Browsed by
Category: Essays

My ruling on the cake question

My ruling on the cake question

Owing, I suppose, to my previous intellectual and moral triumphs, I’ve been asked to cast the deciding vote in the current cake question. Should we the collective allow a cake maker to refuse the production and sale of a cake that contradicts his religious beliefs? Which principle should here be ascendant: the guarantee of equal rights to goods sold on the public market; or the guarantee of free speech and freedom of religion? To what degree are these three important rights called into play in this case?

From the cake maker’s point of view, a wedding cake emblazoned with the names of two men instead of a man and a woman is a message they cannot support. Their reading of the Christian Bible considers marriage a sacred bond between a man and woman, who upon marriage cleave to one another and become one flesh in order to better support each other and found and raise a family, in accordance with God’s plan for humanity. Homosexuality, again from the cake company’s understanding of Christian teachings, is a grave sin, that should be fought against like other sins, not celebrated. Therefore, making a beautiful wedding cake decorated for a man on man marriage is a perversion of what they believe their wedding cakes should do, which is to celebrate what God has brought together. (or so I’d picture the argument [turns out that picture of thins was incorrect; see “Dang!” section below the author’s name to explain how this essay fights a straw man!])

Of course, It seems likely that many marriages they’ve provided cakes for have not rigorously followed the cake maker’s understanding of a Christian marriage, but they can’t review the religious merits of each wedding that wants a cake from them, and this cake with two men’s names side by side just goes too far: it sends a clear message that is contrary to their own feelings on the matter, and they don’t feel it reasonable to force them to put their talent, their artistic elan, their creative vigor, their raw materials into a message that they believe is wrong. [Are there cake makers out there who–citing KJV Matthew 5:32: “But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.” and/or NIV Mattthew 5:32 “But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for
marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.”–demand proof that the wedding in question is for both parties the original one? Perhaps, but that’s not the topic of this essay.]

From the cake purchaser’s point of view, they are being discrimated against. This is a public business and they were quite willing to pay for the good they desired. It is immaterial that the cake maker offered to make them other cakes that did not have to do with their wedding, and it is also besides the point that they did not live in an area where there were no other wedding cakes available, that indeed another company, outraged by defendant’s decision, gave them a free wedding cake (ConstitutionCenter.Org). The point is that they went into a public place of business, regulated by the law of the land, they requested that that company provide them with a service that company regularly performs for other law-abiding citizens, they offered their money, and they were turned down. They were discriminated against, and should be protected by Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws, and they have no choice but to try to right the injustice, which is why they are here today, standing before us in the Supreme Court of the United States of America. (or, again, this is the image I see before me)

How should I rule? Where do I come down? Hmmmm. The way I see it, I have a few options: I could rule that the cake maker has to sell them a cake decorated any way they decide, that the cake maker has to sell them a generic cake but with no decorations specific to the homosexual nature of their union (example: it has all the frill and flowers, and maybe even some mention of marriage, but no discussion of who is getting married), or that the cake maker doesn’t have to sell them a wedding-style cake at all. My justification for the first case would be that key issue is that businesses on the public market have no right to discriminate against would-be customers; to support the second position, I’d argue that anti-discrimination demands that the business sell the couple a generic cake, but freedom of speech means they don’t have to decorate it in a way that contradicts their beliefs; to argue the third position, I’d hold that no matter what the cake says, it is a work of art that clearly celebrates marriage (by its basic structure and our shared cultural understanding of that structure), and so having to sell the cake for a wedding they consider immoral violates the cake maker’s freedom of speech because it forces them to celebrate what they do not think is ethical to celebrate, and it violates their freedom of religion by forcing them to bow down to secularism, which is just as much a metaphysical position as any other position about how one should really think and act. I think both the fact that wedding cakes could easily be obtained elsewhere and the fact that they are not essential goods are relevant. In no case would I justify the cake maker’s actions by invoking an individual’s right over their own property: this is a public company, and we can’t have anybody in any case refusing to serve another person just by claiming that serving that other person violates their rights to decide what they do with their private property. If that argument is allowed, it is hardly even a slippery slope before racists are allowed to refuse to sell groceries to people of other races, and etc–things clearly unconstitutional because such decisions would allow one individual to deprive another of their basic right to care for themselves within the public space where individuals must meet and government must insure justice.

I would like to call forward two other sets of legal combatants: a racist cake maker versus a biracial couple’s request for a wedding cake topped with their names and with a model of a black person dancing with a white one, dressed in wedding outfits, and sharing that unique bliss of settling for life into another person, wedding your world to theirs; & a liberal cake maker versus a pro-Trump, anti-immigrant organization’s request for a birthday cake topped with a picture of a border wall stopping dark-skinned people, Trumps’ head smiling transcendent over the wall, and some inscription to the effect of “This is our country! Go back to where you came from!” along the bottom.

Of course, I need to also consider the option that the cake maker could be forced to make a generic cake, but that it would be widely known the kind of celebration the cake would celebrate, and that somehow it would be reasonable to surmise that the cake would ultimately be finalized with the decorations I’ve outlined. In the case of the biracial couple, such a decoration follows naturally from everyone’s understanding of a three-tiered, frilled and flowered cake (ie: it is for the celebration of a wedding). In the case of the birthday party, we’ll have to assume the information about the decorating motif will came from previous parties held by the organization, and/or by the fact that the organization requested some very particular cake along the lines of the one just sketched.

The racist cake maker argues that they don’t think white and black people should marry, since they are not fundamentally compatible and their union is therefore contrary to the peace, stability, and prosperity of the nation, and that since this is their view, they shouldn’t have to support the message that this wedding is a beautiful event. The liberal cake maker argues that they don’t agree with Trump’s immigration policies, that they think the message of the cake is racist and celebrating such a message and Trump’s presidency is exactly the opposite message they want to deliver. In all cases, the cake makers claim that cake making is an art and that they work hard to make cakes that are both aesthetically and culinarily beautiful and don’t think the government should be allowed to tell them what message they pair with this beauty.

What to do? What to do? Do I need to factor in the legitimacy of the various parties’s positions? How would I do that? To my mind, the conservative Christian cake maker and the liberal cake maker both voice viewpoints founded on ethical positions that a current US citizen may or may not agree with, but that we can all agree have many proponents and represent a current theological argument with some Biblical support; whereas the racist cake maker’s position is completely outdated, the theological grounds for it absurdly weak and not even kind of current within contemporary US Christianity, and the intellectual grounds completely undermined by common sense experience of black people and white people sharing all kinds of things quite effectively, including marriages. Finally, I think that “This is our country!” cake is clearly mean and unhelpful, and could–if the cake-maker wanted to claim religious freedom in their rejection of the project–easily be theologically contested with, for example, the still very current Luke 10:25-37. But does how current and reasonable the theological arguments are come into play here? Or do I need to just consider the general principle: that a cake can be considered artsy speech and the way it is decorated a message, and that therefore these three hypothetical cases are all functionally equivalent?

As a political liberal and a theological Something Deeperist, I strongly support both the biracial and the homosexual wedding cake, and I strongly dissent from the Trumpian anti-immigration cake. I think that opposition to the biracial cake is just plain stupid and wrong and ridiculous. I consider opposition to the homosexual cake ultimately a misdirected rebellion that sticks up for a theological point that the deepest religion does not consider material at the expense of a full-embrace of the most important theological point (be kind to everyone; don’t worry about the small things, focus instead on the Love between God and you and between God, you, and everyone else; excessive literalism shifts your focus onto ideas and feelings about meaningfulness and away from that whole-being engagement with the Light within that alone knows what is truly meaningful, so avoid excessive literalism), but I have some sympathy for the cake maker’s wish to avoid assenting to a message he is religiously opposed to, and I recognize the topic debated is still a theologically current one for many US Americans. Finally, I cannot fathom how the anti-immigrant cake does anything but celebrate fear, hate, and a never-ending cycle of ever-growing lonely desperate boredom. But that’s just my feelings about the issues involved. I’m supposed to be a humanly-impartial judge, finding a constitutional solution to these questions, which means I’m to ask myself if these are legitimate free speech cases, or if the defendants are just finding an excuse to discriminate against the plaintiffs.

I’m not sure. I guess I’ll rule that they have to all provide generic cakes, but are not obligated to make any issue-specific decorations. My reasoning is that calling a generic cake, be it three-tier or large square, a “work of art” and/or a “statement” is an overstatement, that while those shapes and the standard embellishments (rings of frosting on the edges, flowers) lead to certain assumptions about the cakes, merely providing those generic shapes and flourishes does not constitute a serious statement about the legitimacy of the celebration the cake will be used for; due to these considerations, I think a citizen’s right to receive goods and services without companies turning them away due to their race, religion, politics, sexual orientation, or etc (whatever all is protected by their state’s anti-discrimination laws: Colorado Public Accommodation Laws ) trumps any claim of freedom of speech or religion. However, a specialized cake decoration–beyond what is provided to all purchaser’s of a basic type of cake–could be construed a statement, so a cake maker’s refusal to garnish the cake with a customized message could be protected under the first amendment (which both guarantees the right to free speech and the prohibits religious laws [First Amendment ]). Furthermore, the decoration you get on a cake is far from an essential service, and most everywhere you can find a private person and/or a company to decorate your cake however you choose. Therefore, I rule it unwarranted for the state to step in and demand a cake maker decorate a cake in some specific way that comments on how worthy of celebration a given event is.

So that’s my ruling: you have to sell them a three-tiered cake with frills and flowers, but you don’t have to decorate it with their names or with two men dancing with each other or anything like that. Since it is not standard for wedding cakes to be emblazoned with some generic statement about weddings, the cake maker also is not obligated to write anything about weddings on the cake. If the anti-immigration cake orderers demanded a frosted “Happy Birthday”, the matter would be a bit trickier, because birthday cakes always say that, but if we make the cake maker write that, it looks like perhaps we are forcing the cake decorator to celebrate the birthday the cake is for, and since everyone knows what birthday it is, one might decide the cake maker was being forced to make a statement about the birthday in question. However, ultimately I disagree with that reasoning: “Happy Birthday” is a generic statement for birthday cakes, and as long as the cake maker doesn’t have to say any more (like name the organization who’s birthday it is), the cake maker has been forced to provide a generic good, not forced to create a statement about the worthiness of some event and the ideas within it.

