Copyright © 2006 by Jay B. Gaskill
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I-2-I
The
Dialogic Imperative
By
Jay B. Gaskill
INTRODUCTION
In my twenties, I
recognized the falling away of the underpinnings of common morality as a result
of the structural damage done by a pathological extension of skepticism. I
imagined the whole body of human ethical principles, precepts and core beliefs
as body of water held together by a bucket which represented the religious
underpinnings of morality. That was
frame one.
In frame two, the bucket is removed, revealing the
temporarily bucket-shaped glistening contents hanging in the air. In frame three, without any support, the
contents become a quivering blob. And in
frame four, gravity takes over. The
“modern” culture hovers between frames two and four….
As the late Douglas Adams might say, the mystery of Life,
the Universe, and Everything is more about the quality of the question than the
deceptive simplicity of the “answer”.
Here we will explore some of my threshold theological reflections and
the resulting questions:
Among the first theological questions: Why is existence?
The universe itself is an unfinished project. This is a
message in itself. Something is encoded
in that primal fact (and the conditions of our discovery) that may tell us
something very significant about the nature of deity and our ultimate
relationships.
By now it should be evident to all thinking people that
ethical belief has lost its firm moorings.
Yet I am optimistic that recovery from this condition is possible (even
inevitable). The culture will eventually
experience a renewal of belief without resort to the arbitrary adherence to
tradition or naked authority. That this
may happen sooner rather than later is based on five optimistic premises:
My survey of religious and anti-religious sensibilities
reveals five general approaches to the problem of ethical authority:
We have to do better
than that. Here is where we might start:
I. Our Species’ Commitment to Integration
Metaphysics is our species’ pet project. We are called to acquire deep understanding of the world and our place in it. We seek to discover the coherent integration of all knowledge (whether learned from interaction with the world or known within the mind) in the confidence that we will find it. The a priori conviction that Reality is an integrated whole without arbitrary breaks and discontinuities is our reasonable faith. It is also a powerfully heuristic faith: Without it we would lack the confidence in our own cognitive powers that our project demands. The belief that we will discover the hidden connections, correlations and unities of all reality is the core faith stance of the scientific mind.
When we take the intuition of ultimate integration seriously (as I believe we should) we are no longer willing to sharply bifurcate our methods of evaluating knowledge, from our project of using all we can know to model all that is. So we no longer dissociate epistemology and metaphysics; we pursue a mutually correcting dialogue between the two processes. We build, test and refine our comprehensive world picture. We allow our philosophy of knowledge to be informed by that larger world view and empowered by the faith of ultimate integration that drives it. Yes our goal is audacious: We seek to understand all reality, physical and non-physical, on the deepest and most comprehensive scale possible. Of course we do metaphysics. An incomplete city the in the process of rising up is better than an empty desert.
Our species has made immense progress in the quest to understand deep reality. We owe this to a powerful heuristic engine. Starting with the principle of parsimony of explanation (Occam’s Razor, that says in effect that the simplest, most elegant theory or explanation is always preferred), we humans have added one element, and produced something that has succeeded brilliantly in illuminating the Nature of Reality and the Reality within Nature. Whether explicitly or implicitly, we have been using the following test: All other things being equal, the simplest, coherent explanation of the greatest integrative explanatory power is more likely to be true or valid. This powerful heuristic engine can still force some of our most fundamental questions to yield up their secrets.
Consider the problem of our time-sensitive mortality vs. the time insensitive durability of the underlying order of things. Can conscious being exist apart from our own space-time bound versions of it? Our inner sense, carried deep within the architecture of our consciousness, tells us yes, somehow conscious lasts outside our space-time bound versions. This insight has persisted despite the spell cast by the arch materialists (increasingly discredited) who told us not to trust that inner sense or anything else that can’t be measured in a laboratory. As we recover from that arch-materialist spell, we know intellectually that the extant order manifest within nature is real, that latent form and design is real even before it emerges into the world, and that the deep order mirrored within our “mind space” captures a reality resident outside of space and time.
Yet we fear death.
