Onwards to the Omega Point

“And just as reasoning springs from experience, so the development of sentiment [my term: affective potentialies] arises from the souls inward and outward experiences. Not only is it of the same nature as the development of cognition; but it chiefly takes place through the instrumentality of cognition. The souls deeper parts can only be reached through its surface. In this way the eternal forms, that mathematics and philosophy and other sciences make us acquainted with, will by slow percolation gradually reach the very core of ones being; and will come to influence our lives; and this they will do, not because they involve truths of merely vital importance, but because they are ideal and eternal verities.” – C.S. Peirce, The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, Vol 2 (1893-1913), pg. 41, Indiana, 1998

This statement alone proves Charles Sanders Peirce to be a candidate for the most astonishing thinker the Human species has yet produced.

Before Alfred North Whitehead, Henri Bergson, or Teilhard de Chardin were philosophizing as to the nature of being and reality, there is CS Peirce figuring out the basic elemental features of reality from his original experiences of being a chemist at Harvard college in Cambridge Massacheussets in the 1850's. Chemistry contained the metapghorical ingredients for his philosophy of semiotics - or meaning. The unit in chemistry is the molecule; the molecule is made of atoms; atoms of particles. Reasoning in the opposite direction from the vantage point of his thinking as a human revealed more objects - albeit, phenomenological ones - what he called signs.

By the late 1800's and early 1900's, almost every word Peirce writes comes from an astonishing level of erudition. Hold your tongue when you read this mans writing is what I'd suggest when reading him (I've had to criticize myself a few times for thinking too prematurely that he didn't know what he was talking about, only to learn that he did) - he seems to have done nothing else in his life but read and write.

In the above cited statement, Peirce is essentially describing the metaphoric image developed by Teilhard de Chardin, who, like Peirce, couldn't help but see an "end point" to the scientific process which picked up steam in the 18th century and has complexified since.



Perhaps an original inspiration for the universe evolving towards the omega point is Kabbalistic in origin. But then again, the idea of a universe emanating from one point to the human condition long ago suggested to the neoplatonists that universe was returning to God - or to the One. Indeed, Plato's "ideal forms" are precisely those objects which Peirce has in mind, and they seem to be "of" the One (i.e. Its Will). But what can also be seen is Aristotles emphasis on efficient and final causation - or the ethical dimension - which Plato chooses to leave out of his philosophy. Here's another Peirce zinger...


“There is no philosopher of any age who mixes poetry with philosophy with such effrontery as Plato.” – C.S. Peirce, The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, Vol 2 (1893-1913), pg. 38, Indiana, 1998

I don't think Plato commits this by mistake, given, as Peirce so often praises of him, that Plato was a very deep thinker who tended to question things quite . John Deely, in his Four Ages of Understanding, mentions in passing (on discussing the neoplatonists and their nominalistic errors) Plato's supposed 7th Letter:

“If I thought it possible to deal adequately with the subject in a treatise or a lecture for the general public, what finer achievement would there have been in my life than to write a work of great benefit to mankind and to bring the nature of things to light for all men? I do not, however, think the attempt to tell mankind about these matters a good thing, except in the case of some few who are capable of discovering the truth for themselves with a little guidance. In the case of the rest to do so would excite in some an unjustified contempt in a thoroughly offensive fashion, in others certain lofty and vain hopes, as if they had acquired some awesome lore.” – Plato, 7th Letter, in John Deely, Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twentieth Century; pg, 55-56, UofT Press, 2001

What's intimated here is hard to say - but Eco, another follower of Peirce, spends a good chunk of Foucaults Pendulum mapping out the psychological situation of the nihilist-philosopher who likes to play with reality without realizing every act that puts him out of sync with the reality around him makes him feel worse and worse on the inside. Ideal Forms, if they exist, exist with reference, one may assume, to a contrary and opposing state. Chaos would essentially be that state. Thus, your body inclines to an ideal state - an ideal attractor. As a human who is self-organizing through spacetime, that means your biodynamical processes are organized according to a higher ideal 'attractor' which inclines cells to correlate their processes so that they achieve a higher correlation with this ideal.