To me, however the judges rule, the main thing we as citizens should keep in mind is that this is not a completely obvious matter. Furthermore, it is probably not a huge deal. The big deal is whether or not the state protects everyone’s right to find their way to greater and greater and ever greater insight into the question of how it is True that what we say and do and what happens to us truly does matter, and how it is True that we really are all in this together and must be first and foremost kind and respectful with and open to one another. It is only insofar as they are ratified and illuminated by the Light within that calls us all “worth respecting, loving, and helping” that any of our ideas and feelings can be meaningful/believable/interesting to us human things. Therefore, the only way forward is to share that dogma (we are all in this together, but wisdom is not merely voicing words to that effect, but finding a whole-being insight into that and how we really are all in this together) and admit we share it and therefore have shared goals and boundaries–a shared Reality where we can work together to responsibly use our shared resources, of which the government, its principles, structures, and laws, are an important part. Freedom of speech, the separation of church and state, and anti-discrimination laws are all important aids in our endeavor to create a society in which we each relate to the Law within in a way that is meaningful to us and work together to make and enforce laws based on what find in this inward-seeking.

There are non-crazy arguments on both sides of this cake issue, so there is no reason to suppose the court’s ruling is an attack on you. It can be interpreted as an attempt to settle a question that pits opposing rights (right to publicly available products; right to freedom of speech and right to follow your conscious and convictions) against one another, meaning there can be no obvious resolution. We citizens must choose our battles. It is fine that some people wanted to test this question, but it is a quite specific case, and we needn’t start inferring broad interpretations from it. In general, we the people need to calm down and keep our main focus on being the last check on corruption and clearcut folly in the government. We have to find a way to constructively argue the details of government (specific policies, laws, regulations, politicians, and etc) while remaining cohesive in our stand against clear cases of corruption and folly. But we’ve gotten so partisan and so muddled, that we cannot, for example, together address the influence of money in our political process or together support the ability of a respected independent bipartisanally-appointed investigator to look into the very serious question of a foreign government’s malicious influence on our elections and what, if anything, the various members of our current administration did to encourage that foreign government’s influence in the very election that got them into government.

Author: AB CdEfghiz
Editor: B Willard
Copyright: AM Watson

Afternote: Dang!
It seems that my ruling is not completely germane, since the baker refused to provide any cake at all for the wedding, and Colorado’s law does not say they have to write anything he doesn’t want to write on it. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/12/07/let-them-buy-gay-wedding-cakes/

So my synopsis of the position was not even correct. I thought what they couldn’t stand was to write two men’s names next to each other and put two men in tuxes dancing together on the top of the cake. He could argue that someone was likely to add those items to his cake, and he doesn’t want anything to do with the message that sends, but that doesn’t seem to be free speech to me–if I’m a liberal paper seller, and you are a conservative newspaper, can I refuse to sell you paper? It comes down to how much a generic three-tier trim-and-roses wedding cake is art and speech, and I don’t think it is enough of either to trump Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws.

Well, anyway

The Law

The Law

Here is a spiritual question.

If meditation is too painful for you because the hurt inside is yelling so loudly, should you still meditate? Or is it wiser to stop? And if the latter, is there some substitution you could make so that your practice might limp along until you, in a reasonably short eventuality, are in a position to resume meditation?

Here is a practical consideration.

One can well begin the process by demanding incrementally more dignity for oneself. By that I don’t mean to suggest that mopers can cure themselves by taking to the streets and demanding passerbys salute them, call them “Sir” or “Madam” and otherwise pay homage. I’m speaking rather of simple, private adjustments in one’s life. For example, tidying up one’s apartment, organizing one’s finances, keeping oneself and one’s dress clean. Or, calling forward a more specific example in order to awaken the senses and with it one’s imagination, suppose it was Saturday morning and you were alone in this apartment, eating a pomegranate; pomegranates, though delicious and healthful reminders of the wonders of international trade, can be rather messy; no great surprise, then, that you notice, while passing your bathroom mirror, that you’ve got some red streaking on your chin, adding a sort of Halloweeny ghoulishness to your aspect; now, you’re not planning on going anywhere for a while, and you hadn’t even noticed the juice stain until you’d seen it in the mirror, so it clearly causes you no physical discomfort; it may even be possible that a bit of pomegranate juice on the skin provides a little health and beauty benefit by infusing your flesh with antioxidants; perhaps you should leave well enough alone and continue walking past the mirror; but no: it is at this point that our method inserts itself, explaining that for the sake of your own private dignity, you break your momentum, turn back towards the mirror and wash off the pomegranate juice, also taking the opportunity to straighten your hair. Do you see? In this way, you communicate to yourself at a very deep level that you mean business, that you demand something of yourself and for yourself.

Indeed, even if a meditation practice must be paused, one’s spiritual practice need not collapse in upon itself. In addition to taking care of your space and your appearance, you can also focus on being mindful about what you say and how you present yourself. You can keep a journal each night, writing down how you felt and how you behaved and what you want to do next and how you might accomplish your goals. You can exercise. You can breathe carefully, taking care not to overbreathe and feeling the stillness created when you breathe air out but do not immediately breathe air back in. You can even add silent chanting meditation to your walk to work and to the time spent falling in and out of sleep. A good one is, “what should I do, what should I do, what should I do, ….” Another nice phrase to run over and over again in your head is, “how can I actually make things better for me and everyone else?”, or some variation like “how can we all make things better for everyone?”

We humans. Do you remember the spot in the creek where the channel suddenly and precipitously narrowed, creating a funnel of white water emptying into a deep (5ft?) and wide (10ft?) trench in the creek? It was between Napier Park and the bridge over Main Street that led from the front gate of GE to the downtown, which was of course nothing more than a small section of Main Street. Creeks ever evolve, and I don’t know how long after 1992 this slice lasted. Certainly, in 2010, it was no more. An awesome sight, but also a little terrifying. What I enjoyed doing at the time was tossing a stick into the creek (pronounced in this essay, out of nostalgia and shouldershrug, as “crick”) right above the diving tunnel and watching its fate. Because the water churned so violently both forward and backward at that spot, the stick would often spend several seconds jiggling back and forth in place before the chaos’s fickleness resolved into the inevitable suck-down under the white water. The water after the frothing was glassy green and deep, and from the right vantage you could see the water gushing into the deep spot as a straight white tube sunk into the green still waters. You never knew when the stick would emerge. It might be a few seconds, it might be five minutes. This private research of mine held me in good stead when my family went to nearby Niagara Falls and learned, in an incredible 3-D film with surround-sound and a surround-screen wrapping around the first fourth of the auditorium, of someone who went over Niagara Falls in a giant rubber ball with extra oxygen stored inside, but who, held under the falls for 14 hours with only three hours worth of oxygen in his tank, was found the next day inside his perfectly preserved one ton tomb.

“O divine Niagara, be prepared on July the 5th to receive a faithful worshiper of your beauty and of the mystery that covers you, and if you will to keep me with you eternally as your prisoner, I accept the sacrifice in the hope that your divine nymphs will spray my grave with flowers from the gardens of your palaces.” (George Stathakis, Buffalo Evening News from I guess sometime shortly after 7/5/1930)

If you’re just a human, tossed about by the noises inside and outside, a prisoner to the white water of stimuli and other physical slaps, how do you proceed?

Some say that asking any question except “how can we make things better for everyone?” will lead to the correct answer. Simply because all other questions miss out on the fundamental interconnectedness and spiritual importance of all sentient creatures, and so ask the wrong question. No matter how passionately, creatively, logically, interestingly you answer the wrong question, you still end up with the wrong answer. And, so goes the reasoning, it is this failure to even quite want to make things better for everyone, that keeps humanity breaking apart on the rocks all the time. Is this true? Didn’t, for example, Marx ask that question, and end up finding an answer that has not made everything better for everyone? I guess the nuance is that people ask questions that they may think answer that question, like “how can we give everyone material security?” or “how can we get everyone into heaven?”, but in focusing on these questions, they skip over the one they are purportedly answering, and actually answer something quite different.

But if that’s the case, then how can you ask anyone to ask this question, since in asking it they inevitably skip over it, and only think they are asking it? Well, we have to keep tuning ourselves, keep refining our approaches, keep coming back to the real question, the one that understands we are all in this together and must find and share kind joy together. We can’t come up with ideas, policies, or systems to once and for all correctly ask and answer our question. But we can agree that it is our goal and keep refining our ideas, policies, and systems with the understanding that they are not the answer, that the answer is known only to the inner joy that knows what this life is really for, and as such cannot be perfectly translated into ideas, policies, and/or systems, but that it be better or worse translated into such what we say and do, and so it can and should remain our shared goal and standard. Not to bring about heaven on earth or to force everyone into heaven. Those kind of goals make sense only for God. But to work together within the only framework that can possibly mean anything to human beings: how can we grow together in the understanding of how we are all in this together and how we should therefore treat ourselves, each other, and the resources (be they ideas, governments, raw goods, etc) we share?

Author: Susan Jes Sayin
Editory: B Willard
Copyright: AM Watson

What is Something Deeperism?

What is Something Deeperism?

A Quick Intro To Something Deeperism

1) Basic Definition: There is a Truth (aka: Light; God; True Good; etc — we’re pointing with words imperfectly but not therefore necessarily inadequately towards a shared vista). The Truth shines through each conscious moment. The path of wisdom is relating the rest of our conscious moments (ideas, feelings, etc, all working together) better and better around the Truth so that there is less and less gap between the Truth and our words and deeds. In this way the Truth guides our thought-as-a-whole (feelings, ideas, awareness, and the Truth shining through all things, all working imperfectly but still meaningfully together) better and better, allowing us to translate the Truth better and better into words and deeds.

The path towards wisdom is the seed of wisdom: By following our inner push towards aware, clear, accurate, competent, honest, compassionate, kind, joyfully-together thinking and acting, centered around the Light within ourselves and everyone else; our ideas and feeling get better and better at following and understanding the Light; allowing the Light to guide our thought-as-a-whole to more and more aware .. joyfully-together thinking and acting.