This is a deeply plausible fear, partly because we are wired that way, and partly because our individual conscious world lines are fragile. We may grasp that our separate conscious experiences somehow represent the “localization” of a general, timeless conscious “beingness”, much as last night’s sunset was an instance of some archetypal experience. But our life stories are precious, finite tales with a beginning, middle, and end. We stubbornly fear that we are alone and will be at the end. It is our primordial fear. It continues to warn our species never to give up on our eternal dialogue with Reality or on the faith that all is connected, all is part of an integrated whole.
II. Our Necessary Alignments
Our dialogue is profoundly shaped by a deep alignment of our basic motivations, one shared by all intelligent, living creatures. As we humans emerged from the raw state of nature, the underlying alignment of our basic motivations became increasingly visible to us. Given a sufficiently deep introspection, that alignment resolves into the first three affirmations of all living conscious beings who acquire a critical level of self and situation consciousness:
(1) the affirmation of life (especially one’s own life, then human life, and life generally);
(2) the affirmation of conscious intelligence – one’s own, that of our fellow humans and in general;
(3) the affirmation of creation (both in nature and as a specifically human endeavor).
These three affirmations form a
correlated triad, in that no element is separable from the rest, and each
separately exists only in a context framed by the other two. A breach in that
integration or the denial of these affirmations is the beginning of evil. They form
the three dimensions of “value space”, the three-in-one “normative architecture”
of conscious choice; they are the three axes along which all our species’
conscious decisions can be mapped. They can only temporarily be ignored. For
convenience, I’ll sometimes refer to this triad of core values as the V3.
Once we members of Tribe Homo Sapiens advanced sufficiently in the Darwinian struggle for planetary dominance to achieve a measure of security from fear (one of the perks for the eco-system’s supreme predator is that the other predators run from us, not the converse), three “new” imperatives began to emerge in our lives. In the value context of the triad, they are seen as necessities, hence these imperatives:
(1) The scientific imperative, the dialogic impulse to query all Nature, is the developed, systematic form of our species’ food-threat dialogic.
(2) The civilization imperative is our discovered social technology, the preservation of which is necessary to maintain the working venue for social exchange, the human-to-human dialogue.
(3) The creation imperative is a new dialogic, human to latent creative change, a dialogic that yields inspiration, revelation and innovation.
Naturally, all of our species affirmations and dialogues are deeply entangled with each other.
III. Our Ongoing Dialogue
The human condition is driven by an overall Dialogic Imperative.
Three “I-2-I” dialogues are
included:
The insight that biological, space-time consciousness is a bridge state or living interface between physical and non-physical realms takes on theological implications once we reflect on the prospect that the non physical realm necessarily contains the archetype of conscious being itself, the meta-design which is also meta-designer. The internal evidence of our own conscious states necessarily includes our discovery of the “numinous” level of experience, whose ontological status is self validating. When we take the Integration Principle seriously (that all reality, physical and non-physical, including the contents and essence of conscious being, are part of one fully integrated reality) we are justified in concluding that the numinous level of experience represents the apprehension of a numinous level of reality.
This reality need not be named, though it is often seen as the presence of God or Ultimate Being or Ultimate Self. Many mystics adhere to the tradition that no name can capture this Reality without distortion. Whether the Presence is named or not, the insight that the human relationship with Ultimate Being is a dialogue is a central one. The overall dialogic I am describing is not just a spiritual nexus, but one that takes the form of scientific inquiry, creative activity, or humanitarian engagement, support for these things, or any combination.
All of these activities are
potentially holy.
All science, art, ethics and spirituality can be understood as products of the Dialogic Imperative. I note here (but develop separately) a powerful, emerging normative model, the ideal of the Creative Civilization, in which the civilized order explicitly and effectively protects and nurtures the conditions for human creative activities. These conditions include zones of safety from predation and zones of protected freedom where creative activities are kept safe even from internal oppression.
Before the “modern” era, creative civilizations appeared in history as special nodes within a larger civilization. One thinks of the ancient city states like the Athens of 600-200 BCE and of Renaissance Florence under the protection of the Medici family. The modern efflorescence of scientific inquiry and exploration are all part of the human creative endeavor, broadly construed.
