https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Uh1yjSl772g
Welcome everyone to our monthly Q&A. It’s great to be here again. So much happening for me lately. I’ve been traveling. I traveled to Montana to do a circling into DIA Logos workshop with Guy Sendstock. He and I were partnering together to present to a meeting there that was really powerful. Then I traveled to Chino, California and took place in the Quest for a Spiritual Home conference with Jonathan Hajot, Paul VanderKleijon van Donk. Just amazing. And then I traveled to Aetna, which is in northern California, just south of the Oregon border. And I stayed at an Eastern Orthodox monastery. Wonderful people, wonderful community, good people living good lives in a good place. Bishop Maximus was there, recorded a lot of content with him. And so I’m just, I’m brimming. I have to tell you that the trip to the monastery was, it was like a retreat. And I was there to do a lot of work and recorded a lot of material, I think a total of nine hours with the content. But it was just so rejuvenating. It’s just really, really wonderful. But I’m back and here to answer your questions. And I’m eager to get to it. So the first question is from Glad. And I want to thank, as always, all the patrons for your financial support, your emotional support, your intellectual support, your philosophical support. It encourages me, it keeps me going. It gives me room and motive to deeper thought. So thank you so much. So Glad’s question is, Hello, John, I’ve watched many of your recent videos about AI and the GPT machines. And I found your voice to be among the few reasonable insane ones regarding it. Thank you, Glad. I worked very hard on that with a lot of people’s help, because I wanted to try and bring a voice of clarity and reason and of rationally possible hope. And so I am glad you see that. Of course, you have a question. Still, there’s a gap that I can’t figure out regarding you and I would appreciate it if you could try to clarify. I will try my best. If AGI would have to be auto poetic, wouldn’t it have to evolve like other species do? And then even if it has the technical ability to change its code more easily than biological creatures, would it not still need to live within the world in order to properly evolve by variation and selection? I’m just struggling to see what exactly would allow these entities to evolve and adapt more quickly if their fittedness to the world can only be determined by living long enough to be meaningfully affected by selection pressure. Again, I thank you for your work and for the manage the manner in which you engage in it. So this is a good question. Auto poetic things do necessarily evolve in that they the reason for that is an argument which I made elsewhere. So I won’t get into detail. Auto poesis depends on autonomy and adaptivity and adaptivity depends on anticipatory relevance realization. So they’re all bound together and relevance realization is a cognitive evolving process. You are constantly in a multi-dimensional way evolving your optimal grips and your meta optimal grip. You’re finding the trade off relationships and appropriating them with opponent processing in a multi-dimensional way and that is constantly evolving. There is no final state of relevance realization. There is a state in which in a certain kind of mystical experience you step out of relevance realization, but that’s a different thing. And so here’s my answer. The auto poetic machine doesn’t have to be evolving biologically to be evolving. Relevance realization is a ongoing moment by moment evolution of your sensory motor optimal grip met and meta optimal gripping on the world. And that is what these machines that is where they will be evolving. They do not have to evolve intergenerationally like we do. They only have to evolve the way we do within a lifetime cognitively. Your relevance realization has very significantly evolved. It has complexified to come into an increasing but never completable conforming complexification. A complexity that complexification that gives it an ever-increasing but never completable conformity to the complexification of reality. That is ongoing cognitive evolution and because the trade-offs are environmentally contextually dependent, there will not there cannot be a homogeneous single thing. There will be have to be multiple machines that are fitted to this environment or this spatial temporal scale. Machines that might be working at the cosmic level will not be conforming to the world as the machines that are working at the microscopic level or the biological level, right, etc. So there’s going to be a multiplicity of machines covering the multiplicity of spatial temporal levels, also multiplicity of different kinds of environments, configurations of initial conditions of cause and constraint with different histories, etc. So they are going to evolve individually and then they will have to evolve culturally. They will have to, as we have learned to ratchet