
living beings is neither the simple straight-line progress of the West
nor the circular harmony of the East; it is rather a combination of
two, a spiral heading upwards, a helix in which the motion is both
circular and linear, with each cycle along one set of dimensions
resulting in an uplifting of human condition along another dimension
of measurement toward a more advanced state, or, if interrupted at any
point in the process, heading downwards to continue the process again
once the destructive influence has passed.

The finding that happiness can only result when likes and values are
in harmony with each other necessitates that both ethical and
aesthetic development proceed in a manner that is harmonious with each
other – through development of the aesthetic sense with help of art
and literature that integrates beauty with virtue and develops
emotions into forms that are noble and beautiful, while providing an
equally elegant conceptual structure that intellectually accommodates
emotional understanding. The high purpose of art is thus to
communicate to senses and to emotions the universal order - to
communicate the ecstasy, the majesty, the magnificence of the universe
in which we live. The high purpose of art is to communicate the truth
in a way that is accessible to emotions - in a way that the feelings
can catch on and that can bring into expression that they can fathom
the higher truth of the world. The high purpose of art is to express
what is true and what is lasting - what is true, that is, to the
universe, whether it find its reflection in passions that run through
us or in fractals and logarithms or in the substance from which has
come matter and time.

The high purpose of science and philosophy is to communicate the same
truth in a way that is accessible to reason.

In postulating the equlibrium theory, John Nash went against both pure
capitalism, which claims that the benefit of the collective is
achieved through people striving for their own benefit, and against
altruistic ideologies such as Communism and religion that claim the
pursuit of self-interest to be antithetical to the benefit of the
collective. What he said was something that ought to be common sense:
that the benefit of the group is achieved when people strive to
benefit themselves – and the group. That is, in a social universe
consisting of self and others, the social universe benefits when one
strives to benefit both self and the social universe. Through this is
achieved an improvement in the well-being of all.

The social universe benefits, in other words, not from competition
alone and not from cooperation alone, but rather from the mixture of
competition and cooperation. It benefits from people seeking their own
benefit as well as that of the group. This mixture of competition and
cooperation, an integration of two opposite approaches to life,
results in a Pareto-optimal solution, an equilibrium that achieves the
best outcome for everybody. Knowing what's good for yourself and
knowing what's good for the group, rather than seeing the group as out
to destroy you or sacrificing yourself for the group, results in the
best solution both for yourself and for the group. This is the meaning
of synergy.

The mechanism of this approach is as follows. Competition sharpens the
tool – it challenges the person to be his best. Cooperation strives
for the benefit of the whole. Competition alone produces people who
are good at what they do and benefit the consumer, but who are at each
other's throats and never reap the full benefit of their efforts
because they spend so much time competing, hence they have no time
left to enjoy life. Cooperation alone produces a lazy, low-level state
of affairs that sells the consumer short. Combining competition with
cooperation – challenging people to be their best, and to contribute
their best to the shared outcome of which shared outcome each partakes
– arrives at the best outcome for the whole and for each member. This,
is the beautiful outcome; synergy; reconciliation and integration;
consummation; the good of the collective and the members at the same
time.

The optimal outcome for the world comes from cooperation of people
within small entities such as companies, within the context of
competition between companies and communities, within the context of
cooperation among higher levels of structure – industries, sciences,
technologies – to make a better world.

This state is largely (and thankfully in not least degree to the
people responsible) reflected in the status quo. As Covey rightly
advised his clients, companies should strive for their employees
collaborating among each other rather than competing against each
other, and in dealing with customers and suppliers companies should
strive for win-win scenarios. The first results in people expending
their energy striving to benefit the company and not in divisive
intramural politicking that seeks promotion of self at all costs to
other employees and regardless of benefit to the company; the second
results in companies having good relations with other participants in
the economy except, of course, their competitors. At a higher level,
there is at this time international scientific and medical
cooperation, as well as international economic policy-setting that
takes business and labor interests, as well as interests of the people
for air and water free of disease, into account. The latter is
currently under challenge by Bush administration – a state of affairs
that best be corrected by giving it the benefit of the boot.

What would bring larger entities to collaborate for a shared
objective? Seeing the full picture and seeing how participating within
it can lead to the benefit of the whole and of one's own entity. It is
believed that human nature is selfishness or at least rational
self-interest, but I posit that humanity has gotten as far as it has
due to the fact that it has a species consciousness as well as
individual consciousness – that people possess within themselves,
whether through mechanism of creation or evolution, a natural interest
in the benefit of people other than themselves. In other words, that
people do in general, not only as a result of liberal education but
innately as a result of genetic traits that are more profoundly
expressed in some than in others, wish for mankind to do well, and
that this impetus has allowed many people on their own accord to
pursue teaching, scholarly, charitable, monastic, scientific,
creative, policing and civil service paths that did not present great
monetary or ego reward but allowed satisfaction of doing something
significant for other people. Few feelings are better than that of
having done a good deed without needing to boast about it; I consider
only the feeling of great achievement, the feeling of mutual love and
the state of grace or spiritual ecstasy to be as gratifying. The first
two are rare; the third goes away unless one applies oneself in
serving mankind. Doing good is a far more sure path to gratification
than taking, and it is an easier path to gratification than
achievement or seeking a beautiful relationship.