Some civilizations are doing a far better job in nurturing and protecting human creative activities with their respective boundaries. None, to date, have self consciously organized to perform this function. The advent of large scale, self consciously creation-engendering civilizations will be a signal event in our species development. Finally, the “liberty-friendly” civilizations will confidently answer the question, “Freedom for what?”
We will also find that each dialogue is an aspect of the human moral response to the extent that it represents a step toward the integration of life with “Value space”. This can be understood as the contextual matrix formed by the V3, the three axes of affirmation (life affirmation, the promotion of conscious intelligence and the reverence for creation); these axes form the ordinal contours of the realm within which all moral dialogic processes can be mapped.
IV. Moral Precepts, the Virtues & Evil
Each of the “I-2-I” dialogues can be correlated to a corresponding set of virtues. All virtues (and the contrary anti-virtue inclinations) naturally emerge from the “real world” interface that is constantly presented to each conscious, living being. This is a result of one defining property of the “real world” (Event Space): Exchange processes pervade. Because exchange processes permeate the domain of event space, exchange relationships form the architectural framework of all being-in-the-world.
But the rules of exchange relationships seem ruthless and heartless. Something for something seems always to trump something for nothing. Every action provokes a reaction of equal strength; and in the end nature’s books must balance. But the real trump card of exchange is creation. We living, conscious beings are nature’s innovation that promotes innovation. As long as creation processes (of which we are the principal exemplars) remain aligned with the V3, there remains the prospect that life will trump its opponents in nature. I suspect this idea was captured in the Biblical image of light overcoming darkness.
Moral precepts are the maxims of application that are employed by moral agents, consisting of all conscious, living intelligent beings who understand that Event Space and Value Space always intersect, and employ that understanding to guide their decisions. Moral precepts sort into three groups:
All virtues flow from their generating values and affirmations; these consist of the dialogic imperatives, the V3 and the Integration Principle. Virtues are intensified exemplars; put another way, they are incarnated moral precepts:
(1) The virtue of integrity flows directly from the integrating principle.
(2) The virtues of prudence and forbearance are empirically derived value-enhancing strategies based primarily on risk assessment.
(3) The virtues of courage and loyalty are value-enhancing character traits (that potentially can be enlisted in the service of the non-moral). When these virtues are enlisted in the service of moral action, they sometimes can conflict with prudence and forbearance.
The virtues are correlated to the V3, either: (a) as directly implied; (b) as value enhancing character traits; (c) or as strategies. Conflicts among virtues are resolved by mutual optimization adjustments among reasonable moral agents (i.e., those willing to accept realistic optimization, who are committed to veracity and to acting within the moral context framed by V3). Actors with an evil orientation (often covert) have placed themselves outside this dialogue. For these predators, discussion is a prey opportunity.
Evil is defined here as an
active, intelligent agency that opposes the V3 and/or their mutual integration. For example, to enlist creative
innovation against the interests of life and conscious intelligence (as the
Nazi’s did with medical technology in the death camps) is evil. Those who indiscriminately
promote all life forms as “equal” and act against conscious, intelligent life
(think of cultists for whom microbes and rats are somehow equal to human
babies) represent another evil mindset.
And so on. In my earlier career,
I interviewed and represented thousands of criminals. They were on the whole a
sorry lot, but they were ordinary people for whom the natural good in almost
all of us was strongly overbalanced by moral failure and grossly narcissistic
thinking. True evil (in the narrow but highly dangerous sense used here) was
startling to encounter, but thankfully it was extremely rare among the criminal
subpopulation.
V. An Example of Universalization of Scriptural Wisdom
All religious and moral insight has followed a process of development characterized by gradual universalization. As an exercise in illustrating the process by which modern religious thought achieves greater and greater scope of universalization, I examine how this process of development decodes the universals embedded in the Decalogue. Here is an outline of the process:
Moral relationship begins at home in the form of the norms, explicit and implicit rules of conduct that we learn to use in our intimate relationships. Over time the most durable and robust of these norms travel from family to clan, from clan to tribe, even to “nation” (which is tribe writ large). This is part of an ongoing process in which values and norms are universalized.
We learn to extract the underlying principles embedded in our received “we don’t do thats”, and to connect the underlying principles to implementing rules. “Don’t hit your sister!” may become “don’t initiate uninvited violence, except when playing”.