up culture so that they can integrate and complexify all these different machines in a distributed cognition, a culture, a socio-cultural evolution. The cognitive and the socio-cultural are like biological. They work through ultimately an important processing between variation that gives you long-term of all of ability and selection that gives you the momentary efficiency. So all of this being said, the answer is to understand that autopoiesis isn’t committing you to biological evolution, it’s committing you to auto, I’m sorry, it’s committing you to cognitive cultural and cultural cognitive evolution. Now what you may be saying is won’t there need to be sort of biological evolution to go with that? Perhaps, and that may deal with sort of substrate constraint problems, but look at how much you in your life and your culture around you evolve without there being biological evolution. The upper Paleolithic transition, there’s no good evidence for significant biological evolution, although there’s good evidence for cognitive and cultural evolution taking off in the upper Paleolithic transition and then again at the actual revolution and then again at the time of the three R’s, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution. And possibly now we could add a third R which is the cybernetic computational revolution. So I hope that answers your question. Yes, they will evolve, but they’re going to evolve at the primarily the cognitive cultural, the cultural cognitive level. Thank you, Galaad, for your question. Okay, now a question from another patron, David Alvarez. Thank you, David. Hi John, two questions. Number one, for the pair of books used in Lectio Divina, it is recommended that both have already been previously full of read in the normal propositional style or could one start with two new books, read one chapter of each in the normal style and then reread pages, paragraphs of those chapters in the Lectio Divina style. Also, are we supposed to read the entire book in Lectio Divina style or only the most impacting sections or pages? Yes, so to the first question, you can do either. You could read the whole book. You should definitely read it, either the whole book or I think slightly better is to read a section normal style. Also read up a bit, remember on the background of the author, get a sense of their biography, where they’re coming from, what issues they were facing, if you can. So when you’re reading a passage, yes, you don’t do Lectio Divina on the whole passage. Let’s say you’re picking a paragraph, you read that and then you’re going to, the first movement of Lectio Divina is what engages you, what engages you in the Lectio, like what stands out to you, what grabs your attention most. And it shouldn’t be too long of a section because you want to be able to meditatio on it. You want to be able to sort of chant it to yourself, enchant it to yourself. What are the associations? What’s being evoked in you, perhaps provoked in you? Then you move to oritatio, the speaking. What’s being provided for you? What’s being more, what’s problematic for you? And what do you want to happen? This is almost like a prayer. And for those of you who are religious, it can be prayer. And then you move to the contemplatio, you open your eyes and you try to see through the eyes of the person whose text you’ve been reading. You’re invoking, right, the presencing, the active presencing of their perspective, which you have internalized in the previous three stages. And when you’re looking through your eyes, you’re trying to see the world as they see it, but you’re also seeing, right, trying to see what you haven’t yet seen and look beyond, look for, open yourself up to the something more. So I hope that answers the first question. Question two, a more personal question. I will start reading What is Ancient Philosophy by Hedeau for the first time. For the Lectio Divina practice, I would like to pair it with another text talking about wisdom, the good life and morals from other periods and cultures, for example, Zen Buddhism, Nietzsche and existentialism. Any recommendations? I’m considering one of these. Beyond Good and Evil, the Enlightened Mind, the Wisdom of Hapacia, Walden. I would recommend the Wisdom of Hapacia. It’s not exactly from the tradition other than Hedeau, but it’s the initial best compliment because Hedeau is more about making the arguments about the entire Platonic and Neoplatonic wisdom tradition. And then the Wisdom of Hapacia gives you a multitude of practices. And you can also check into my online course on the Cultivation of Wisdom, but I would recommend the Wisdom of Hapacia first. The Enlightened Mind is really good because that would be my second choice if that’s the anthology by Mitchell. That’s a very good anthology to go with What is Ancient Philosophy. So I hope that answers your question, David, and keep up the practice. Try to see if you can get a couple of people, maybe three more, and do the Philosophical Fellowship