The reason that doing good feels good is that it touches upon the best
in the human beingness – the interest in the good of the species and,
in some cases, of life itself. Thus, an order that benefits the self
even as it benefits the species does the most for the entirety of the
human nature – both for its self-directed, or self-interested, and its
species-directed, or altruistic, components, which are expressed to
different extents in different people and which people ought to be
free to choose the path that suits them the most. This offers man the
fulfillment of the entirety of the human nature – the opportunity to
do good, and do well, at the same time.

C.S. Lewis stated that the Christian recognizes God's creation as
fully perfect, and the existence within a man of a certain motive
therefore predicted a natural way whereby it may be fulfilled. Indeed,
this is the same statement as that made by rationalist philosophers,
that the Universe is rational (and all motives within human psyche are
there for a reason – because they help our survival or evolution as a
species). Given that both self-interest and altruism are potent
motives within human psyche that have had tremendous formative power
on the history of the species, both the Christian and the rationalist
view demand that there be a rational and Christian way to channel both
altruism and self-interest in society. There is. It is to possess a
social covenant in which people are encouraged to benefit both
themselves and the species – to do good and do well at the same time,
with those who want to do well without doing good being subjected to
laws of market competition that brings them to work for the consumer's
interest and those who want to do good without caring whether or not
they do well monetarily being given the honor that the social
usefulness of their endeavors demands.

In the latter, we find America currently lacking. The disrespect that
is afforded the teaching profession is, I believe, scandalous; for it
is the teachers that inform the cognitive habits of the young
generation, and teachers again that have the power to either affect
the children into being developed human beings and productive
citizens, or else through neglect to resign them into the hell of
addiction, depression and crime. The teachers in America aren't
respected, and for this reason American primary education despite
money expended upon it is lagging behind that of other industrialized
countries, as the best and the brightest shun teaching careers. A good
teacher is a great asset to the civilization; someone who can instill
in children the love of the subject, the love of learning, the love of
productive endeavor, the love of the neighbor, the love of country and
the love of life. I have been fortunate to have had two such teachers
in an American private school. They deserve all the respect one can
give them, and the more respect is afforded great teachers the more
great people go into the teaching profession and have positive effect
on the formation of young minds, in schools public as well as private.

A side note on rationalism is that it is a philosophy that seeks to
project upon the entire Universe the method of rational logic that is
one function of human cognition – in much the same way as Hegel
projects upon the Universe the dialectic that is another form of
conducting inquiry. Both can therefore be seen to be an absurd case of
hubris – of seeing the entire Universe to represent the way of
cognition with which one is most familiar – until one asks whereby
such functions exist in the human mind. For if the Creator of the
Universe is as beyond all quantification as Bible states, then
certainly He will place in His creatures the mechanisms of cognition
with which they can approximate Him – and in this case, both
rationalism and dialectical systems would be useful in apprehending
the Universe, even if neither may do so completely. If we have
evolved, then linear logic as well as the dialectic are features of
human species – ones that can be employed to its benefit or to its
harm but that are regardless in no way demonstrative of the truth of
the Universe, merely of advantage of survival therein.

Representing one's effect upon the collective benefit as the sum
Si = ax+a1y1+a2y1+…+anyn,
Where x is self, a is contribution to the benefit of self, and each y
term is an other person that stands to be affected by one's actions, S
increases with increase in the sum of the terms. The benefit of each
person is the sum
Bi = bx+b1y1+b2y2+…+bnyn,
Where x is the self, b one's own contribution to the benefit of the
self, and each y term the contribution of another person to one's
benefit. Collective benefit is the sum of Bi's – a sum of actions
expended by all individuals to benefit themselves and other people in
the social whole.

This definition quantifies everyone affected by the individual's
actions, whether they take economic form or other forms. It includes –
one's co-workers, one's wife and children, one's neighbors, the
government, the people whose health is affected by industrial and
agricultural activity that forms one's consumption, the people who
produce the goods one consumes, one's friends and enemies…. The
interests of all these people needs to be reflected in the society and
the economy in order that one's actions work toward benefit of all
whose lives one touches. In this, the main tenet of Christianity –
that the main commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself, with
the concept of neighbor including all human beings – becomes reified
in society's system of reinforcements, and people are steered toward
living the lives that will get them right with God, even as they are
steered toward living lives that benefit – each other as well as
themselves.

The equation above is true for the objective definition of the
collective benefit – the benefit of "the greatest good for the
greatest number" according to utilitarianism or the benefit of "all
individuals included in the society," according to Ayn Rand's concept
of society as the sum total of its individual members. But game theory
maintains something else: that collective benefit is not simply a sum
of its parts but an entity in its own right. That is, the group exists
as a real entity; whether it be Christianity claiming that all
Christians are part of the body of Christ, or pantheism claiming that
we are all one, or government claiming that a nation is a real unit
that retains its own character regardless of which individual citizens
live in it. Therefore there is, in addition to the good of the
individual members of the collective, also the benefit of the
collective. Which collective can be defined, respectively, as –
Christendom; humanity; or the nation.

This can be understood economically, but this can also apply in other
aspects of life. Quite simply, actions that benefit both self and
others, whether in enhancing their state of mind or enhancing their
material well-being, are actions that lead to collective benefit. A
person who hurts another person poses a net drain on the collective
well-being; a person who helps another person enhances it. Attitudes
that are ennobling and enriching – that help people to see the beauty
in each other and cherish each other – are attitudes that increase
total benefit and are as such attitudes that increase the well-being
both of the individual and the collective. Attitudes that are
prosecutorial, degrading, shriveling and abusive are attitudes that
cause misery and are as such wrong for both the whole and the
individual members.