We don’t start out with only what feels like inkling of the Truth. And the Truth would have to be deeper and wider than our (oh so human!) ideas and feelings, so we can never have literal / definitive / 1:1 / exclusive insight into the Truth. However, we cannot have literal certainty about anything; and we wouldn’t be able to understand, care about, or follow literal certainty anyway. And, as far as we know, we can do as the mystics suggest: via meditation, prayer, contemplation, and loving kindness practice; we can think and act more and more aware, clear, honest, competent, kind, and joyfully together; gaining more and more insight into that and in what way it is True to say “we are all in this together”.

We can’t have literal insight into the Truth. But that does not mean we cannot have an adequate whole-being insight into the Truth. Such an insight would allow our emotional and intellectual ideas to point adequately well towards the Truth. And it is such an adequate whole-being pointing-towards what is really going on and what really matters that our intellectual thought requires if it is to know how it should be used, and what it should be used in service of.

Ideas and feelings know they are limited. They know they should not run the show alone. Pursuing wisdom is pursuing adequate insight into foundational values that allow ideas and feelings to function adequately well and with adequately clear consciences.

We should seek a better and better organization of ideas and feelings around the Light within that alone Knows what’s Best. But ideas and feelings are notoriously limited; so we’ll never get it perfect: we need to keep reassessing, admitting errors, trying again, pushing out from within, pushing for less and less gap between the Light outside our thinking/feeling/perceiving and the Light within our thinking/feeling/perceiving.

2) Basic Argument for Adopting and Relentlessly Pursuing Truth, and Bounding that Pursuit with the Assumption that the Truth Ratifies Goods Like Awareness, Honesty, Kindness … : No human’s thoughts and actions can mean anything much to him or her unless the following requirements are met:
(a) the Truth is real (ie: some ways are truly more preferable than others)
(b) one’s thought-as-a-whole relate meaningfully to the Truth (ie: something along the lines of the following: one’s ideas, feelings and the Truth shining through all things can work together and understand each other adequately);
(c) Truth is infinitely aware, clear, honest, competent, kind and good and helpful; and is here equally for everyone. And we can grow in our understanding of the Truth by following our own inborn sense towards aware … helpful thinking and acting; reaching always for more insight and compassion by seeking always to be more and more centered around and aware of the Truth within and shining through all things.

The state of affairs (a-c) is the bare minimum required for a human being to be able to truly understand, care about, and believe in his or her own ideas and feelings. Of course we cannot have literal knowledge about such things, but we could work to gain more and more whole-being insight into that and in what sense (a-c) are essentially True.

Note that you don’t necessarily have to accept the metaphysics of (a-c) to follow, understand, or care about your own thoughts and actions. You have to gain the whole-being insight towards which (a-c) imperfectly, but not therefore necessarily inadequately points. You can play skeptic and doubt the existence of a Truth without particularly undermining your own thinking/acting; just as you can play believer while still drastically undermining your own thinking/acting. Wisdom is a whole-being insight into the Light within. To be coherent (for your own thoughts and actions to be meaningful to you), what you need is to find whole-being insight into that and in what sense (a-c) are essentially True. That is not going to be a literal insight.

So why bother with Something Deeperism? If success in Something Deeperism is not the same as agreeing to the ideas of Something Deeperism, why pursue a philosophy of Something Deeperism? Better ideas help to orientate one’s thought-as-a-whole better towards what’s really going on and what really matters, which in turn helps one gain more whole-being insight into that and in what way it is True to say we are all in this together. To the degree we lack whole-being insight into that sense of things, we cannot believe in, understand, or care about anything we think or do.

Intellectual thoughts are a really big part of how we relate to ourselves, other people and this life. So we want to choose ideas that point us more towards our real situation. That way, we are in a better position to gain whole-being-insight into the Truth, and that insight can flow more easily/naturally out into our ideas.

So, Yes: It is true that of course ideas without insight are not worth much, and it is very possible to be more or less wise than one’s ideas. Nonetheless, part of growing in wisdom is working always to replace worse sketches of what is really going on and what really matters with better sketches of what is really going on and what really matters. Hence the usefulness of philosophy, religion, and wisdom practices; and hence the usefulness of Something Deeperism, which is basically just a gentle (but persistent) reminder that there’s no point in either skepticism and faith unless they are helping us to gain more insight into the Light within that alone knows what’s really going on and what really matters (and that therefore alone knows that and in what sense false beliefs should be avoided [the raison d’etre of skepticisms] and true beliefs should be adopted [the raison d’etre of faiths]).

Furthermore, a philosophy of Something Deeperism can help groups recognize and make use of all the common ground their members have. Something Deeperism helps us to realize that none of our philosophies make sense to any of us in the absence of insight into and use of aware … helpful thinking and acting. And so Something Deeperism keeps us all on the same page: Whatever our differences, we can all agree on aware … helpful thinking and acting, and on the need for us all to seek wisdom; and to agree that wisdom is honest and kind, not dishonest and cruel; and to agree that it is counterproductive to pretend wisdom can fit into a literal set of metaphysical, political, and/or philosophical ideas. All this implies a shared starting point: a place of clarity we can refuse to abandon: we will disagree on much, but should we not agree on (no matter what! for if we sacrifice this, we sacrifice the only coherency any of us could have) awareness, honesty, clarity, competency, accuracy, kindness, and shared joy; all bound up in a respect for wisdom and for our different vantages on what surpasses all human feelings and thoughts????

3) Basic Argument for Seeking a Relationship with the Truth that is Founded Primarily on Direct Whole-Being Experience of the Truth, and for Always Push-ing Against the Human Tendency to Shift One’s Focus onto Ideas and Feelings about the Truth: Putting more focus on ideas and feelings about the Truth than on the Truth Itself is a grave and a common error. The Truth is not ideas and/or feelings about what is really going on, but what is really going on itself; the way forward is to relate ideas and feelings to the Truth more and more meaningfully — a process that self-defeats to the degree we confuse ideas/feelings with the Truth. When you put too much stock in ideas and/or feelings about the Truth, your focus turns away from a whole-being coordination around the Truth and you confuse and frustrate yourself by more and more pathetically/desperately clutching ideas and feelings that (since they claim a clarity and certainty you deepdown know they don’t have) are ultimately meaningless to you.

[Note that notions of “there is no Truth” combined with feelings of “I’ve got the Truth” are just as guilty of the above-sketched error as are notions of “I know the Truth” combined with feelings of “I’ve got the Truth”.]

[Note that we need some principles to help us navigate human life, since ideas are necessary for interacting with this world and our own thoughts, and without any firm principles, you spend every second trying to build up to a coherent philosophy from scratch. The principles of Something Deeperism should be adopted, just not grasped too tightly. They know they are mere ideas and are therefore like evolving, never-quite-adequate ladders towards whole-being insight (ideas, feels, etc centered around the Light/Truth) into the Truth. The idea is to create a ladder that we can see fits adequately well with our inner moment; and then work to travel deeper and deeper into the Truth via that ladder, which will allow the Truth to explicate Itself to our thought-as-a-whole better and better, allowing us to understand better and better in what sense any given ladder is adequate and inadequate.]

[Note that we are all already Something Deeperists. We all already know we need insight into why it is TRUE that we are all in this together in order to believe in, care about, or understand our own thinking or acting; but we also know that we will never have literal insight into such a TRUTH, and that confusing ideas about the TRUTH with the TRUTH creates a great deal of trouble. Something Deeperism is not here to reject or contradict your philosophy or religion. It is here to work with all of us to help us all remember what our philosophies and religions are for: they are there to help us to understand that and in what way it is TRUE to say we are all in this together and should be kind and respectful towards one another, and happy together, enjoying each other’s company.]

AMW and BW, copyright AMW, although everybody knows this so why does he try to own it???

A Quick Intro To Something Deeperism

1) Basic Definition: There is a Truth (aka: Light; God; True Good; etc — we’re pointing with words imperfectly but not therefore necessarily inadequately towards a shared vista). The Truth shines through each conscious moment. The path of wisdom is relating the rest of our conscious moments (ideas, feelings, etc, all working together) better and better around the Truth so that there is less and less gap between the Truth and our words and deeds. In this way the Truth guides our thought-as-a-whole (feelings, ideas, awareness, and the Truth shining through all things, all working imperfectly but still meaningfully together) better and better, allowing us to translate the Truth better and better into words and deeds.

The path towards wisdom is the seed of wisdom: By following our inner push towards aware, clear, accurate, competent, honest, compassionate, kind, joyfully-together thinking and acting, centered around the Light within ourselves and everyone else; our ideas and feeling get better and better at following and understanding the Light; allowing the Light to guide our thought-as-a-whole to more and more aware .. joyfully-together thinking and acting.

We start out with only what seems to be an inkling of the Truth. And the Truth would have to be deeper and wider than our (oh so human!) ideas and feelings. So we can never have literal / definitive / 1:1 / exclusive insight into the Truth. However, we cannot have literal certainty about anything; and we wouldn’t be able to understand, care about, or follow literal certainty anyway. And, as far as we know, we can do as the mystics suggest: via meditation, prayer, contemplation, and loving kindness practice; we can think and act more and more aware, clear, honest, competent, kind, and joyfully together; gaining more and more insight into that and in what way it is True to say “we are all in this together”.

We can’t have literal insight into the Truth. But that does not mean we cannot have an adequate whole-being insight into the Truth. Such an insight would allow our emotional and intellectual ideas to point adequately well towards the Truth. And it is such an adequate whole-being pointing-towards what is really going on and what really matters that our intellectual thought requires if it is to know how it should be used, and what it should be used in service of.

Ideas and feelings know they are limited. They know they should not run the show alone. Pursuing wisdom is pursuing adequate insight into foundational values that allow ideas and feelings to function adequately well and with adequately clear consciences.

We should seek a better and better whole-being organization around the Truth within. But we’ll never get it perfect (for it to be an adequate standard of thought and action, the Truth would have to be perfect; and we are not perfect): We need to keep reassessing, admitting and adjusting missteps, trying again, pushing out from within, pushing for less and less gap between the Light outside our thinking/feeling/perceiving and the Light within.