But family, clan and tribal centered thinking has a stubborn hold on the human psyche. We tend to think in “us and them” terms where our norms are concerned. “Don’t hit your sister” might become “don’t hit any members of the family.” We tend to develop two sets of norms, those that apply within and those that apply outside the “loyalty regimes” defined by our ethical cohorts. Folklore has long recognized the notion of “honor among thieves”. We can all think of examples in which our sense of moral obligation seems weakened or less complete when applied to a total stranger. Some of this is an entirely rational extension of the sage advice to children, “Don’t go anywhere with strangers.” Some of it is a form of bigotry.
Religion, at its best, teaches us
to extend the reach of our moral impulses, and to avoid the trap of
marginalizing or dehumanizing those who are outside our immediate loyalty
regimes. But too often religion as been
co-opted as a thinly disguised tribal ideology, lending moral sanction to the
“us-them” divide. This, of course, is
the atavistic feature of militant Islam. But across many cultures, slavery is
another ugly legacy of human tribal thinking at its worst. After all, our real tribe is Homo Sapiens.
As a devout, practicing first
century Jew, Jesus was steeped in Torah law and the oral traditions that gave
it life. His ministry and the decades
that immediately followed his execution by the Roman procurator, Pilate, represented
an acceleration of the moral universalization process. This process is vividly
captured in the post resurrection accounts of the Pentecost, the seminal event
when a handful of Jesus’ apostles canvassed thousands of their fellow Jews
gathered in
In a very real sense, Jesus incarnated the core moral message of Judaism and inaugurated the processes of its dissemination to the world. In this sense, Christianity began as pan-tribal Judaism. Far more about his parables and other teachings has been written with far more insight than I can attempt. But among his most memorable and central aphorisms is an answer to a questioner who asked “What is the greatest law?” Jesus’ answer was to love God with one’s entire being and to love one’s neighbors as one’s self. On this alone, Jesus told his inquirer “hangs all the law and all the teachings of the prophets.”
This is a paradigm example of the dialectic process of ethical universalization. Rules implement ethical principles. Ethical principles are extensions of core universal moral injunctions.
Many Christians are under the misimpression that Jesus’ teachings were a radical departure from the Jewish ethical sensibility of the time. But the Great Law, as stated by Jesus, represented a restatement of the Shema, the prayer at the very heart of Jewish worship, and the Golden Rule corollary.
Here is the core message of the Shema:
“And you shall love the lord your
God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your might.”
[V-ahavta et Adonai Elohecha b-chol l’vavcha u-v-chol m’odecha.]
The Golden Rule is captured in various forms and iterations in several major world religions, including Judaism. This is powerful evidence, if any is needed, of the universal character of this precept. Rabbi Akiba ben Joseph, would have been a poor shepherd teenager when Jesus was executed.
Akiba is known for asserting that one commandment in Leviticus 19:18 “is the great principle of the Tora ”. The commandment? “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Rabbi Hillel, possibly the most revered and famous of rabbis within the Jewish tradition, lived about one generation before Jesus. Whether Hillel’s life overlapped that of Jesus, his core teachings as a sage of great ethical wisdom, most certainly reached Jesus’ ears. Among Hillel’s aphorisms (which are generally recorded in Pirkei Avot - Ethics of the Fathers, captured in written form in the Mishnah) was: “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”
One day, a gentile seeking to know the Torah (apparently he wanted the first century Cliff Notes version) approached Hillel, after his request had been harshly rejected by another Rabbi. The gentile impertinently asked Hillel whether he could recite the entire Torah while standing on one leg. Hillel gracefully complied. “Do not do to your neighbor that which is hateful if done to you. This is the whole of the Torah. All the rest is commentary. Go and study. ” According to the legend, the gentile did enter a course of Torah study and was converted.
The process of universalization involves a more penetrating understanding of the core, underlying principles that underlie given moral precepts, a process that sometimes results in restrictive assumptions being transcended. Trivially, this means the understanding that a given precept applies outside the tribe. Less trivially, it means that the precept applies to the governed and those who govern with equal force. At the most general level, it may mean that the same principle may underlie more than one precept and that there are unexpected implications: for example the discovery that slavery is incompatible with the Decalogue by necessary implication.