It is possible to say that mathematical logic does not apply to the
world of the subjective thing that is valuation. This would of course
place all values outside the sphere of quantification. Placed outside
the sphere of rationality, values become undefended, and consequently
there is no rational defense for things that bring about happiness and
no protection from things that destroy it. It is not difficult to see
how this leads to a population of miserable people who are always
struggling for scraps of sunlight, wasting all their resources
defending their likes and dislikes while preventing the energy from
going to benefit the social whole. The idea that valuation is
subjective and not in any way based on any universal principles, or on
anything rationally discernible, is what Mortimer Adler called
suicidal psychologizing on the part of philosophy – a case of copping
out on the task of explaining the human being.

The hideous injustice of this line of thinking consists of the fact
that it degrades and devalues humanity. It states that people's
experience is subjective hence not rationally quantifiable, and then
the bulk of the people who practice this line of thinking do the
unforgivable and the illogical: they leap from the tentative
("subjective is not quantifiable") to an impossible value judgment
("subjective is unimportant"). Now if experience of the people, as
this logic contends, effectively does not matter, then it becomes
excusable to commit grave harm to people and to attack or devalue
those who seek to provide to people a good experience – experience
such as those of beauty, compassion, and love. To paraphrase R.D.
Laing, It is fashionable to talk of experience as merely subjective,
but never of anything as merely objective. To devalue experience as
"merely subjective" is to devalue mankind as the recipients of the
experience – and a philosophy that sees the experience of beauty, or
love, or spirituality, or compassion, as "merely subjective" or "in
the eye of the beholder" is the philosophy that does violence to
humanity, excluding these considerations from our social interactions
and our environments we create and relegating the mass of the people
to be mistreated and to live in despair and ugliness.

Is experience subjective or objective? It is both. The event that
causes the experience to occur is an objective happening; the
experience of the event as felt by the person is subject to sensory
interpretation. The study of physical beauty by Judith Langlois has
shown that a face with a particular proportions will be experienced as
beautiful by subjects from all cultures. Another study has shown that,
out of 500 faces shown to 20,000 subjects, all faces got picked at
least once, but some got picked only once and others hundreds of
times. The experience of beauty occurs in presence of some objects and
not others, and some objects evoke the feeling of beauty in more
people than do others. Both the object and the subject's tastes and
values are involved in the computation; the experience is a function
of both. Experience is – integrative.

To those who do not consider experience to be a real event due to the
fact that it takes place "only" inside a person's head, one needs pose
this question. Is computer software real? Its effects also take place
only inside the computer, or the computer system to which the computer
is attached. Yet nobody of any authority would begin to claim that
computer software is not real. How much more real, then, is the code
by which runs human psyche, measurable as it is only through its
effects on the person's perception which may or may not manifest in
actions – but which in all cases occasion events in the human brain to
occur.

Some objects – like the faces in the Judith Langlois study – appeal to
something universal in human beings and are experienced by all who
perceive them as beautiful. Others are experienced as beautiful only
by people with certain tastes and beliefs. The art that touches on the
universal in human beings is art that is timeless; the art that serves
its times or its subjects is art that is limited to its audience. Both
are necessary; both are legitimate. Classical art is still loved today
because it speaks to the universal in human beings, but the
currently-anachronistic music of Jefferson Airplane was just as
important for its times.

Seeing experience of life as is both subjective and objective – as
integrative – as a thing that can be discerned both from within and
without, with the integrative perspective – the perspective of both
experiencing something immediately and measuring it externally –
superior to the mere objective method of measurement without personal
experience and the mere subjective method of living it without having
a theoretical overarching perspective – one can rather postulate a
model of the individual's interaction with the collective. That model
is as follows:

Think of a pomegranate. A pomegranate consists of hundreds of seeds.
Each seed has its unique core – its unique center – of which it is a
manifestation. Each seed is also a manifestation of the entire fruit
in which it exists. The seed is the substructure; the fruit is the
superstructure. The pomegranate and the seeds reinforce and shape each
other.

The fruit is the seeds in it, but also itself as a unique being. The
seeds are part of the fruit, but also their own unique and unshakeable
selves. An individual and a civilization can be therefore seen as the
seed and the pomegranate, with complex patterns of interconnectivity
among one another shaping and reframing both – with each individual
endowed with its own center, contributing its own unique essence to
the larger whole, and the whole containing the individuals while also
having its own character.

When looking at a succession of seeds in the pomegranate, one gets an
idea of what the pomegranate is like; until one comes across a seed
that is different, and that by its sheer beingness refutes the
pattern. This is known as the pioneer seed. The pioneer seed is
different from previous bunch of seeds; it's different from voices
that claim to speak for the fruit. It is a part of the fruit however,
and it peforms a very important function: that of giving a truer
understanding of the whole than what has existed before.

Pioneer seeds lead difficult lives. They are pressed by the previous
patterns, they are made to believe they are wrongly made, in order
that they disappear and the cognitive dissonance of the existence of
seeds such as them vis-à-vis the patterns that claim to speak for the
fruit be resolved. The solution is for the pioneer seeds to dig in
their heels and identify with the larger whole and say that they are
serving a social function: That of refuting the pattern that claims to
speak for the fruit and making the observer understand something that
was not seen before.