2) Basic Argument for Adopting and Relentlessly Pursuing Truth, and Bounding that Pursuit with the Assumption that the Truth Ratifies Goods Like Awareness, Honesty, Kindness … : No human’s thoughts and actions can mean anything much to him or her unless the following requirements are met:
(a) the Truth is real (ie: some ways are truly more preferable than others)
(b) one’s thought-as-a-whole can relate meaningfully to the Truth (ie: something along the lines of the following: one’s ideas, feelings and the Truth shining through all things can work together and understand each other adequately);
(c) Truth is infinitely aware, clear, honest, competent, kind, good, joyfully caring/sharing and helpful; and is here equally for everyone. And we can grow in our understanding of the Truth in the way we sense we can: by following our own inborn sense towards aware … helpful thinking and acting, reaching always for more insight and compassion by seeking always to be more and more centered around and aware of the Truth within and shining through all things.

The state of affairs (a-c) is the bare minimum required for a human being to be able to truly understand, care about, and believe in his or her own ideas and feelings. Of course we cannot have literal knowledge about such things, but we can work to gain more and more whole-being insight into that and in what sense (a-c) are essentially True.

[The topic of undoubtables is covered in more detail in “Why Something Deeperism? Simple!” (the next essay in the book).
But let’s discuss (c) real quick:
If our inner senses towards clarity, honesty, accuracy, and competency cannot lead us to genuine insight; we have no intellectual path towards genuine insight that we can intellectually or emotionally understand or make use of. If our inner senses towards kindness and joyful compassionate generous and grateful togetherness cannot lead us to genuine insight; we have no emotional path towards genuine insight that we can understand, or even stand. We can only gain meaningful-to-us insights into what’s really going on and what really matters if to the degree we can gain insight into that and in what way (c) is essentially correct about the nature of Reality and our relationship to It.]

3) Basic Argument for Seeking a Relationship with the Truth that is Founded Primarily on Direct Whole-Being Experience of the Truth, and for Always Pushing Against the Human Tendency to Shift One’s Focus onto Ideas and Feelings about the Truth: Putting more focus on ideas and feelings about the Truth than on the Truth Itself is a grave and a common error. The Truth is not ideas and/or feelings about what is really going on, but what is really going on itself. The way forward is to relate ideas and feelings to the Truth more and more meaningfully — a process that self-defeats to the degree we confuse ideas/feelings with the Truth. When you put too much stock in ideas and/or feelings about the Truth, your focus turns away from a whole-being coordination around the Truth and you confuse and frustrate yourself by more and more pathetically/desperately clutching ideas and feelings that (since they claim a clarity and certainty you deepdown know they don’t have) are ultimately meaningless to you.

[Note that notions of “there is no Truth” combined with feelings of “I’ve got the Truth” are just as guilty of the above-sketched error as are notions of “I know the Truth” combined with feelings of “I’ve got the Truth”.]

We could not understand, believe in, or care about literal ideas about Reality (our ideas and feelings know they can have no literal purchase on Reality). The goal is, rather, a whole-being organization around the Truth within, allowing our ideas and feelings to flow out into the world adequately in tune with the Truth. The goal is to live in and through and for the Light that Knows that and in what way it is True to say “we are all children of the Light and must be kind to grateful for ourselves and each other.”

[Note that we need some principles to help us navigate human life, since ideas are necessary for interacting with this world and our own thoughts, and without any firm principles you spend every second trying to build up to a coherent philosophy from scratch. The principles of Something Deeperism should be adopted — just not clenched too tightly. Our principles are mere ideas and are therefore at best evolving, never-quite-adequate ladders towards whole-being insight into the Truth (ie: ideas, feels, etc centered around and adequately understanding and following the Light/Truth). The goal is to create an idea-ladder that fits adequately well with our inner moment; and to travel deeper and deeper into the Truth with the help of that ladder — which adventure (to the degree it is successful) will allow the Truth to explicate Itself to our thought-as-a-whole better and better, allowing us to understand better and better in what sense any given ladder is adequate and inadequate.]

[Note that we are all already Something Deeperists. We all already know we need insight into why it is TRUE that we are all in this together in order to believe in, care about, or understand our own thinking or acting; but we also know that we will never have literal insight into such a TRUTH, and that confusing ideas about the TRUTH with the TRUTH creates a great deal of trouble. Something Deeperism is not here to reject or contradict our philosophies or religions, except to the degree they cause us to self-defeat. By explicitly stating and discussing Something Deeperism we seek only to remind us what our philosophies and religions are for: to help us to understand that and in what way it is TRUE to say we are all in this together and should be kind and respectful towards one another, and happy together, enjoying each other’s company while we work together to grow in wisdom and make things better for everyone.]

4) Something Deeperism is helpful in group settings: A philosophy of Something Deeperism can help groups recognize and make use of all the common ground their members have. Something Deeperism points out that none of our philosophies make sense to any of us in the absence of insight into and use of aware, clear, honest, competent, kind, joyfully-sharing, truly-helpful thinking and acting. And so Something Deeperism keeps us all on the same page: Whatever our differences, we can all agree on aware … helpful thinking and acting, and on the need for us all to seek wisdom. And we can all agree that wisdom is honest and kind, not dishonest and cruel; and that it is counterproductive to pretend wisdom can fit into a literal set of metaphysical, political, and/or philosophical ideas. All this agreeing implies a shared space: a place of clarity we can together inhabit and defend. We will disagree on much, but we can and should agree on (no matter what! for if we sacrifice this, we sacrifice the only coherency any of us could have) awareness, honesty, clarity, competency, accuracy, kindness, and shared joy; all bound up in a respect for wisdom and the Light that makes wisdom possible. Without these standards, all humans self-defeat; it is therefore sensible for groups to adopt them and work together to better understand them and abide by them.

AMW and BW, copyright AMW, although everybody knows this so why does he try to own it???

What is Something Deeperism?

What is Something Deeperism?

What is Something Deeperism?
A self-circling, four-part obsession

Something Deeperism is the general position that we humans have insight into the Absolute (the Absolute is what is actually going on / what actually matters / what one should actually do–as opposed to mere opinions-about/perspectives-on what is going on / etc); but not literal / definitive / exclusive insight into the Something Deeperism. Picture the Truth as a Knowledge that is also Reality and therefore beyond doubt. The Truth is ultimately prior to human ideas and feelings about the Truth, so our ideas and feelings cannot relate perfectly to the Truth, but they can still relate meaningfully to the Truth (similar to how feelings are deeper/wider/vaguer than ideas, so an individual’s ideas cannot capture her feelings perfectly/literally/1:1, but her ideas can still relate meaningfully to her feelings). We humans can neither stand nor understand our lives without clear, honest thinking and feeling grounded in a certainty that knows that clear, open-eyed, joyous loving kindness is the way and that also knows how we can live in that Knowledge;therefore, we have no choice: we must assume such a Truth, and that our ideas and feelings can relate meaningfully to It, and–since the Truth will never be perfectly translated by our ideas and feelings and since our external circumstances are always changing whereas the Truth is always the same–we must never stop searching to better and better desire, understand, and follow that Truth within. So the path of Something Deeperism is centering your whole being (ideas, feelings, and etc) around the core of your and all being (the Truth) better and better: a task of constant pushing out from within, constant self-awareness and reassessment, constantly holding your feelings, ideas, and actions up to our inborn guardrails (insights we are born with and which we see more clearly as we learn to think, feel and act more clearly, honestly, gratefully, kindly): “am I being honest?”, “am I thinking clearly?”, “am I being kind?”, “or am I egotripping, showboating, grabgrabgrabbing?”

Naturally the foregoing is not literally true, but poetically true: poetically we point towards what is really going on and how we should deal with that circumstance. Like how a poem about a walk on the beach with a heavy heart can bring the attentive reader to a reasonably adequate sense of what the poet experienced: because we are all fundamentally the same and so–just as an individual’s ideas and feelings can, with clear, open heart and mind, can adequately understand and follow

Something Deeperism believes that human ideas do not literally capture their object, but rather point towards them imperfectly but still meaningfully. Mathematical ideas may become literal / definitive when written down, but when contemplated within human thought, they cannot help but take on deeper and wider meanings and so fuzz-out at the edges. Still, in practice math can be bracketed off from the question of what (if anything) it actually means and whether or not it actually matters. At least as measured by formal soundness, one can play the math-game perfectly well without worrying about those questions. However, topics like whether or not it matters what one does lose all meaning when bracketed off from questions about what they really mean and whether or not they really matter. And those are the questions most important to humans. But that’s OK, because human beings are not formal systems. We are ideas, feelings, vague notions, and etc all working meaningfully together; and there’s no reason to suppose that within human thought there’s not a Truth shining through that is both Knowledge and Reality and thus has the undeniable stamp of Truth within Itself; that is, for all we know human thought has enough wisdom within it to provide it with certain knowledge–not certain ideas and feelings, nor even a whole-being certainty, but rather a certain Truth that can adequately though of course not perfectly/definitively/no-chance-for-errorly guide one’s whole-being (ideas and feelings relating meaningfully to each other and to the Truth within).

Something Deeperism seeks to clarify the confusion caused by the false debate between faith in Goodness/the Truth (used interchangeably since they both point poetically towards the same place) and reason. Sure: Goodness cannot be perfectly translated into human ideas and feelings; but that doesn’t mean we cannot relate human ideas, feelings, words and actions meaningfully to Goodness. And since we cannot make sense of, believe in, or care about our own ideas without intellectual and emotional rigor, as well as spiritual (ie: non-mutable, non-relative/perspectival/debatable) Love/Goodness/the Truth, we have no choice but to work to better and better translate between ideas, feelings, words, deeds and Goodness.

Note also that believing in the doubtability of the existence of Truth is just as intellectually undefineable and unprovable as believing in the existence of Truth. And whereas to the degree you believe there’s no Truth, you doubt the meaningfulness of your own thought and so doubt all your thoughts and so slip into the chaotic mush of self-defeating thought, to the degree you are able to discover that Truth exists and what Truth is, your thought has a firm foundation: it can understand, believe-in, and understand itself.

Something Deeperism posits that just as via clear thought and feeling one’s ideas and words can imperfectly but still adequately relate to feelings even though feelings are wider/deeper/vaguer than ideas and words, clear thinking and feeling can also allow one to relate one’s ideas and feelings imperfectly but still adequately to the Truth shining through each conscious moment. And so one can speak meaningfully of the Truth, but only in a poetic (not literally/mathematically, but not therefore either inadequately meaningfully or unTrue) sense: we humans are essentially the same in our inner and outer experiences, so just as I can recreate within my own conscious moment an adequate facsimile of a poet’s experience by reading her poem with an open heart and mind, I can get the drift of spiritual writings by reading them with an open heart and mind (I’m here assuming the writings are good ones).