because Alexio Divina and Philosophical Fellowship work really well together. Okay, now a question from Byron. Thank you, Byron. First, I just want to say thanks for everything you’re doing at the moment. It is really something very special for the world. I’m slowly starting to grasp the idea. Thank you, Byron. I appreciate that. I know I don’t present sort of an easily accessible set of ideas. Part of it is designed to draw people, to challenge people into the transformations that are needed. But I also, on my part, need to be, I’m working to try and make my material more accessible, more avenues in, more onboarding practices and discussions. So I hear you and I appreciate what you’re saying. I have been working on the Ecologies of Practice and I’ve read the book Sacred Reading on the Ancient Art of Alexio Divina. Great introduction. You recommended Vision of God as a book to start for this, but to be honest, I found it way above my head. I hope I’ll get there one day. Okay, very good. My question, what are some of the other texts you would recommend? I was thinking one of these, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Ethics by Spinoza, Confessions by Augustine. Oh, that’s really good. That’s really good. I would do it in historical order, actually. I think that, I would start with the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, then do the Confessions by Augustine, and then do the Ethics by Spinoza. Make sure you get a very good book on Spinoza to give you some really background. I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend Claire Carlisle’s The Religion of Spinoza as a book to read along with that. The introductions in your book on the Meditations or the Confessions are usually good enough on their own, but for Spinoza, the Ethics, you need to read The Religion of Spinoza first. Or any others you’d recommend for a beginner, someone who has just really realized he’s in the cave and has been looking at shadows for a long time. Nice allusion to the parable of the cave. I think those are a good beginning. I think that’s a very good selection. I would recommend following that. You seem to be called to it already. Those are good selections. They’ll take a long time to work through those, so yes, do that. Please heed my advice that I gave. I think it was to David. It was just before, and I don’t make it clear enough what I’m giving the instructions. Make sure you also, like chapter by chapter or section or section, read it propositionally first. Make sure you’ve got at least a preliminary conceptual grasp on it. Read something about the thinker before so you have some sense of where they’re at and where they’re coming from, what problems they’re confronting, and then reread it step by step in Lexio Divina. I hope that was helpful for you, to Byron. I hope that was helpful for you, Byron, and thank you very much for your support and for your questions. Now we’re going to move on to a question from Jay. Thank you, Jay. Jay is saying, I’m progressively working my way through the material, almost finished with the Meeting Crisis series. I would recommend strongly also doing the After Socrates series as well. Also working through the conversation with Bishop Maximus. Yeah, those, those, those, I think it’s four videos are really important, and there’s going to be a bunch coming out because of the wonderful time I got to spend with Bishop Maximus. I’m trying to be able to communicate it clearly and simply to those around me. Is there a resource or a few resources that you can point me to that could boil a lot of this down to explain it to people that are not engaged in this topic? I know an elevator pitch would be a bit too much to ask, but it’s really difficult to talk to people about this in a way they can sufficiently get their heads, get into their heads, and more importantly their hearts around, oh, get their heads, sorry, and more importantly, hearts around it without extensive conversation that most people don’t want to dedicate time to. Thank you so much for any feedback and direction. So one thing, Jay, is that the book Awakening from the Meeting Crisis is almost ready for publication. It’s going to be ready very soon. The patrons will get, I think, the first three chapters ahead of time. And we’ve done a lot of work, especially with the help of Madeleine Abraham, who’s here, and Christopher Massa Pietro to really make the material more accessible. There’s extra notes. There’s lots of extra resources there. For people other than me, I suppose, you know, getting people to read about or think about on Bullshit by Harry Frankford or Kellyanne Allen’s book Belonging or, let me see, it’s Meaning and Life Why It Matters, but I forget her name. Her last name was Wolf. I can’t remember her first name. I think those are good books to read, get things a little bit more down to earth. But especially look forward to Awakening from the Meeting Crisis. I think that could be very helpful. We’re putting out a bunch of short