The pomegranate and the seed depend on air, water and sunlight. The
pomegranate and the seeds take these components and make something
better than has existed before; something beautiful, consummate and
synergistic. Since both the pomegranate and the seeds are real,
legitimate entities, achieving benefit consists of achieving benefit
both for the individual and for the whole. It consists of both the
individual and the collective good. I say collective good not in the
utilitarian meaning – the meaning of "greatest good for the greatest
number" – but in the meaning of the benefit of the whole; the benefit,
that is, of the pomegranate. I say individual good in the manner
spoken of by the romantics and the objectivists and extolled by them
as the highest and only form of benefit.

In the way of the fulfillment both of the individual and the
collective benefit stand – bullies. I define bullies as entities and
individuals that seek power over other individuals at the expense of
their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The internationalist
Clinton administration, which sought the benefit of humanity as well
as all individual humans whose self-interest did not consist of
oppression over other individuals, was under the most vicious attacks
from two sets of people: bullies at home (Republicans who were used to
dominating the American citizenry and could not stand for them to have
cultural and economic alternatives) and bullies abroad (Islamic
terrorists, murderous regimes and Stalinist dictatorships that were
used to pulling the same trick on their own populations and were
threatened by Clinton's promise). In order for the individual and the
collective benefit to be fulfilled, the power of bullies has to be
broken through action combining the top and bottom – through action
combining the leader with visionary outlook pushing from above and the
people who do not wish to be dominated by the bullies any longer
pushing from below. Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo, in fighting with
people's help the corrupt officials in his country, provides the model
for that sandwiching arrangement. Another model has been the United
States, with the help of the Afghan people, overthrowing the Taliban.

Both the seeds and the pomegranate are legitimate entities; and both
must strive to be the best thing they can be even as it is legitimate
for them to seek their own fulfillment. We must tend to our garden; we
must also tend to the world. And it is legitimate for us, as seeds in
the fruit, to reap dividends of what both our own seed and the fruit
produce, even as it is legitimate for the fruit as a whole to reap
dividends from the individual seeds and from its own structure.

Because both the seeds and the pomegranate are legitimate entities,
they both possess power and they both consequently possess
responsibility for the outcome of the whole as well as for themselves.
Where an individual is in his life, is a function both of his actions
and of his society's preferences; where a society is, is a function of
the actions of the whole and of those of its individual members. The
same character that is encouraged in France (finely cultivated,
delicate) is desecrated in American heartland; the same character
traits that lead to success in Japan (respectful, docile, patient,
hard-working) lead, in Africa, to extinction. Even within America
itself, the values differ between different regions and between cities
and heartland; and the character that does best in Los Angeles is
quite different from a character that does best in Fort Wayne,
Indiana. Each society has its own character that rewards some traits
while punishing others, and an individual with given natal
predispositions will be expected to achieve different things in
different societies.

The power over lives of both the individuals and the social whole is
therefore shared between the individual and society; it is an
interaction of the substructure and a superstructure, a synthesis.
True responsibility for individual lives and the social whole is
therefore shared among the two levels. And yet the current ideologies
err on either side and fight each other, resulting in people believing
one thing in one set of places and the opposite in another. One
ideology, popular especially in Midwest, consists of assigning all
responsibility to the individual. This quickly degenerates into
bullying attacks on the individuals whose inner propensities are not
valued by the society, which spirals downward further into ignorant
claims that their inner propensities are innately wrong and that the
individuals with their propensities are incapable of success, or if
they do succeed are evil. This is of course a case of society playing
God, claiming for its ill-informed judgments the authority to judge
what is beyond its power to create; and the most eloquent and
well-deserved blow that one at the receiving end of such bludgeoning
can do to the entire social edifice that assails him is to move to a
place that values his or her natural propensities and live happily
there. The other error, seen in the worldview of sociology and in
Marxism, consists of assigning all responsibility to society. This
strips the individual of responsibility for his actions and shapes a
character that is irresponsible, criminal and weak. In reality – and I
mean here in the quantified, complete reality that involves and
quantifies both the individual and the society, and not in the pushy
screechy ignorant assault of those who, committing the first error,
want to indulge in orgies of abuse against some individuals while
considering themselves good realistic responsible citizens– both
levels are real, and both levels are to be held justly accountable for
their effect. Responsibility for a life is a shared function of the
individual and society he inhabits; responsibility for a society is a
shared function of its inhabitants and its historically and
sociologically formulated character.

Different societies assign different consequences to different kinds
of actions. An action can possess a real, or natural, consequence; a
consequence that stems from the action's inherent character and that
results automatically, by law of cause and effect, in another event.
In addition to real consequences, there are the artificial
consequences, or the consequences assigned by society. Thus,
conducting business in America results in success or failure according
to effectiveness of marketing and quality of deliverables; conducting
business in the Soviet Union resulted in imprisonment. That the same
action, when performed in different social universes, results in
different consequences, shows that the social universe is artificially
constructed – whether by top-down design as in the case of the former
Soviet Union or, as in the case of most societies, by bottom-up social
and historical development. I define bottom-up as that which evolved
spontaneously among people. I define top-down as that which was
formulated and given to the people from above. The same character,
while in all cases evoking the same natural consequences, will evoke
different sets of artificial consequences in different societies; and
it is both beneficial to the characters and resulting in their
greatest contribution for them to find themselves in societies whose
artificial systems of reinforcements are friendly to their basic
nature.

