Do You Want Pluralism?, page 1

1. I read far and wide - and sometimes it can seem like "too much" - reading in such different fields, with different perspectives and different beliefs.

2. I can say with certainty this: a pluralism that denies or ignores positive knowledge is insane. It is absolutely and retardedly careless. No person in their right mind believes in a world without structure - without 'hidden rules' that allows reality to operate as habitually as it does.

3. On one of my book shelves there is a little black book with the title "Symmetry: the ordering principle". Symmetry, then, is the ordering principle. Symmetry is that "positive condition" which pluralism - if it is to exist as an overarching framework in a culture - must fulfill.

4. Another few conditions which perhaps might be tacked on to symmetry is i) complementarity, ii) mattering and iii) the Path of Least Resistance. Reality has rules, and 'symmetry' is the most abstract way of describing these rules. But on closer inspection, symmetries can sometimes be "complementary"; the bee is "symmetrical" to the flower, insomuch as the bee and the flower mutually evolved as 'pairs' to one another's functionality. Complementarity better handles the fact that 'symmetry', which often implies mirror symmetry, is not necessarily about "exact replication". Mattering, conversely, speaks to the deeper process at work: since there needs to be 3 quarks to produce a proton, and another 3 - but a reversal of the former - to produce a neutron, we need to conceive this process as not merely "physical": to become matter, or for symmetry to emerge, a formal complementarity, or "fittedness", needs to MATTER. Matter, in the sense of "to be significant", is what matter - the physical stuff - really is. Finally, since all of the natural world is a "synechistic" - or dynamically continuous - this means that every state of symmetry, or complementarity, or "mattering", fluxes in and out in terms of its place within the larger surrounding context: every process in nature follows the PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE.

5. Nothing irritates me more than religious dogmatism. Whether it be Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Pythagorean, Hindu, Buddhist, etc, I have a genuine feeling of contempt - for the fearfulness - that motivates people to pretentiously imagine they have "the truth" without feeling the need to justify that truth with words i.e. in language, dialectically, and with reference to empirical reality.

6. The above 4 conditions are always operating in your brain. Every meaning - every mattering - that has occurred within your mind, has been a function of social context, interpersonal context, and so on, with each state emerging in your awareness being a function of what is most coherent (the overarching circle, as it were, which leads us to a particular point) - or the path of least resistance - given the energetics and other conflicts that causes the plinko-chip of your awareness to assume a particular self-state.

7. As said above, I have a healthy contempt for religious fantasy, and so, I very much like pluralism, and so, very much dislike i) nihilism, moral relativism and hedonism, for being dementedly inconsiderate of the long-term consequences of this way of being; and I also dislike ii) religious conservatism, criticism of humor, comedy, and play, as if the CONTEXT didn't ultimately constitute the most important factor in any moral situation. More or less, I want my nihilistic humor, because nihilistic humor speaks to a real part of us - the part that notices strange and weird things, even if outlandishly wicked - but which, when combined in a certain way, releases a great deal of enlivenment in us.

8. That said, I have an even greater contempt for Western liberalism for not recognizing the need to counter the effects of fiction and arbitrariness on our psyches. Play and Reality were two important distinctions set out by the infant psychoanlyst Donald Winnicot which are absolutely relevant to the question of pluralism: can we have a culture that makes room for play? The answer to that, and the only sane answer that will be acceptable, is: so long as you develop an awareness of what is real, and so know what is real, you can play without causing harm.

9. This society and world we live in is a society WITHOUT ANY BALANCE. There is no internal recognition of how what is observed/interfaced with becomes assimilated into ones own psychodynamic structure. Without knowledge of ones own psychodynamic processes - or how meanings operate and become transformed within us - nihilistic comedy is a TIME-BOMB. Without knowing what is real, without knowing how it is your own consciousness works on the inside, the TIME BOMB will go off...

10. When the external material and social conditions which scaffold and make your existence feel the way it feels - when this falls away - all the 'fluff' - apocalyptic netflix shows, postmodern negative emotion porn, or nihilistic comedy - you have interacted with, will come out in a way and form that will undoubtedly overwhelm you. It wont be the same material - at least, the side you interacted with, the "play side", was only part of the equation. The other side - the darkness, evil, depressiveness, nihilism, and implicit over-valuation of fun, play and laughing - this will torment you, and most likely, anyone around you.

I want pluralism. I want a world based in the ideas of Popper's The Open Society. But that can only happen when humans recognize the need to GET REAL about how they work. Otherwise, the pendulum might swing to the other side i.e. religious conservatism, and nothing would have been learned.