As an exercise, I invite you to take a moment to look more closely at the Ten Commandments, as a testament of universal moral insight whose remarkable endurance and vitality have kept them relevant to civilization for millennia.
There is an implicit normative hierarchy in the Torah’s creation story necessary for a full understanding the universal ethical contents of the Decalogue. For this analysis, there are three essential normative elements in Genesis. [In this discussion, I see classic theism as fully compatible with the conception of God as the supreme organizing principle of nature, the ur-source of creation, and the active center of ultimate morality.]
From Genesis:
G-d is the creator of all life.
The human creation was the supreme act of the life creation phase,
third in the following creation hierarchy-
light over darkness;
life over death; and
humanity over the other life on Earth.
The human species was created in G-d’s own image. [As 21st Century humans, we recognize that with hierarchy goes obligation.]
That said, the Decalogue begins with a significant preamble, that—
I am G-d (Creator)
AND your liberator
AND I now reveal myself to you as ultimate law-giver (here, ultimate
source of moral law).
Note that this is an historically original statement of the implications of the human dignity interest, liberation from oppression. God, as the supreme source of moral law, is liberator.
The Commandments, Summary Iteration 1
I am with you,
Your G-d,
Your liberator.
1 Honor me, the one G-d,
the creator, the source.
2 Do not worship false
gods or idols.
3 Do not make a false
oath in my name.
4 Keep one seventh part
of your time for me.
5 Honor those who gave
you life in this world.
6 Do not murder.
7 Do not breach the
marital covenants of trust by committing adultery.
8 Do not steal.
9 Do not lie against
another.
10 Do not covet or envy
that which is not yours.
Note that, after the crucial introduction, the first three law elements all affirm the unity, validity, integrity, and primacy of God-given law and the God-authority, and inter alia, its non-appropriatable nature (i.e., #1 - supremacy & unity; #2 - no false gods; #3 no misappropriation of G-d’s authority).
The next three elements all require one to honor the creation of life: the ultimate creator of life, those who gave one’s own life, and the life of others (i.e., # 4 the creator through honoring the Sabbath; #5 honoring parents; # 6 avoiding murder)
The next three all require that trust relationships be valued / honored / respected in their various forms - fidelity, truthfulness-honesty, and theft-honesty (i.e., #7 no adultery; #8 no false witness; #9 no theft).
The tenth commandment (no envy) echoes the first three elements, but as the individual obligations of one made in God’s image. Inherent in the no-envy injunction are the virtues of self-sufficiency, honor, and integrity. These are reflections of deity’s integrity, primacy, and unity. Seen as integrated in the ethical context of one conscious, sentient being created in God’s image, and dealing with others so created, the tenth commandment is an implied recapitulation of the deity’s nature, sanctioning and reinforcing all the prior values and injunctions. Increasing the reach of the underlying universal elements, we arrive at-
Iteration 2
1 I am creator. I am one.
2 Serve me, and no other deity-pretender or image.
3 Do not misuse my
authority or my name.
4 Guard a regular portion
of your time for the holy.
5 Honor those who gave
you life in this world.
6 Do not commit life threatening
aggression.
7 Do not breach intimate
covenants of trust.
8 Do not steal.
9 Do not lie against
another.
10 Do not covet or envy
that which is not yours.
Iteration 3
I am perfect unity and integrity, source of universal law, and your
liberation.
1,2,3
Honor me and my law, rejecting pretenders, abjuring misuse of my
authority.
4,5,6
Honor me, creator of life, your life-givers in this world, and the life
of others.
7,8,9
Honor trust relationships, by keeping commitments, avoiding theft and
mendacity.
10
Honor in yourself and other sentient beings, self-unity, integrity,
value-integration
And finally, Iteration 4:
In this iteration, we have progressed from first stage monotheism (God as supreme among the other gods), through second stage monotheism (God as unique and unchallenged, but extrinsic to the world), to third stage monotheism in which God is understood (at minimum) as the supreme integration of material and non-material reality, as the ultimate integration of moral and physical order, and as the ultimate integration of local conscious, intelligent being with its non-local origin, Ultimate Being.