It is therefore entirely in the best interests of both the world and
the individuals that inhabit it for there to be a flux of individuals
among regions within nations and across national boundaries. An
individual with genetic predisposition for a Kansas character would
not be happy in Cameroon; an individual with a genetic predisposition
for a San Francisco character will not be happy in Kansas. Rather than
apply their talents for the benefit of the world they inhabit, they
will become liabilities to their societies even while they themselves
lead miserable lives. It is a social service, and a service to
humanity, to take the people who through clash of inner traits with
social values are manipulated into the function of scapegoats in their
societies to social universes in which their innate traits are
rewarded rather than stigmatized – and in this end the distraction
that self-righteous abuse of outcasts poses to the demanding
historical task of formulating societies into humane, civilized,
intelligent and habitable shapes.

This requires that the societies themselves compete for members within
an overarching perspective that includes many societies united in free
and fair competition for members – that the power exercised by
societies over people's lives be checked by the individual's ability
to leave when he or she feels too downtrodden for another society, and
the existence of information, resources and political power for people
around the world to be able to make such a change. Thus, global
economy – an arrangement that benefits the collective prosperity of
the whole as well as prosperity of far more individuals around the
world than it hurts – is an excellent arrangement; one that improves
the state of humanity even as it improves lives of its individual
members. It is beneficial, both for its inclusiveness of millions of
individual human beings, and for the reason that it destroys the
stranglehold of local entities that lay claim on the lives, minds and
hearts of individuals, at the expense of their membership in humanity
and at the expense of their individual benefit. The global economy,
with international entities created to place safeguards against
protectionism and other abuses, results in the people who are
competent around the world being able to have global market for their
produce while consumers around the world have the best of the world at
their disposal. This arrangement was striven for by the best among
both Republicans and Democrats – by both Reagan and Clinton; and it is
still producing great dividends for people around the world, having
raised 250 million people out of poverty in two decades in China
alone.

But global economy is not sufficient. Global economy requires global
diplomacy. It requires this: global outlook in participating
countries. A isolationist like LePen or Pat Buchanan in one country
could jinx the entire global cooperation. Global economy is a
synergistic arrangement. It is, once again, a fragile equlibrium that
requires a presence of mind and a global outlook on the part of
everyone to achieve, an ongoing political strength and vision, and
willingness to motivate the people to see the big picture as well as
themselves.

Following the economic progress toward globalization is progress in
other spheres of human endeavor: endeavor such as cultural, spiritual
and social. It is an economic fact that the best outcome for the
consumer results from free competition among producers; and it is
likewise a fact that the best outcome for the individual vis-à-vis
cultural identity and social condition results from there being many
social alternatives from which to pick. Thus, the advanced state of
American and European society, which has seen cultural competition, as
compared to Middle Eastern society, which has not, is demonstrative of
the principle of cultural competition at play and the improvement it
has had in the lives of humanity. In this way, cultural competition,
like economic competition, arrives at the best outcome for the human
being.

Intercultural competition leads to intercultural communication,
resulting in a more integrated world. The optimal outcome of
intercultural competition for citizens is improvement realized in all
cultures, as good ideas from other parts of the world are adopted
while bad ideas within one's own culture are destroyed. The process
leading to that, like competition of laissez-faire economics leading
to best outcome for the consumer, is not automatic, but rather
requiring the agreement upon fair tactics and unfair tactics – on
exclusion of amoral, forcible and fraudulent, methods of influence –
on requiring constant effort of synthetic intelligence and peacemaking
to achieve at the best outcome among components and not allow cultural
chauvenists within each region to silence, demonize or kill off the
other cultures. Like laissez-faire economics within social covenant
shaped by law, or like game theory-influenced competition within the
framework of cooperation, this requires an overarching perspective of
international cooperation at the task of producing the best possible
people living within pareto-optimal social covenants that reflect the
best of humanity – its foresight, its compassion, its knowledge, its
inspiration, its wisdom. Its commitment to living – beautifully.

Some people are naturally selfish, and others are naturally
altruistic. Some are selfish in some aspects and altruistic in other
aspects. A person may willingly work with minimal pay for a political
cause, but would not tolerate anyone telling him to wash his clothes.
Another person may be willing to die for his country, but would whine
about having to pay a 30% tax. Each ideology structures the mind so as
to arrange the internal existents – the different pieces of human
nature – in a manner that leads to a particular configuration, a
particular outcome, a particular character, a particular product. The
fundamentals of both selfishness and of altruism exist in the mind;
they are inextricable part of the thing that is human beingness. An
order based on selfishness alone, like an order based on altruism
alone, is an order that is not fulfilling to a large number of its
members, nor is it an order that makes the best use of its resources.
The only conceivable order is one that allows for both aspects of
human beingness to be fulfilled.

For this reason it makes the most sense to include both efforts
private and public, with the corporations and the communities working
in synergy with one another around the world to arrive at the best
outcome for humanity. The Marxian concept of the main class struggle
being the one between labor and capital stands refuted. Labor and
capital are two sides of the same coin which is economic production
engaged in a competitive market – two necessary components toward
production of material goods. Rather than consummating in Communism –
a case of one class eliminating the other, a destruction and not a
consummation, the lazy solution – the dialectic where it was not
interrupted by force has resulted instead in a global economy in which
labor and capital work in synergy with each other. The far more
relevant dialectic now is between the private and public sectors;
between entities that provide for people's material fulfillment and
entities that provide for their political one; between bottom-up
entities based in pursuit of economic self-interest and top-down
entities based in pursuit of shared goals. I find both top-down and
bottom-up entities are required, with the first which, in an
integrative, synergistic solution come together with one another to
build upon rather than to destroy each other, with each working to
fulfill the aspect of human beingness to which it speaks.