Something Deeperism is not a philosophy that can be built up from undoubtable assumptions. Rather, it must be taken as a whole and explored from the inside out. However, you can summarize it quickly and the intellect and emotion can see therein their only only real chance for progress. Please also note that no philosophy can be built up from undoubtable assumptions: ones that pretend they can be just hide their assumptions about what is really going on, what really matters, and how one should really think and act (senses-of-things that the intellect cannot define with precision or prove one way or another, but that humans cannot dispense with; take, for example yon radical skeptic: doth he not feelingly grab the sense “I am actually right!” and so commit a secret dogmatism?)

********

If the Truth shines through my conscious moment; and if I can through aware clear honest thinking and feeling coordinate my ideas, feelings, words and deeds better and better with the Truth; and if the Truth supports my sense that we are all in this together and must be kind to one another and that shared joy is the way; and if that kind of meaningful communication is possible not only within me (ie: between the various aspects of my conscious moment) but also between me and my fellows: if all that is the case and my thought-as-a-whole (ideas, feelings, and everything else within my conscious moment working together) can discover that and how it is the case (not through literal knowledge of the Truth—which strikes me as neither possible nor, even if it were possible, usable by human thought—, but through an overall insight into the Truth that I can relate poetically [not literally, but still meaningfully and essentially accurately] to ideas, feelings, words and deeds)–if all that is possible, then I have a method for choosing one thought over another that is meaningful/interesting/stand-able to my thought as I cannot help but experience it. Otherwise, I don’t and I will make no progress in thought and action, which will continue to flap meaninglessly around as I try to pretend it means this and that to me and/or I don’t need my own thought to make any sense to me, and so on with the nonsense.

All individual humans and human organizations would do well to accept the essential dogmas I outlined above. Any individual dogma that doesn’t accept them is meaningless/useless to human beings; therefore they provide a dogmatic foundation for shared undertakings: none of our individual philosophies can be worth anything to any of us unless they help us to understand and live the Truth of those dogmas (not, of course, the words and concepts used to express the dogmas so much as the general internal sense-of-things those words and concepts point imperfectly but not therefore inadequately towards, but without words and concepts a human cannot communicate fully either with himorherself or with others, and refusing to use words and concepts that point adequately well towards senses-of-things prior to words and concepts is a type of lie: you’re throwing out a way forward on the grounds that it is imperfect, but you know perfectly well that that is not a legitimate reason to throw out a way forward). Therefore, we should not allow our shared dogmas to doubt those undoubtable dogmas (ex: if clear honest reasoning and relentless joy-spreading we-are-all-in-this-together kindness don’t matter, all humanly understandable and standable philosophies are out the window; therefore, we really ought to all agree to agree that we will together prioritize clear honest reasoning and relentless joy-spreading we-are-all-in-this-together kindness).

However, it is important to keep in mind that what human thought needs for a firm foundation is not ideas about the Truth grasped with the sense of “This is the Truth!”, but whole-being insight into the Truth; therefore, neither groups nor individuals should seek blind faith in the the dogmas outlined above. Forcing yourself to believe an idea you don’t understand just confuses you, muddying your thought and making it less meaningful/interesting/believable to you. That is why Something Deeperism advocates not literal belief in the bare minimum dogmas (“bare minimum” as in to the degree they either are not True or you cannot find a way to show yourself that and how they are True, your thought cannot believe/understand/follow itself), but a whole-being insight that is aware of its limitations: since you are relating what is prior to ideas and feelings to ideas and feelings, there will of necessity be some fudging/estimating/error; therefore: wisdom is never perfected and no one is in a position to assume they can get by without humility, without revising, seeking over and over again for a better nuance. So both individual and group dogmas should also include that nuance: the Truth is Absolute, but our insights into the Truth are not; so we should all keep seeking for more and more clarity, honesty, accuracy, goodness, kindness, and shared joy.

*****

We humans need ideas to help us navigate this human realm, and without some stable dogmas, all is mush and chaos, so we need some principles, even though the Truth is wider and deeper than human principles. But no worldview is worth anything unless it is helping its adherents relate their whole-being to the Joy within that alone knows that and how human life is sacred and how we should move and be; so our dogmas, though limited, must help relate us to the limitless Truth. A worldview is a type of moving platform that must be constantly revised and that must constantly guard against the temptation to confuse itself for the Truth that it is there to help one relate to.

The first goal is to reach a tipping point of whole-being (ideas, feelings, and deeper senses all working together) insight where it is more true for one to say “I believe kindness truly Matters” than to say “I don’t know anything for sure”. At that point, our inborn starting-point has brought us to a whole being starting-point. Again: it doesn’t count if you lie to yourself or trick yourself into this conclusion; the whole point is that you cannot believe in, care about, or follow your own ideas unless they are both clear and accurate, and relate to a Light within that knows that and how kindness truly Matters.

Either affirming that those essential dogmas are worth believing or doubting that they are worth believing amounts to making a poetic statement (declaring what should actually be believed oversteps what can be intellectually/emotionally known and understood); but when we doubt those dogmas without which human thought cannot believe in, care about, or understand itself, we contradict ourselves and spin our wheels hopelessly; whereas if we can find a way to get whole-being insight into the Truth of those procedurally undoubtable dogmas, we will have a workable way to connect our ideas and feelings to a Light within that alone knows what is worthwhile and that alone can provide our ideas and feelings with a firm foundation. That’s why religion is good, so long as it is not too literal: it gives people a shared vocabulary and framework to discuss spiritual growth and challenges, and it also helps to ground us in the kinds of practices necessary for improving our whole-being insight into the Goodness (ideas, feelings and etc all relating meaningfully to the Goodness shining through each conscious moment) that we all need to make any progress, and which no human will fully grasp, and which ego-trips constantly seek to co-opt. Blind faith in ideas amounts to forcing feelings of “this is so!” onto ideas you can’t really understand or even care about. In recognition that intellectual, emotional, and spiritual progress all require each other and that the Truth, not ideas and/or feelings about the Truth, must ultimately orchestrate any progress, Something Deeperism advocates pushing more for whole-being insight poetically (not intellectually literal or emotionally definitive, but still essentially accurate and meaningfully) expressed and lived than for dogmas believed and followed. Of course, there’s no perfection in human life, and some dogmatism is inevitable, so Something Deeperism doesn’t say “no dogmatism at all!”, but merely works to bend us towards dogmas like “let’s keep pushing to keep ourselves focused on the Light prior to all ideas and feelings by gently but consistently pushing against our human tendency to put more focus on ideas and feelings that make us feel meaningful than on the whole-being coordination of ideas and feelings around the Light within that alone knows that and how we are meaningful”. Something Deeperism is not pushy! It is gently pushing for better and better and …

****

But for real: what if one gets the Truth wrong? Indeed, so much trouble is caused by people thinking they know the Truth when all they know are intellectual ideas about the Truth! As we’ve noted: The Truth is not the same as ideas and feelings about the Truth, and declaring xyz statement “True” without whole-being insight into the way in which the statement is “True” causes one to clench misunderstood intellectual ideas tighter and tighter, which drives a larger and larger wedge from one and the Truth (which is of course prior to ideas and feelings, since the Truth is what is, not ideas and feelings about what is). Therefore, to accept the literal Truth of the undoubtable assumptions is to commit the same basic mistake as disavowing them: the error of pretending literal knowledge where only poetic insight is humanly possible.

That’s why Something Deeperism points out that while we can have insight into the Absolute, we cannot have Absolute insight: we need intellectual and emotional ideas to navigate this human reality, and without spiritual insight nothing means anything to us, so we need to meaningfully relate our intellectual and emotional ideas to the Truth, and both blind skepticism and blind faith work against that coordination of what is prior (the Truth) to what is post (ideas, feelings, words, and deeds). Therefore, let us keep trying and trying again for the correct nuance: Meaning is Real and ideas and feelings can relate meaningfully to Meaning, but part of that process involves a necessary error: we’ll inevitably confuse ideas and feelings about Meaning to some degree, so we have to work to keep reducing that error, so we drop down again and again to a little lower level: we must constantly reevaluate and refine our dogmas, which are structures that need to understand their own limitations to remain useful.

This essay is not literal. It points. It uses some reason and some emotions, but it points also past them. This essay is not unique in that. All human words and deeds do that. Even math, though able to live bracketed off from the question of Meaning when inside symbols and in computers, upon entering a human mind automatically becomes part of the human quest to figure out what is really going on, what really matters, and how one should really think and act. Let’s not pretend we are what we aren’t!

Author: Monsieur Pud En Taine
Editor: BW w/AMW
copyright: AMW

Prefatory Quote

Prefatory Quote

Have you ever been involved–no matter on what side or in what capacity–in a raped and pillaged village? More particularly, have you ever been struck down in the midst of such a fiery, hope-shattering melee: either by the downward-splitting blade of a horseback attacker or the whistling arrow of the resistance? Did you ever, while your lungs drew in cold shocked night air filling with stinging smoke and insanely bereaved/terrified bone-deep wails, suddenly understand the final stab and sink down from horrified pain to broken-hearted ache to sweet forgetful sleep?

If so, perhaps you’ll recall awakening to the soul plane just as you left the body level. And, still in and watching the scene but no longer liable to other bodily sensations, you looked around at the others. Some still animated and enveloped in the pell-mell; others, like yourself, no longer embodied, blazed like candle flames as the white-hot flickering outline of a tidier (the wounds healed, the dirt and blood gone) and still-alive version of your broken bodies. You and the other dead, look at the living and at each other, and you feel so sorry, so sad–no matter were you an innocent child now unjustly robbed nor a marauding villain (perhaps out of your teens, perhaps not) justly served. You feel guilty and terrible and you look at the other spirits who also feel the heavenly wind yanking them upwards, out of the fray and the two colliding communities. What is in their look? The same thing in your mind:

No matter who I am,
no matter my experiences,
my reasons,
unless “how can I make things truly better for myself and everyone else: how can I let the joyful sharing Love at the core of all experience win this world for responsible kind respectful joyous cooperation?”:
Unless that is my question,
I am asking the wrong questions and will keep getting the wrong answer.

