God as Consciousness

If consciousness is God, in that all that exists exists through consciousness, then we partake of God through consciousness. God is everyone of us, not as the thing in the world, but as consciousness of the things in the world (including our individuated selves). Our selves belong to us, but consciousness does not. Of course, this consciousness is casually actuated through our physical selves - brains. But structurally, consciousness in being is not actuated, but a prerequisite of being. That is what God is, our way of expressing a subject noun that is conscious.

Will to Consciousness

The single principle of all that exists: To raise its consciousness. Life is the will to consciousness. Everything one does is an opportunity to a) lower one's consciousness, b) stay in one's consciousness, or c) raise one's consciousness. All problems and their nature are merely a result of the choice of one of the above. Problems may appear insoluble because one is not raising one's consciousness, or the parties involved are stuck in the same consciousness. In the long run, consciousness MUST be raised.

Note 179

If one knows that there is in reality no free will, then liberalism's elevation of the individual is but another form of social control, based on the illusion of free will.

Note 178

God: to search for the structure of all structures, the form in all forms.

Note 176

There is an inherent instability within democracy in one country as centrifugal forces pull it apart.

Therefore seperate nations, institutionally constituted as states at war with each other, is the neccessary complement.

Global or regional cooperation forces countries to break apart.

This drives the push to either conservative conflicts, or progressive conflicts.

Progressive conflicts lead to smaller entities and the expansion of individual freedoms.

Conservative conflicts lead to preservation of existing orders and stability.

Progressive conflicts come at a cost of inherent and prolonged instability and death, because a new basis for a new social contract has to be found, as a foundation for order.

In other words, a modification of the modern conception of state will result, as another intermediate equilibrium that balances the internal values, and the external relations, of order-providing entities.

What is the principal contradiction? Generally, that between the individual and the collective.

In this case, individual identities revolving around markets, and social collectives up to the national level. Collective identities revolving around state and global institutions, including global markets. A reordering of these relationships in a Socially Darwinistic way may be what true war (a state of nature) is about.

Note 175

We are all god, but in a less than perfect structural form.

We confuse teleology with history. Teleology is the perfection of structure at each point in time, not a perfecting of structure across time. So god is the end point of teleology.

Note 174

Structures are like gods. Like gods, they are arbitrary and necessary.

Content is the loss of form in its expression. It is so easy to imagine a different one, like countries without borders. And I would be restructured too, as an extension, a sensemaking of the structures of life. So the gods are not worshipped, but practiced.

They are not an object, but a part of me, in the same way that walls, doorways and arches structure a room. I become the room, and find others too, who have become their rooms, and so can create more rooms.

Are we gods then? No, we are reliant on them, they give us form, and we give them content. In that content we infer our content to fill our form, the empty reflection.

Trilemma of Personal Identity

I am 3 things. A mirror, the one viewing the mirror, and the one whose image is reflected in the mirror.

One can only pick 2. This is the trilemma of personal identity. Is this a false trilemma? Is the world in the mirror the same as the world outside the mirror, which we can't see?

The first two make me an idealist. The first and last make me a materialist. The last two make me a dualist.

Note 173

The fading of the light of day is a reminder of the final return to darkness.

In darkness, nothing matters, so mattering or not mattering does not matter.

This is the union of opposites, the light from darkness, and the darkness in light.

Descartes 2

Descartes saw that the self was the god principle (self-verifying truth) of consciousness. If one took away the self, the contents of consciousness would cease to exist. If one saw the self as illusion, the world would be viewed as illusion. Then consciousness would be empty of self-verifying truths.

Because the "I" exists not as a thing but as a process, the self is a conversion of a process (of consciousness) to a thing by giving form to the process through its relation to the contents of the process.

This attempt to convert a process into a thing generates a paradox. The process can only be identified as thing (the self) within the context of the contents of the process, but the thing thus described cannot encapsulate the process because it lies outside that context.

While one might be tempted to attribute causal and so ontological primacy to the contents, it does not account for what the process is in terms of consciousness itself.

Note 172

Is there a basis for the world state? If the liberals are right, there can be no agreement on fundamental values, so it has to be imposed from above. If the conservatives are right, there are objectively correct values, so there is a basis for bottom-up world state formation on the basis of the discovery of higher truths. The problem is one of countering ignorance.

In other words, for the world state to be possible, the liberal has to acknowledge the lack of universality of liberal values, and the conservative has to acknowledge the duty of universal values. In any case, the duty of both is to reconcile the view of the universality of value embedded in the core of each idea with their practical two-level division/relationship of politics and values that has emerged in a world of nation-states.

This reconciliation may be resolved (on the liberal side) by the dissolution of the politic-value distinction via the world-state or the destruction of the liberal state through libertarianism. In conservatism, it may be resolved via the universal spread of conservative values as the basis for political union or conversely, the protection of purity - the maintanence of purer communities through isolation, status structures, and other social or political methods.

Note 171

Morality is defined by the absence of the object which it is for. If it were not absent, it would be a particular interest, and cease to be morality. Therefore, the condition of the Good is the absence of the object, be it God, a divine law, the nation, the common good, the collective utility function, that is the source and end of the act.

The corollary to the moral and meaningful is therefore the necessity of absent and hidden objects, and the two are constitutively bound to each other. The imagined nature of some of these objects is not a hinderance, but an important aid. The more real it becomes, the less it ceases to express moral necessity, and the more it then works through institutions and self-interest, namely the desire for social approbation.

For example, the growing size and strength of states is accompanied by a weakening of nationalism as an abstract good (in favour of globally-minded liberalism) and its growth as one promoted through state institutions and social norms. This explains the paradox of Democrats seeking a larger state and Republicans a smaller one.

Core Civilisational Principles

Or, how to read world history - it can't explain anything or everything, but it is important.

West: Exploration, discovery, conquest
China: Stability, material accumulation
India: Liberation, Moksha
Islam: Adherence to Divine Law

Note 170

Current teleologists are both right and wrong. The world is pragmatically moving toward individual rationality, but to do so only in order to transcend it. The economic mode corresponding to this is post-scarcity. This is not collectivism or communism, but the ability to see the individual for what he/she is.

Identities, Interests and Institutions

Corporate identities play the role of translating expectations into institutional forms. It is evoked when interests demand solidification. Identities are institutionalized interests, as a process.

They are a process by which interests are defined, and by which institutions are defined in relation to these interests, and by which the identities are defined in relation to the institutions, which embody these interests. This paradox of self-definition by way of interests and institutions renders it, by necessity, a process.

Identity is therefore best seen as process through which expectations about interests and power structures mutually construct and reinforce each other over time.

Note 169

Matching content with form is difficult, maybe the most difficult thing. To do so is to bring about the higher order essence of a thing. In some cultures, this may often be taken as expressions of divinity, which can express itself in plural forms. Social definitions of higher and lower are irrelevant or subordinate to this essential art.

Note 168

Philosophy is essentially the activity of tracing the circle from the point at which you begin.

A lot of philosophy starts from a naive point of view, so the circle that is traced essentially tells us what we already know.

Our point of view is hardly significant, it is just one form of diagonality. Who know how many kinds there are?

Note 167

Meaning seeks its own completion, without limit. Therein its meaninglessness.

Note 166

Juxtapose substantivism and relationalism. Both are true; and both melt away.

Asian post-liberalism

Asians have substantial second-mover advantages when it comes to liberalism. Their job then is to wrestle with liberalism (divorced from the Western historical experience), understand its impossibility within its own historical context, and bring about post-liberalism. The first stage is not even reached. Has this task even been recognized?