It is in fact true that there are certain tasks that the free market
cannot provide for because they do not belong in the sphere of selfish
endeavor. More precisely, they do not involve the aspects of human
beingness that are motivated by monetary terms. Privatizing law
enforcement means corruption; privatizing science means lack of
objective research; privatizing marriage counseling means the richer
party getting his way at the expense of the poorer party; privatizing
schools means parents determining the curriculum for their children
and excluding the facts and subjects they find unsuitable. These tasks
belong in the sphere of collective endeavor, of the community and the
government, in the same way as tasks such as agriculture and industry
that have viable monetary rewards belong in the sphere of capitalism.

Through achieving the benefit of both self and the group is achieved
the beautiful outcome, an outcome that is an accord and a harmony, an
outcome that is a consummation. An outcome, that is, that is an
integration and a reconciliation of opposites and their high-minded
fulfilment; beauty of Schiller, synthesis of Hegel, synergy of Covey
and collective benefit of Nash. I say high-minded, because the
high-minded logic involves seeing the higher benefit of all parties
involved and using creative mind to lead toward it, making better
product of both parties through knowing their potential than anything
that has existed before. It is emphatically neither compromise nor
sacrifice nor domination; far rather, it is the case of seeing the
entire picture, seeing each part of the picture, and seeing how each
could come to a higher state while also improving the whole.

Which is why postmodernism is such an inadequate ideology. It sees as
invalid the concept of the grand picture, with all the civilization's
grand narratives that unify people's creative striving, from progress
to Christianity, under attack. It claims that the absolute truth is
unknowable, hence it denies objective justification for human rights
and human dignity – for human values – thus eviscerating also the
individual. Thus, it arrives at destruction of both the seeds and the
pomegranate – both the individual and the collective. It results in
evisceration of both the substructural and the superstructural levels
of humanity.

Now if absolute truth is unknowable, then all ideas are equal, and the
idea that absolute truth is unknowable is equally valid or not valid
as any other idea. Postmodernism is thus self-refuting. Postmodernism
is what Mortimer Adler called suicidal epistemologizing and
psychologizing, or removing objective quality from human life and
human experience and denying it the sanction of reason. As such, it is
a degradation of the civilization – a degradation also of humanity. It
is a case of failure to own up to the burden of consciousness.

Certainly it is possible to deconstruct everything to its fundamentals
and to insult it. It is possible to name compassion low self-esteem,
altruism weak ego boundaries, soulfulness self-absorption, sensitivity
weakness, interest in the big picture egomania, abstruse interests
insanity and love codependency. But that is not the intelligent sum of
human endeavor. These qualities result in the best masterpieces that
humanity has produced, and as such deserve respect and protection.
Yes, we can deconstruct; we can also kill half the world's species in
a few decades and destroy the treasure that nature took the nature
millions of years to produce. How much more worthy enterprise it is to
construct – to create another species or resurrect ones we have driven
into extinction, rather than slaughter ones that exist; to create
genetic cures, rather than put out chemicals that cause genetic
illnesses; to make space colonies, rather than overpopulate the Earth.
I see it as the purpose of science, art and philosophy to ennoble life
– to apply the mechanism of will, of mind and of talent to arrive at a
beautification and consummation of human condition. Rather than using
one's will and one's mind to self-eviscerate and turn into a shrew or
a heckler, how much more noble it is to use one's will and one's mind
to create something beautiful, out of the medium that is human
existence, and give it nobility, dignity and strength.

It is said that the human being is entirely a natural being. I posit
that the human being is a being both natural and supernatural; as a
being that is natural to the extent that he follows patterns and a
being supernatural to the extent that he sets them according to his
own volition – according to his inspiration, reason and will. This
quality – this supernatural quality – is our gift and our saving
grace; our unit of the divine – that which makes man in God's image.
The existence in the mind of mechanisms that Freud, Adler and similar
people described does not inhibit existence of will; it rather
presents another part of the picture. The will is an existent. As
such, it has its legitimate place. Its legitimate place is this:
Create what has not existed before. Lead. Improve. Dignify. Integrate.
The human prerogative is to exercise this supernatural quality to make
the world better. To build on all of the natural to arrive at a
consummation. To integrate, structure and recombine existents into a
synthesis. To create and to shape. To – ennoble.

The monstrosity of materialistic psychology is its desire to destroy
the supernatural in the human being and thus reduce the human being to
a deterministic state. It of course uses the human being's
supernatural, pattern-making, mindful, quality in order to do that.
Thus it is a misuse of an existent in order to destroy that very
existent in other people. It is an indulgence that fails to own up to
the human being's burden of volitional consciousness. It is a
hypocrisy and it is a power trip that results in paralyzed minds,
shriveled spirits and humanity castrated of its potency.

Ennoblement is the process of enriching life with the supernatural
quality in humanity. I call that process also humanization. The
civilization is a process of evolution out of a less human state and
toward a more human state – from a state that is deterministic, toward
a state reflecting greater level of intelligent design. When people
can live a dignified existence – when people can be cultured,
trusting, loving and gentle - that is an achievement, and it means
that the civilization is working. When people are distrustful and
hateful, brutish, and nasty, the civilization is not working, and
needs to have its sensibilities revitalized through a collective
effort of mind and will. This effort of mind and will, directed
cooperatively toward an ennoblement of life, is what is required in
order that a moral civilization – a civilization based on something
other than military or consumer coercion, with coercion the tool
rather than the essence of the civilization – be allowed to exist.