Thermodynamics exists; and thermodynamics is the root of all disorder in nature and ignorance in human minds - entropy literally means the absence of information. Entropy and the ideal form are therefore opposites of one another, as the latter specifies the ideal geometry of a final form whereas the former represents the very condition of spacetime: the separation, or asymmetry, between one thing and another thing. In any case, Eco conceives the following situation in his book:

“True, in the course of my reading about the Templars and the various atrocities attributed to them, I had come across Carpocrates assertion that to escape the tyranny of the angels, the masters of the cosmos, every possible ignominy should be perpetrated, that you should discharge all debts to the world and to your own body, for only by committing every act can the soul be freed of its passions and return to its original purity. When we were inventing the Plan, I found that many addicts of the occult pursued that path in their search for enlightenment. According to his biographers, Aleister Crowley, who has been called the most perverted man of all time and who did everything that could be done with his worshipers, both men and women, chose only the ugliest partners of either sex. I have the nagging suspicion, however, that his love making was incomplete.” – Umberto Eco, Foucaults Pendulum, pg. 51, Harcourt, 1988

Translated into the above mentioned metaphysics of biological functionality, the philosophy of Carpocrates would seem to be the inspiration of a demon-being which wants to suckle more vitality from the bodies biodynamism.

It's odd stuff. But it proves a powerful truth about us: we are caught between a world of endless transformation and uncertainty, while self-organizing as a unity from a potential-and-not-yet-real iron clad perfection (idealism) that draws us to reason towards truthfulness - and not lies.

“So we attempted to do what was not allowed us, what we were not prepared for. Manipulating the words of the Book, we attempted to construct a golem.” “I don’t understand….” “You can’t understand. You’re the prisoner of what you created. But your story in the outside world is still unfolding. I don’t know how, but you can still escape it. For me, it’s different. I am experiencing in my body everything we did, as a joke, in the Plan.” “Don’t talk nonsense. It’s a matter of cells….” “And what are cells? For months, like devout rabbis, we uttered different combinations of the letters of the Book. GCC, CGC, GCG, CGG. What our lips said, our cells learned. What did my cells do? They invented a different Plan, and now they are proceeding on their own, creating a history, a unique, private history. My cells have learned that you can blaspheme by anagrammatizing the Book, and all the books of the world. And they have learned to do this now with my body. They invert, transpose, alternate, transform themselves into cells unheard of, new cells without meaning, or with meaning contrary to the right meaning. There must be a right meaning and a wrong meaning; otherwise you die. My cells joke, without faith, blindly.” – Umberto Eco, Foucaults Pendulum, pg. 566, Harcourt, 1988

Why are we sick? Because we changed the words to the book. Why do we invent stupid stories about how reality works? Because we no longer have an external means to represent to ourselves the truth of our situation. Perhaps it once existed -Atlantis - but we no longer have it, and so we rely on empirical investigations of self, society and the universe to figure it out.

Peirce began the process with his semiotics, but in order for the reality of ideal forms to enter human life - something Pierce, a friend of the Swedenborgian William James, must have had much knowledge about - something must happen to the human mind: it needs to change in order to bring more "sentiment" - or what I call affective coherence - into our bodily structuring.

How can we do that? Peirce rightly mocks the Hegelians for their speculative idealism, yet one cannot help but note the gnostic character of Hegel and the gnostic character of todays power-clique, nefvermind the oft cited term "Hegelian dialectic" to explain government behavior.

Peirce after all derives his own triadic semiotics from the logic of Hegels thesis, antithesis and synthesis, and indeed, each development of a sign moves through the logic of likeness, conflict and resolution - or a firstness, secondness and a thirdness.

But Peirce didn't have a proper understanding of human development, which awaited the development of attachment theory, developmental psychology, and in particular a deeper understanding of the animal (ethology), which combined with psychodynamic theories of development and increasing knowledge of brain development creates a sort of "preventive developmental science" which takes account of critical periods of development, and the essential nature of the human self, and what humans can do to support the development of strong, resilient, and positive toned selves.

When we do this, we will, in fact, move into an area of being and reality that is very different than today. It is not a world of X-Men - the only character in that show which is remotely similar to the temperament associated with this level of being is professor Xavier.

Astrocyte, I would send you a private message but I do not have enough posts to. I am wondering if you could help me with some advice.