But how, fading ghost soon to be reconfigured to await judgement, options, and another try: How will you remember this lesson with all intellectual and emotional ideas deleted? True: at it’s core, this insight is deeper than those things and partakes of the one spiritual idea, the Knowledge that is also Reality. But still: you’ll need a way to build a bridge between the mind/body you’ll wear next and that grand glimpse.

The Truth is But A Dream

The Truth is But A Dream

What do you know?
How do you know it?
No matter how you slice it, you believe in clarity, honesty, and accuracy of thought.
No matter how you gin it, you believe in freedom of will and of the need to choose well.
No matter how you pose it, you believe in a kind joy we can share and that must win for any of us to win.

What to do with what you cannot disbelieve?
Believe it blindly and you don’t really understand it, believe it, or even care about it: you retreat into an emotionally clutched story about what you believe, and so slide away from presence in what you actually believe, which is of course prior to all ideas and feelings about what you believe.

What to do with that which disbelieving amounts to disbelieving in your own thought as you cannot but help to understand it?
Doubt it and you doubt yourself. Believe it literally/definitively and you lose it for a boring story that you have to grasp tighter and tighter to keep from seeing that you’re clutching dandelion fluff blowing in the summer breeze, clawing at nothing at all while that which you truly believe slips away from your focus. Doubt it literally or believe it literally and you end up in the same spot: living in stories, incoherent because the bulk of your conscious experience has left the only thought that means anything to you. What is that thought? It is the seed of wisdom and it screams Yes! I can think clear and true and follow the Light better and better! If that is not true, what does anything mean or matter to you? But blindly believe in some collaborating account and you are living in ideas and feelings about the spark within, and those are not at all the same as the spark within.

So how to catch it right? Where’s the nuance we’re looking for?
Not mindless doubting, not mindlessly believing. Not pretending you can ignore the intellect and maintain a workable relationship to this life; but also not pretending the intellect is all there is or that it cannot relate meaningfully to the rest of your experience.

How to catch it right?
One’s thought as a whole coordinating the various aspects of thought around the Light within that alone knows what is real, what matters, how we should live, what we should do. Flowing more and more cleanly off that Light. Not pretending our ideas and feelings are the Light! But working every moment to better and better translate the Light into workable ideas and feelings, that of course know themselves limited and provisional, but also necessary. That’s how you gotta work it when you span what is prior to ideas and feelings, through ideas and feelings, out into the world where you meet the others and affect and are affected by them.

Ah friends, the rapids froth! The raft flows and twists with the madcap rambling roller coaster cold mountain water.

Don’t leave me here all by myself.

AMW

Dear God

Dear God

Dear God in the Highest,

Hi! How are you?

I am fine, but I feel like I’m wasting my life. Any ideas?

What should I do? I can’t think of anything! I could try to be a writer, but what would I write? I feel so tired, like I’m slipping down the drain, fading out. I cannot think. I feel only a wobbly warble throughout. I think all the hot women are hot, but that doesn’t seem to be helping anybody. What should I do? Any ideas?

I live in a comparatively easy situation. Just have to work my 40 hours and pay my electric bill. That’s pretty much all they ask of me. What do you ask of me? I’m sorry about all the people in prison–not that I put them there or anything.

I wish there was a way to make things better. But I can’t even say exactly what the problem is.

Oh well, thanks for listening,

A

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]

Footnote on Pure Love & Something Deeperism

Footnote on Pure Love & Something Deeperism

1. Pure Love 2. Something Deeperism Quickest Sketch 3. Continuing The Overview of Something Deeperism 4. Flushing The General Position Out A Little More 5. Ideas to Motivate Adherence to Something Deeperism

You don’t need to read every entry now. Maybe just the first two. That would probably be best for now. In fact, I implore you: just quickly read over the first two sections and go back to the Introduction. If they bore you, just skim them! This is supposed to be a nice fun work of fiction: don’t let the obsessiveness of certain elements within the authorship take that away from us!!

1. Pure Love is the infinite and eternal love that all earthly loves partake of to the degree that they are actually love (to the degree they don’t partake of just Pure Love, earthly loves are tainted by non-infinite, non-eternal aspects of experience). Pure Love gives, supports, lifts-up helps, understands, loves 100%—for free. Human loves to some degree pull-towards and push-away. To the degree they are Pure Love, they do not pull-towards or push-away, but only beam brightly buoyantly effectively through.

2. Something Deeperism is the general position that we humans have insight into the Absolute (the Absolute is what is actually going on / what actually matters / what one should actually do–as opposed to mere opinions-about/perspectives-on what is going on / etc), but not literal / definitive / exclusive insight.

Something Deeperism seeks to clarify the confusion caused by the false debate between faith and reason. Sure: we cannot perfectly translate the Truth into human ideas and feelings; but that doesn’t mean we cannot relate human ideas, feelings, words and actions meaningfully to the Truth; and since the we cannot make sense of, believe in, or care about our own ideas without intellectual and emotional rigor, as well as spiritual (ie: non-mutable, non-relative/perspectival/debatable) Love, we have no choice but to work to better and better translate between ideas, feelings, words, deeds and the Truth.

Something Deeperism posits via clear thought and feeling one’s ideas and words can imperfectly but still adequately relate to feelings even though feelings are wider/deeper/vaguer than ideas and words, clear thinking and feeling can allow one to

If the Truth shines through the human conscious moment and we can through clear thinking and feeling coordinate our ideas, feelings, words and deeds better and better with the Truth, and if the Truth supports our sense that we are all in this together and must be kind to one another and that shared joy is the way: if all that is the case and a person can discover that and how it is the case, humans have a method for choosing one thought over another that is meaningful/interesting/stand-able to human beings. Otherwise, we don’t and we will make no progress in thought and action. So groups should accept those essential dogmas and we should all seek the Truth: the Truth would be both Knowledge and Reality and thus have the stamp of “True!” within it; thus endarounding the problem of the divide between ways of knowing and Reality; of course, the Truth cannot fit into our ideas, feelings, words and deeds, so what we need is not intellectual and emotional assent to the essential dogmas so much as insight into that and how they are the case–indeed confusing ideas and feelings about the Truth actually pushes one into dogmatically clutching ideas and feelings one doesn’t understand, which is antithetical to growth in wisdom: the continual improvement of one’s whole-being coordination of ideas, feelings, words and deeds around the Joy within that alone knows what is going on, what matters, and what should be done.

[A Note on Interchanging Different Descriptions of the Absolute:
We’re here positing that the Truth shines through all things, including each human conscious moment, and that It is prior to ideas and feelings, so we can only point imperfectly [but not therefore necessarily meaninglessly] towards It; so “Love”, “Truth”, “God”, “Light”, “Buddha Nature”, “Joy” can all be used interchangeably–not necessarily as indicating exactly the same thing, but as generally pointing adequately enough towards that which can only be pointed towards, since it is prior to ideas and feelings.]

{A SOMETHING DEEPERISM WITHOUT METAPHYSICS?

Or does that go too far? Sure, that’s the Something Deeperism of this author, but it is not the Something Deeperism of every Something Deeperist. All that is needed to qualify as a Something Deeperist is to agree that that inner sense that I like to call the “seed of wisdom” is actually onto something, and so one shouldn’t fart around in either radical skepticism or blind faith: one should seek to understand that and how this “seed of wisdom” is onto something. Right? Can’t this be done without metaphysics? I dunno: what does “actually onto something” mean? Doesn’t it point towards “actually the case”, towards True? I think humans cannot help but use ideas and feelings in their thoughts and actions; but they also cannot understand, believe in, or even care about their own ideas and feelings without grounding those ideas and feelings on whole-being insight into what is actually going on (the fact that people often delude themselves about what is actually going on is no argument against this position: the whole point is that our insight needs to be adequately based on Truth for it to guide us meaningfully forward–that we often lurch incoherently in one direction while it becomes less and less meaningful to us only points out how we struggle with this task); therefore, I think we humans must accept (necessarily imperfectly) translating inner insights into ideas and feelings, from which it follows that it is wiser to say “I should think clearly” than to say “I have no idea about what is going on”: both are imperfect translations of inner senses of things ultimately prior to ideas about them, but the former includes a path forward and the latter is completely self-defeating. Of course, if you cannot find any Truth in the former, you shouldn’t announce it, but the latter makes no sense, so saying it amounts to forcing confusion into the center; that’s why Something Deeperists suggest working to find a way to gain whole-being insight (ideas and feelings working with and under the adequate guidance of the Absolute–that which alone Knows because It is both Knowledge and Reality) so that you know both that the former is True and in what way it is True.}

So why squawk on and on about how cool you are because nobody knows shit or because you know the Truth. Seems better to relax, say nothing, and try meditation, prayer, loving kindness, maybe even pick a religion that fits where you are and so join a community of like-minded people who can help keep you on track. But, hey: whatever? Right? I’m taking off, I’m heading out the door, I’m going for a walk. These questions slice so deep and what’s down there anyway? I’m afraid I’ve found a bunch of squeaking mice madly dashing into walls and into and over each other while the cleaver breaks them apart and sends their writhing bloody pieces here and there in the general sprawling mayhem.

Another failed introduction to Something Deeperism!

[Back to Intro of “Love at a Reasonable Price”]

3. Continuing the Overview of Something Deeperism Has been moved, for everyone’s sake, to Outtakes!

[Back to Intro of LaaRP]

4. A Few Principles Of Something Deeperism:

Wisdom is possible—at least as a direction. Growing in wisdom is the never-ending process of better and better—through the clear thinking and feeling outlined above—organizing one’s feelings, ideas, words, and deeds around the Truth within (so the rest of one’s experience better and better syncs up with and so understands and follows the Truth at the core of one’s experience).

True dogmas (here “dogma” means a statement about Absolutes—like what is actually going on, what actually matters, or how one should truly live) are not literal, definitive, or exclusive. They point poetically (not perfectly clear, precise, or intellectually verifiable; but not therefore inadequately) toward the Truth, which after all is prior to ideas and feelings about It (ie: “true dogmas” point one’s conscious experience toward adequate insight into the Truth the way a good poem recreate’s the writer’s experience adequately though not literally/definitively within the reader: it is not a mathematical formulation, but the essential has still been communicated).