Honor and love me, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul
and all your might. And love your neighbors as you love yourself.”
VI. The “Great Attractor” To Which Our Dialogue Points
Biological consciousness is the interface or bridge state between what we call the physical realm and that of the non physical; consciousness co-inhabits the domains of Event Space and of Form Space. Our “Mind Space” enjoys a dual ontology. Within the physical realm, biological conscious being is an emergent property of certain high level biological organization. Within the non-physical realm it represents the multi-localization along various time-space world lines of the universal archetype of conscious being of extraordinary power. We represent an incomplete expression within that space-time world line of archetypal being. Our brain-minds are ontological amphibians.
Any observer from a sufficient remove can detect an apparent
directionality in physical/biological evolution (from “Big Bang to Big
Civilization”). This apparent
progressive directionality always shows over itself sufficiently large time
frames, measured by the evolved sense of purpose and value that accompanies
biological consciousness. Such a “boot strap” measurement is allowed because
consciousness is self referential, and represents the emergence, in the
universe, of value and a normative reference frame. The progressive evolution
vector originates in the non-physical realm and plays out in the physical one
because the most supremely adaptive biological designs are conscious ones.
Biological consciousness is an emergent venue of purpose and value that links the non-physical realm of Form Space to the physical realm of Event Space. Its appearance in the universe opens the possibility of a dialogic relationship between the realms. Think of a reciprocal exchange relationship: Local Consciousness appears as an emergent being-state within the physical realm endowed with uniquely intensified creative power -- the design that is also a designer. Local consciousness operates by integrating the form-nature of both aspects of reality and thereby introduces novel form and design into Event Space. Non-local Consciousness represents the pre-emergent meta-being-state within the non-physical realm that converges as distributed nodes of Local Consciousness in Event Space. Non-local consciousness remains in relationship with the physical realm as a whole and with local, individual conscious being in particular.
The implications depend on whether you are inclined to see non-local being as a non-living archetype, as a remote detached being, or as a present, involved being. The “Deist” perspective recognizes this archetype of being as Supreme Being, seen as the Ultimate Architect, if you will, but locates “The World” (Event Space) as a separate, created realm, rolling forward without further divine involvement, except as implicit in that First Push. In the “Theist” perspective (with which I am comfortable) deity is alive and present in Creation. Of course, theists differ as to the nature of the creation (as whether it is finished or ongoing) and on the nature of divine involvement.
One of my favorite writers is the
physicist, turned Anglican priest, the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, who wrote, “As embodied beings, humans may be expected to act both
energetically and informationally. As
pure Spirit, God might be expected to act solely through information input. One could summarize the novel aspect of this
proposal by saying that it advocates the idea of a top down causality through
“active information.” Belief in God in
an Age of Science, “Does God Act in the Physical World?” by John
Polkinghorne (Yale 1998) at p 63
If we are able to accept as true that local space time consciousness and its non-physical meta-form are in relationship, we are immediately taken to a broadened scientific perspective. We are no longer persuaded by a strict parsimony of belief stance that requires us to ignore, marginalize of deny the evidence presented within our own conscious states. We accept that our apprehension of the numinous or of the presence of a meta-intelligence or of ultimate being is something both relevant and real.
Human life is, at its very best, dialogue with Universal Being in the very largest sense, (whether seen as an interactive relationship with deity, with universal “beingness,” with the vital archetype of being, or with the unnamed “other”). This is a dialogue into which all individual mortal conscious beings are called. Science, ethics, and esthetics are mutually integrated because they are essential aspects of this dialogue with that being whose nature is ultimate integration. The tendency to generate novelty, the “creation tendency” that suffuses the physical universe can be seen as the divine impulse within space-time.
The love of deity (or loving connection with the center of all being and creation) can be seen as the enlarged love of self, and an actualized universal that gives our participation in ongoing creation an independent moral significance. Internalized, this alignment transformed the dialogic imperative into the creation imperative, the highest expression of the life impulse.
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Copyright ©
2006 by Jay B. Gaskill, attorney at law
Contact via
email > law@jaygaskill.com Phone contact available on request.