It could be said that we don't have the resources to have a noble and
beautiful existence. That is entirely untrue. With average income of
$40000 a year, America can most certainly afford noble existence and
noble attitudes – attitudes of generosity, greatness, compassion,
artistic beauty and romantic love. It has been fashionable to attack
the people who cultivate such attitudes as posers or snobs or
pretentious. Much rather, they are people who exercise the main human
prerogative – using their will and their mind to forge themselves into
something noble; into something reflecting high-minded design; into
something beautiful; into something reflecting the rational and the
aesthetic striving and as such harboring the keys to happiness.

Postmodernism seeks to deconstruct everything in the mind. That
arrives at a devitalized, distorted, disfigured populace; a population
of people who cannot justify their romantic attractions and cannot
justify that which is their claim on life. I seek the opposite
outcome. I seek to ennoble. I seek to enrich. I seek to give grace and
splendor. I seek to ennoble life.

I seek to ennoble life.

And based on the unified ethic and aesthetic of ennobling life – based
on a novel and yet old mechanism, a mechanism of using one's will and
one's mind to enrich and create rather than to destroy and degrade –
based on systems of thought that include this mechanism - I seek a
cultural renaissance in America.

In every choice – in every action – there are two possibilities. One
is that which leads toward ennobling – the forward-seeking. The other
is what leads toward the degrading - the downward-pulling. One leads
to an upper turn in a spiral; the other breaks it down to a lower
state. The first seeks to succeed or to make another person
successful; the second seeks to destroy another person's success even
if it means not being successful oneself. The first seeks to improve
human condition; the second seeks to put people in their supposed
places, nevermind that we are creators who are endowed with
supernatural quality – that of legitimately making our own place. The
first works with what's good in people to make them grow into
fullness; the second drags them down for their supposed deficiencies.
The first seeks progress; the second seeks similitude. Of these, only
the first is capable of arriving at a world worthy of human
habitation, and only the first is therefore moral.

An integrated personality is known in psychology as a personality that
has reconciled its opposites. It is known in psychology as a
personality that has resolved its internal conflicts and acts as one.
Right-wing intellectuals look down on people who are not integrated as
lacking integrity; what they fail to consider is that integration of
an open mind that is exposed to a million conflicting influences is a
far more difficult task than is remaining what one has been defined to
be by an authoritarian household and church. And yet it is the former
integrity, the dynamic synthesis, that produces a product that truly
and meaningfully integrates existents contained within the social
universe – while the former integrity is essentially a case of never
having stirred, of never having been mobile, of never having taken a
step toward becoming a human being with a mind.

America's greatest contribution to the history of mankind has been
that of applying to the federal government the morality and the checks
and balances that governments previously forced upon the individual.
The government in America is prohibited from tyrannizing the people;
an advancement that most of the Western civilization has since adopted
with America's guidance. The blindness of libertarianism and anarchism
in America is that, in its single-minded attack on the government as
representing oppression, it shifts power from the balanced-and-checked
American government to unofficial organs of power that evolve
spontaneously in the society, which organs of power do not possess the
same constitutional ideals or checks and balances that inform
Washington. This, in turn, takes power away from benign, noble organs
of power in America and gives it to inferior usurpers; to people who
have none of the advanced ideals informing American constitutional
order, who grossly mistreat people in their communities, and who if
left to their own devices would perform far worse abuses against
American citizens than any that the federal government has ever
perpetrated.

The existence of such entities in America – spontaneous organs of
power that are not subject to constitutional checks-and-balances -
necessitates the existence of the social ombudsman, who exercises the
checks of reason and ethics on the bottom-up entities and individuals
who have taken upon themselves to speak for society or for the
civilization. It is the role of one who stands up to those in the
community who seek to find people to demonize and bludgeon, and
prevents them from violating their rights. It is the role that, should
America live by its stated ideals, needs to be taken up by as many
people as possible; a role that is dangerous and ungrateful, but that
gives one the satisfaction of having done much to preserve human and
civil rights in a land that has been designated at its founding as the
last best hope for humanity.

The aesthetic product of the civilization constitutes its
justification, consummation, and flowering. It is the thing from which
the civilization derives its fame. A species of plants is shown in the
botany books as its flower; it is the art of the civilization that
goes in the museum thousands of years since its demise. The past
civilizations we know exist to us through their artifacts and their
writings; a Bible, a book of Plato or a Mayan pyramid is far more
relevant to modern man than the commercial bosses of Judaic tribes,
the generals who conducted Pelopponnessian Wars or the political
structure of the Mayas. Thus art and literature, far from being an
impractical luxury, is rather the consummation of the endeavor of the
civilization and its mark on the world. Artistic beauty conveys to
future generation the mastery, elegance, talent, resources, vision and
values that existed in the society. Art is the trace we leave behind
in the world; our flowering, our consummation, our justification. And
our architecture and engineering that we produce are also our mark
both for the present and future generations, and as such they must be
the most beautiful and tastefully designed possible, both for the sake
of their inhabitants and for the sake of national pride. Beauty takes
effort and talent to cultivate and as such deserves respect and
protection; both in honor of the effort it took to produce it –
because it is the flowering of the civilization – and because it has
uplifting, enriching, ennobling effect on the inhabitants of the
world.