When one’s thought-as-a-whole is properly organized around the Truth at the core of each human conscious moment, one’s thought-as-a-whole can use the intellect to sketch adequate intellectual pictures of the Truth and how the Truth relates to everything else, and such sketches can help others to get a better sense of the Truth. But they are still just sketches, and unwise conscious moments are still very much able to woefully misunderstand them. So no matter what the source, one must be careful to expect any goodness to come of mindlessly “yessing” the dogma. What is most fundamentally needed is insight; dogmas are only supposed to help people gain, share, and build a shared language for insight into what is really going on, what really matters, and how we should really live—a language for together contemplating questions whose answers are deeper and wider than any ideas, and thus than any dogmas.

Humans with the same stated dogma (examples of stated dogmas: “secular humanist” or “born again Christian”) are never 100% on the same page; and those with different dogmas are still somewhat on the same page; and both people with identical and those with different dogmas can—with good intentions and real effort—get more and more on the same page.

We humans all share the same most fundamental value: seeking and choosing truly better ways of thinking and acting via clear and honest investigation of our inner and outer experiences, with the whole process orchestrated by a deepening insight into that sense within that knows our thoughts and actions truly matter and in what way they truly matter, and the entire process guide-guardrailed by the knowledge that joyful sharing kindness is the way and everything else baloney.

Something Deeperism cannot be intellectually proven, but it can be intellectually motivated. For an attempt at a quick sketch of that see below (#5)

[Back to Intro of LaaRP]

5. Ideas to Motivate Seeking in Individuals and Assuming Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Justice, and most of all Love in groups:

Note that no matter what our outlook, we cannot help but accept/assume some intellectual ideas about what is going on, what matters, and what should be done that we cannot prove intellectually. {In fact, insofar as one doesn’t adequately answer those questions, we can’t really understand, care about, or believe in one’s own thought process (which cannot help but assume insight into those fundamental questions is what it is ultimately working on).} Therefore, we are going to have to accept some dogmas (unproven beliefs accepted as “true enough”) about what is going on, what matters, and what should be done. The only choice available to humans is between dogmas that lead to more coherency and dogmas that lead to less, so we may as well pick dogmas that lead us to more coherent thoughts and actions (ie: thoughts and actions that are more meaningful to the thinker/actor).

Then note that for any idea about what is going on & etc to be coherent, the basic premise of Something Deeperism must be true.

…..

The basic premises of Something Deeperism:

“Truth” and “Goodness” (not those concepts but what they imperfectly but not therefore necessarily inadequately point towards) actually exist and, though they are ultimately prior to ideas and feelings about them and thus not liable to literal/definitive insights, our inborn sense that we can improve our insight into them via clear, honest, pure-hearted thought, contemplation, conversation, and action bounded by valuing kindness, respect, and shared-joy for all is correct. If that premise isn’t True or I cannot find a way to demonstrate to myself that and how it is True, how can I understand, care about, believe in, or otherwise participate in my own thoughts and actions? I can’t. My thought needs insight into that and how that sense of things is True to be meaningful to itself: that is simply the way we humans are constructed {some say you can’t go from your own fundamental experience to the experience of all others, but I can’t make any sense of my thoughts if other people are not essentially like me and [otherwise how can I make sense of all I’ve learned by interacting with them?], so the belief that others are basically like me is also undoubtable: I don’t know that it is True, but I do know that to the degree I do not gain insight into how and that it is True, my own thoughts and actions are meaningless to me.}

But don’t forget that ideas and feelings about what is really true, worthwhile, and preferable are only meaningful to you if you actually understand them; so what is needed is not so much literal answers as whole-being (ideas, feelings, words and deeds under the guidance of the Truth shining within and through each conscious moment). Even supposing literal understanding of the Truth were possible (and how could it be? The Truth is not the same as an idea about the Truth!), merely forcing feelings of certainty atop intellectual assents to literally true dogmas would just lead to misunderstanding those dogmas. What is needed is a whole-being organization around the Light within that alone knows that and how we all matter—an organization that must be self-aware enough to not pretend it can ever consider itself definitive/finished.

…..

Radical skepticism is self-defeating because there’s no point avoiding error unless accuracy is real and actually matters. Blind dogmatism is self-defeating because “what is actually the case” is not the same as ideas and feelings about “what is actually the case” and so belief in a dogma without insight into the way in which it is True actually points you away from meaningful whole-being engagement with “what is actually the case” [regardless of how true the dogma is a dogma can never be “True”; dogmas can only be more or less “true”, though insight can show you the way and degree the dogma points towards what is True]. To avoid the extremes of blind doubt and blind faith, Something Deeperism seeks insight into “what is actually the case” with one’s thought-as-a-whole: the intellect and feelings need to contemplate “what is actually the case” (to notice that they need to relate to “w i a t c” and to consider how to best do that and how to best guard against misunderstanding “w i a t c”) and they can and should also keep working to sketch better and better descriptions of “what is actually the case”, but they must always remember that these sketches are not themselves “what is actually the case” and the process of growing in wisdom must continue, refreshed each moment, until the moment of death.

Everyone is already something of a Something Deeperist. We all realize that to the degree we lack insight into how life is actually meaningful, we cannot understand, believe in, or care about anything we think or do. (Even the most dogmatic skeptic must admit that there’s no way to know how to be a skeptic and no motivation for being one unless there’s something to one’s inner push for accuracy—unless in some sense avoiding error is actually attainable and worth pursuing.) And we all also realize that it is possible, tempting, and self-defeating to get so focused on ideas about why our lives matter that we miss out in engagement with that within that alone understands that and how our lives matter. (Even the most fundamental religious believer will agree that of course they are trying to follow not human ideas about God, but God; and that whenever human ideas and feelings get involved, there is some danger of spiritual misinterpretation and mistake, since, after all, human ideas and feelings are not perfect, but spiritual Truth is.) And we all know that to the degree a society sacrifices accuracy, honesty, kindness and shared joy for anything—including xyz religious or secular dogma—that society works against any meaningful philosophy, religion, or attitude.

Arguing for Something Deeperism is not so much arguing as gently reminding everyone that we all are already to some degree Something Deeperists, and we should remember that, remember that we are all basically the same and in this together, remember that pretending we are not alike enough for respectful communication and collaboration is a cruel lie that undermines us to the degree we countenance it.

We all have to keep pedaling, keep pushing for more real whole-being insight into the kind joy within that alone understands what this life is all about. We cannot never stop seeking for more clarity in thought and action, for more wisdom. We have to keep pedaling.

How great Something Deeperism is! Without it, you wander hopeless lost in meaninglessness. If you imagine you can have no meaningful relationship to the Truth, then you say things like “for all I know, I don’t know anything”, which makes no sense: insofar as you actually believe it, you don’t actually believe it. If, in the other extreme, you imagine that you know the Truth, that It is xyz dogmas that you memorize and live by, you mislabel the Truth—which is actually prior to ideas and feelings and therefore insofar as you equate It 1:1 with xyz idea—, and so you shift your focus away from an active engagement with the Truth and onto ideas that you clench with forced feelings of certainty which you can neither actually understand nor care about (and, anyway, what use is a dogma—even if it were somehow TRUE—if you don’t understand it?). And so how nicely Something Deeperism steps in! How nicely it tidies things up: there is a Truth and you have some insight into It and with clear and honest effort can get more insight into It, but as the Truth is obviously prior to ideas and feelings about It, you don’t need to worry about literally, definitively or exclusively understanding the Truth—indeed, if that’s what you think you are doing, then you are drifting into La La Land, and need to stop! and head back home, back to a whole-being insight into the Truth.]

This fun, informative article was written by Johnny Go Lightly, a terrible influence on his friends and family.

[Back to Intro of LaaRP]

Author & shame: BW
Editor & shame: AMW
Copyright & shame: AMW

Why Something Deeperism? Simple! It is not a self-defeating philosophy but its rivals are.

Why Something Deeperism? Simple! It is not a self-defeating philosophy but its rivals are.

[Something Deeperism Institute]

Some assumptions are undoubtable to human thought. To the degree a human doubts them, they doubt their own thought as they cannot help but understand it, and thus they doubt all their conclusions, and thus they doubt the attempted initial doubt. Those logoi are truly self-defeating!

Note: In the various Examples of Undoubtables below, words are sometimes set off in quotes to stress that we are here using language to point imperfectly (but not therefore necessarily inadequately) ultimately prior to ideas and feelings.

Examples of Undoubtables:
1. You are capable of “truly meaningful” thoughts and actions.
2. Your various aspects of conscious experience (ex: ideas, feelings, vaguer/wider/deeper senses-of-things) can relate meaningfully to one another.
3. Being true to your inner sense towards “aware”, “clear”, “honest”, “accurate”, “truer” and “better” is a viable way to meaningfully choose one thought/action over another.
4. “Truer” and “better” are not completely relative, but are ultimately grounded within endpoints: “Truth” and “Goodness”. (Otherwise “truer” and “better” meander with your whims, and you cannot decisively declare anyone ever wrong or right).
5. You can relate meaningfully to “Truth” and “Goodness”.

[Doubt any of these and you doubt your thought’s inborn procedures for discovering viable thought-/action-paths, and thus you doubt your own thinking as you cannot help but understand it; and so you doubt all your thoughts, and so you doubt the doubt that started all this …
That’s not to say the above examples point perfectly to what they’re referring to. Of course they don’t.
The point is that if you doubt away the inner senses-of-things those examples are pointing towards, you doubt away any workable thought/action process.
Don’t doubt them away: They are your only possible starting point for thoughts and actions that mean anything to you.
Granted: that is not sufficient reason to blindly believe in them. But more on that nuance below.]