First, this pretty much sums up my experience:

The force acting against the threat that these states might unexpectedly occur was the security of feeling able to prevent them or escape from them. Thus, passivity was his hallmark. In reality, it was a caricature of passivity that served as an active and ever-present screening device against the imperatives of both the external world and his inner life— work demands, sexual demands, sleep demands, intense affect, and so on. His life-style was “passive” interpersonally because initiative and assertiveness failed to develop as a dimension of his self-representation linked to his functioning in the real world. Initiative and assertiveness are also unlikely to have developed because he then would have had to commit himself wholeheartedly to a person, duty, responsibility, or goal from which he was then not free to escape without reproach. Inasmuch as full emotional involvement meant turning some control over to the outside, it evoked, in a variety of forms, feelings of potential helplessness, enslavement, and burial by the crushing force of a sadistically perceived other. Thus, character detachment became a primary means of avoiding panic states and acute anxiety symptoms associated with his felt inability to regulate self-esteem in everyday life. He clung to a self-generated reality of weakness and ineptness that no encounter with the external world could disprove. Passive behavior became a security operation designed to maintain the “schizoid compromise.” That is, it became a means of avoiding the state of normal ego passivity that involves a certain degree of regression through which partial ego control can be trustingly surrendered to both the outside world and to one’s own feelings, and in which mutuality, love, a sense of being fully alive, and the ability to enjoy peaceful sleep can all find their place. Bromberg, Philip M. (2014-03-05). Standing in the Spaces: Essays on Clinical Process Trauma and Dissociation (p. 102). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

This is pretty much how I have always been for as long as I can remember. Things got much worse for me though in high school during a period a bullying. It culminated when I was sitting in history class one day with my stress levels extremely high. I was trying to place some simple historical events in context when I suddenly realized I couldn't think clearly. I panicked. In an instant my brain felt like it shut down and I had really bad derealization symptoms. The fact that I didn't tell anybody pretty much tells you all you need to know about my early relational life. I did complain to my very withdrawn mother that night that I couldn't think clearly, in a panicky way, but all she told me was that maybe I just needed some sleep.

This happened about 10 years ago. Other than seeing a counselor at a kind of community center for a short time I never really sought treatment until last year. The way I rationalized it was that I didn't have a real personality and therapy was useless for my problem. What made me finally decide to go was being struck by a line in this speech:

"If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society--in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having "nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope."

Now, I am not an "artist," but I didn't really think about it like that. It dawned on me that I didn't have or have access to any kind of self to remain true to... "Nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope."

I didn't stay with therapy long, mostly for financial and job related reasons. What I did learn was, as my therapist said, I have a lot of shame. This led to me finding an article by Philip Bromberg online, to purchasing his books, and finding one of your threads. The greatest discovery was that it was possible to "get out and stay out" in a chapter on mentalization.

So this is where I could use some advice. I know that you are a proponent of relational psychoanalysis but the trouble for someone like me is that there's no way I can afford that. A lot of examples in his book start with something like.. "4 years into treatment... Not to mention multiple times per week. I have also talked to non analytic therapists who are very skeptical of analysis and being a long term patient. Are these treatments aimed at management of symptoms though? My thought right now is that I will try neurofeedback and then talk therapy if I can get opened up a little bit.

Sorry if that rambled on, I'm just kind of lost as to the best way to get better and you seem to know a lot about trauma.

An involution at the end of evolution? It's a spiral of self knowledge in the domain of felt experience.

a reply to: Astrocyte

So the only thing remaining to be spoken.on, is: what must we do that we may go back to the right meanings?

originally posted by: Astrocyte


“If I thought it possible to deal adequately with the subject in a treatise or a lecture for the general public, what finer achievement would there have been in my life than to write a work of great benefit to mankind and to bring the nature of things to light for all men? I do not, however, think the attempt to tell mankind about these matters a good thing, except in the case of some few who are capable of discovering the truth for themselves with a little guidance. In the case of the rest to do so would excite in some an unjustified contempt in a thoroughly offensive fashion, in others certain lofty and vain hopes, as if they had acquired some awesome lore.” – Plato, 7th Letter, in John Deely, Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twentieth Century; pg, 55-56, UofT Press, 2001

What's intimated here is hard to say

Plato explains his thoughts clearly in his allegory of the cave... You literally cannot drag someone out of the cave into the light, they have grown too accustom to darkness and refuse to change their mind. Interestingly enough, the etymology of the word "repentance" is simply to change your mind.