The people who believe artistic beauty to be impractical are people
who have abdicated the human prerogative – the human will's role in
shaping the world in which we live. Artistic beauty becomes practical
when people value beauty and make concerted effort to make their
environment beautiful and to adopt beauty as an existent within their
lives, in the same way that happy relationships become practical when
people's likes and values are in accord. Artistic beauty is practical
enough in Paris and San Francisco, whose inhabitants value beauty and
produce architecture and artwork that reflects the best talent and
striving of man and woman. And it is Paris and San Francisco, not
Khartoum or St. Louis, that people around the world travel to see and
their civilizations recommend as their crowning glory. It is thought
that beauty is a concept. No, it is a quality. The contention of the
second verse of Tao Te Ching that in conceiving of beauty we create a
duality that manifests ugliness is manifestly false. Beauty is a
quality, not a concept, one that neither requires its opposite to be
defined nor one that manifests in its opposite when thought about.
Beautiful environments are created by people striving for beauty; ugly
environments are created by people who do not care.

Through cultivation of inner beauty with help of art, poetry and
philosophy, and its ongoing sharing among people, is created a
beautiful world for people to inhabit. A world in which art is as
practical and formative as production is now; a world in which people
live beautifully, think beautifully, interact beautifully and are
beautiful inside and out. Sri Aurobindo's ideal – that the substance
of moral endeavor is to make one's whole life beautiful – becomes
enshrined in the lives of the people; and the goal of all moral
science – to arrive at the merger of ethical and aesthetic, with the
aesthetic informing the ethical into optimal shapes and the ethical
informing the aesthetic into morally justifiable action – is thereby
achieved, arriving at the integrity of the civilization and the
practical happiness of its populace. And Baudellaire's cry – "Make
life beautiful, make life beautiful" – becomes formative of the
civilization, motivating people into creating a beautiful life. Which,
by increasing the area of intersection between the ethical and the
aesthetic, leads to happiness for more and more people.

Oscar Wilde said that we have been given a world which only our folly
prevents from being a paradise. The paradise is achieved when one
lives at the area of intersection of reason and emotion, or ethical
and aesthetic – the area at which inner beauty can be achieved and
shared. The result is happiness and ongoing ecstasy. Which lasts for
as long as people can make it last – sometimes a lifetime, sometimes a
few months, sometimes a tracer that points to a world as it can be –
and is never forgotten, motivating the person to either attempt to
recreate it or wait for it in another lifetime.

The belief widespread in many of the world's religions that the things
that happen do so by the will of God, or that all power comes from
God, is as easy to turn on its head as is postmodernism. If everything
is done by the will of God, then the changes that the leader, or the
revolutionary, or the influential figure whether or not approved by
the religion, makes in the social order by exercising his mind and his
will is also will of God. Which means that, with any changes made to
the social order, the religious people will have to live because it is
will of God. Deifying the status quo means that any status quo - even
the one created by people who are not part of the religion - is
divinely ordained, and governments such as those of Communist China
are there because God willed them to be there. Thus, the success by
whatever means at getting the power means that God is on one's side; a
tenet that is at best Machiavellian and at worst sociopathic. The
logical action, given such beliefs, is to take power by whatever means
and keep it by whatever means – an action that, in places that
exercise such beliefs, more than a few people took and were thereafter
justified by religions as having taken.

If the theory of evolution is true, then rationalism - search for
universal truth in reason - and romanticism - search for universal
truth in emotions - are both legitimate enterprises, as both have
evolved for the best outcome of the species. If people have been
created by a perfect creator, the same holds true, as in both the
reason and the emotion is the mark of the Creator. However, both
rationalism and romanticism by themselves have been shown to produce
garbage along the way. Rationalism by itself produces dry, heartless,
hateful and mean people who have no wonder in their hearts or
compassion for fellow man - people who think that machines are
superior to human beings and that passion as well as compassion are
manifestation of inferior functions; people who would willingly
sacrifice the lives and the future of everyone in their vicinity in
order to make a better gadget or serve eugenic formulas. Romanticism
by itself produces people who are moved by every emotion that they may
have and lead chaotic lives. Both, however, have also produced great
results as well: Rationalism, scientific and technological progress;
romanticism, beautiful literature and art. And in the concept of
universal consciousness, rationalism and romanticism merged to arrive
at a truth discerned, from one side, by quantum mechanics, and from
the other side by mysticism and literature: the truth of cosmic
oneness; the truth that led very legitimately to the belief that the
new age was coming – but which new age, for lack of political
enforcement, has taken time to come.

I suggest a better model. I suggest the model of Renaissance: the
model of union of human spirit and holy spirit; the model of human
spirit, expressed in science and art, being guided by divine
inspiration to achieve ennoblement. The model of including both heaven
and earth and applying both together in beautiful synergetic synthesis
to achieve the best outcome of both levels of human existence.
Resulting in a dignified, ennobled and divinely inspired existence
that allows people to be human beings and creatures of God at once,
through their mind and their imagination both competitively and
cooperatively making a Pareto-optimal situation that is the best world
possible: the world of progress, science, beauty, holiness, nobility,
compassion and art.

http://www.geocities.com/drr0cket

[Mr. 4X]

Schiller has defined beauty this way:<SLAP!>

Has he ever defined spamming and kookery?