[Note that 1-4 build the general system of mystical knowledge:
Rather than waiting for perfect intellectual knowledge of how one should really think and act, the mystic accepts the inner sense towards clarity, honesty, truer and better; and seeks a whole-being insight into an inner Light that alone knows that and in what sense it is True to say, “we are all in this together”.
(“whole-being insight: ideas, feelings, and the Light shining through all things [including each conscious moment] all relating meaningfully with one another, though—since we are finite and the Light, if It is to be the firm foundation for Truth and Goodness that we seek, must be infinite—not relating literally/1:1/definitively with one another.)
The mystic does not renounce intellectual and emotional clarity—without these our thoughts make no sense to themselves.
However, the mystic does put whole-being clarity of attitude and purpose ahead of intellectual knowledge:
We don’t strictly speaking have to know whether or not there is a Reality corresponding to xyz human notion of “Reality”. What we must know is how to think and act in a way that is truly better—that doesn’t just “seem better” to this or that person’s way of thinking and feeling. The danger of self-deceit, of confusing ideas and feelings for the “True Good” remains for self-conscious and purposeful spiritual seekers, as it does for everyone. But, as we just mentioned: more on this later.]

Another Undoubtable:
You and other people are fundamentally the same and can communicate meaningfully.

[If not, what becomes of your understanding of all you’ve learned by interacting with others and their works?
Also, if not, can you stand life? No: to the degree you disbelieve we are all fundamentally the same and able to relate to one another, life becomes absurdly stupid: and to that degree you cannot understand, believe in, or care about your own thinking/acting (See the chapter “How We Learn / Against All Talk of “Philosophical Zombies” in First Essays for more on this.)]

Some Final Examples:
“We are all in this together.”
“Loving Kindness is the Way. “
“Joyful sharing and collaborating is actually preferable.”
“We all can and should treat one another with respect and kindness.”
“What we say and do really does matter.”

[Doubt these fundamental rules of thumb, and you doubt away the only meaning of your life you can understand, care about, or believe in.
This is true of the previous undoubtables too, but the first and second category also lead to obvious logical and ethical (in the widest sense of what one should do, shorn of any a priori assumptions about what “truly preferable” is supposed to look like) paradoxes; while trying to doubt this final category of undoubtables leads only to obvious emotional/a-Reality-I-can-stand conundrums—at least that I easily perceive. I dunno: search yourself.]

To the degree an individual doubts the undoubtables, she doubts the meaningfulnes and viability of her own inborn thought-process/system-for-choosing-one-possibility-over-another; to this degree, she doubts all her thoughts, including her attempted doubts; to this degree she wanders in the meaningless chaos of thoughts she cannot understand, believe in, or care about; to this degree, she loses the ability to travel with her own thoughts to her own conclusions: she ghosts-away in boring, self-imposed confusions and hands the steering wheel of her thought over to animal caprices, which are often mean, stupid, and boring.

Naturally, an assumption’s procedural undoubtability doesn’t prove it either true or True.
And forcing yourself to believe something without adequately demonstrating its accuracy to yourself also breaks a fundamental rule of human thought and so leads to the abyss of self-confusion.
Furthermore, we are speaking here of fundamental notions experienced at a level deeper than ideas and feelings, which conceptual language therefore can never literally/definitively describe.
And we are seeking to ground our feeling/thinking/grounding an Absolute Truth, which our finite minds/hearts/bodies could never fully grasp.
Forcing yourself to believe the literal Truth of xyz undoubtable dogma will only result in tightly clutching an idea you don’t understand.

Forcing a feeling of certainty onto an idea you don’t even really fathom, let alone care about, is not at all the same as meaningfully relating your ideas and feelings to an undoubtable sense of things well enough that your ideas and feelings win real insight into the way in which that undoubtable sense is True (assuming it is True).
But that internal spiritual discovery is the prerequisite for you (you = your thought-as-a-whole = your combined conscious and unconscious experience) to understand, believe, care about, and meaningfully steer and journey-with your own thinking/acting.

Accordingly, Something Deeperism forbids doubting the undoubtables, but it also forbids forcing literal beliefs upon yourself. Instead, Something Deeperism suggests you work to better and better coordinate your ideas and feelings around that sense within that knows what and how life “actually matters”. It suggests you recognize that we of course need ideas to help us make decisions in human life, but ideas are only useful as provisional structures for gaining and living-out more and more whole-being insight into that and in what sense it is True to say, for example, “Love is Real”.

Blindly believing or disbelieving the undoubtables will just confuse us. Instead, Something Deeperism suggests accepting them provisionally as part of a whole-being (ideas, feelings and the Light within) effort to center ourselves around the Light within (whose Reality we again accept provisionally) that alone Knows that and in what sense we are all in this together.

The goal is to organize one’s feeling/thinking/acting around the Light well enough that one’s thought as a whole can grasp the “Truth” to the point that one’s feeling, thinking, speaking, and acting are essentially in accord with the “Truth”. Such a goal could never be fully realized (we are finite and the Truth infinite), but one could move more and more in the right direction, allowing for feeling/thinking/acting that was more and more meaningful to oneself / more and more “Beautiful/True/Good/Just/LovingKind”.

I say “provisionally”, but only half mean it:
Part of the motion of Something Deeperism is what we’ve spelled out above:
A results-demanding wager on the only path of thinking and acting that can mean something to human beings: An aware, honest, accurate, competent, kind, joyful, generous whole-being coordination of ideas and feelings around the perfect Light within that alone Knows what’s what, and that our imperfect ideas and feelings can relate to (imperfectly—but not therefore necessarily inadequately);
However, Something Deeperism is also about prioritizing what we know deeper and wider — if perhaps less intellectually capturably/provably — than our certainties and uncertainties:
That still, silent, uplifting YesILoveYou! from God to all of us, from all of us to God, and from all of us to one another.

Let’s choose our dogmas well. Let’s not choose dogmas that confuse our thought, such as “Nothing is True”, or “Nothing matters”, or “It is literally True that life matters and if you believe that you are right and otherwise wrong”. Let’s instead choose ideas that we can understand and work with, such as “I am going to keep working to gain more and more whole-being insight into in what way it is True that life matters”.

Let’s reject radical skepticism and dogmatic literalism for a constant whole being quest to better and better understand that and in what way it is basically True to say “We are all in this together and must treat everyone equally: with complete respect, love and unflinching kindness.” Let’s choose thought-/action-paths that allow for meaningful progress in thoughts and actions.

Author Lost to Time and Chance
Copyright: AMW

[This essay can be found in “A Readable Reader”, “First Loves: Vol 1 of Love at a Reasonable Rate” and “First Essays”. See Buy Our Books! for more.]

[Something Deeperism Institute]

Something Deeperism: A Quick Intro [FAILED]

Something Deeperism: A Quick Intro [FAILED]

Something Deeperism is a general intellectual position along the lines of:

“I can and should follow my own inner-pushes towards accuracy, honesty, Truth, Goodness, and Pure Love–guard-railing that seeking with my inner-sense that other people are essentially the same as I am, and that respect, kindness, self- and other-compassion, and open-minded/-hearted communal joy are Correct. In this way, I can make progress in life’s meaning: I can gain more and more active insight into what is really going on, what really matters, and how I should really live.

“What would make life worth living and justify choosing any action over another is one thing alone: the Joyful Sharing Love at the heart of the conscious moment. Therefore, I cannot perfectly translate what-is-most-important into ideas and feelings, as what-is-most-important is prior to ideas and feelings. However, imperfect is not the same as inadequate and I can neither relate to this human life without using ideas and feelings, nor can I understand, care about or believe in my thoughts and actions without adequate spiritual insight; therefore, I must find a way to show my whole self (ideas, feelings, inner senses, and the Light within that alone knows what is actually truly preferable: all those elements working together) not only that these principles (ie: every assumption I’m here making) are True, but also how they are True.

“And so the only way forward is to organize my ideas and feelings better and better around the Light within, keeping in mind that I must constantly fight against the human tendency to confuse ideas and feelings about the Light for the Light: I must never stop pushing for more awareness, honesty, joy, Love, kindness, shared joy: for more and more open-hearted/-minded seeking and sharing.”

Much of that mantra is poetic: it points past ideas and feelings towards what is prior to them. However, all worldviews have a poetic base. What actually matters to people are notions–spoken or unspoken, admitted or denied–about what is really going on, what actually matters, and how one should actually live. Whether we form the thought, and even if we form contradictory thoughts, we cannot help but base our lives on attempts to answer those questions. The only choice we have is whether we pull those questions out in the open, thus giving ourselves a chance to think and act coherently, or we hide from the questions by pretending we’ve already got them all figured out. We evade those fundamental questions by focussing on ideas and feelings about what we should believe and do (even the self-aware or -unaware choice of pursuing a blithe thoughtfulness is actually also an assumption about what one should believe and do) so much that we lose sight of the whole-being insight into the Truth/Light/PureLove/TrueGood/God/BuddhaNature (all these concepts point imperfectly but not therefore necessarily inadequately towards what we’re trying to get at here).

Human wisdom is a thing of degrees. We must keep working to see more clearly and act better.

That is the general attitude of Something Deeperism: To the degree I lack whole-being insight into that and how Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Justice, Respectful Helping Kindly Shared Joy are True, I cannot care about understand, believe in, or even care about my own thoughts and actions. So the only choice is to seek wisdom, and if that sense within towards clarity, honesty, accuracy and kindness of thought is not the way towards wisdom, I have no path towards wisdom that I can understand, believe in, or even care about. So the only choice is to accept the spiritual calling, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and strength and mind, and your neighbor–who is just like you and thus also belongs to God–as yourself. The only possible way forward is to get serious about awareness, honesty, kindness.

What about for groups? Well, we all have different ideas about what is True and what Matters, and what doctrines one requires to adequately align oneself with what’s knowable and preferable, but can we not all agree that we are all in this together and that all of our philosophies and religions are only valuable to the degree they ratify and provide a structure for living those values without which none of us can stand life? Can we not all agree on accuracy, honesty, compassion, respect, kindness, rule of law as nourished by a free people freely seeking the Law? Can we not all agree that forcing beliefs onto people is corrupting because it tempts people to lie to themselves and others about their experiences of what is most sacred to them? But can we also not all agree that we still all must and in fact do share some fundamental spiritual values: “It matters what I say and do”, “Aware, clear, honest, accurate thought is the way forward”, “kindness is right”, “we are all in this together and so should be respectful of and kind towards one another and we should appreciate each other and share community and enjoy each other’s company”. Things like that. Things without which we have nothing: let’s accept them and admit we don’t perfectly understand them and that it is a stupid and cruel distortion to pretend like our fellows do not have the same basic rights and duties imprinted within their hearts-of-hearts.

Author: Spelunker Stewart
Copyright: AMW