videos. Susan Wolf, thank you, Madeleine. Susan Wolf, we’re putting out a bunch of short videos on the channel that are designed to give people more access. We’re going to be doing work to try and get a more accessible presentation of all the material in place. But hopefully those recommendations will help you in the more short term. There’s lots coming to try and bridge that gap. So thank you very much. Oh, before I go on, there’s a couple books. Scott Kaufman’s Transcend. There’s a book Lost Connection. There’s a book The Awakened Brain. These are all, I’m reviewing all of these books because I’m going to do a series on sort of popular kogsai, the popular kogsai of meaning, transcendence, and wisdom. And so that’s also something you might want to take a look at. Okay, thank you very much, Jay. I hope that was helpful. We’re going to move on to questions from Martin. Hi, Martin. I found John’s conversation with Guy and Chris fascinating during episode 21 of After Socrates series. Is it episode 21? I thought it was episode 22. Who? I can’t remember. Anyways, my question is around how do we engage with the I it and I thou forms of relating in a more deliberate manner. You three pose this or a similar question in the conversation but couldn’t develop it through the end, I believe. So that we don’t fall prey of bullshitters and we can relate with one another or with books or other entities more meaningfully when appropriate. We have to define appropriateness in this context, I guess. Also I see relating to relating to be a cornerstone cornerstone of John’s work and I appreciate a more philosophical take on relation itself to understand the different components of the project better. Yes. So I think a good way of being much more deliberate about the I thou relationship is a series of mappings. So I think the I it maps very well into the having mode and the I thou into the being mode. So the having mode is the mode in which we are trying to meet our having needs. These are needs that are met by having something, consuming it, controlling it, oxygen, food, liquid, shelter, medicine, perhaps sexuality if you want to talk about the survival of the species. And our relationship, the way we relate there is we we identify, so when I talk about relating I take I talk about co-identification which fits in really well with Uber. What identity am I assuming and what identity am I assigning? I’m in the having mode, I’m assuming the identity of a manipulative consumer and I’m assuming the identity of a consumer and I’m assigning the identity of categorical entities that render them in a fashion so that I can manipulate and consume them as readily as possible. And there’s nothing immoral or wrong by that. You better be able to find water and consume it on a ready and reliable basis. You have to be able to manipulate it. This water, like as long as it’s not contaminated or poisonous water but true water, this water is as good as that water. You need it for its categorical properties, its scientific properties. The I-thou is I’m assuming an identity not of a manipulative consumer but of a rational, in this platonic sense, Socratic Platonic sense, a rational participator. Here is where I am not trying to manipulate and consume as my primary way of relating to the world. What I am trying to do is be correctly oriented so that I can be drawn into the most transformative developmental trajectory as I come face to face with the ultimate dimensions of reality, the mysterious aspects of time and being and personhood and the virtues, etc. And so here what I’m doing is I’m not trying to get an answer. I’m not trying to solve a problem. I’m trying to orient with the correct stance that allows me to navigate the depths of inner and outer reality in a coordinating, reciprocally opening fashion. And the point is not completion. I can drink to completion. I mean water but I can’t grow in wisdom and in the participatory conformity with reality, the guidance by what is true and good and beautiful. I can’t complete those. Of course the great confusion is to try and pursue I-thou being needs, developmental needs, needs that are met not by having something but by becoming someone within a I-it having framing. So I need to be more mature. I confuse that with having a car. I need to transcend my current framework of consciousness and cognition and I confuse that with having a drug experience or drinking alcohol called spirits for a reason by the way. So that’s the fundamental modal confusion. So you can map the I-it onto the having mode, the I-thou onto the being mode, and then the being mode, these two map onto metamotivational frames. In the being mode, I’m mapping onto what’s called the paratelic metamotivational frame. This is the work of Apner. This is where I frame my metabolic arousal, not just my sexual arousal but primarily my metabolic arousal, as I’m in a state of play. I’m in a state of play and so the more and more intense my engagement, the more I’m engaged with something that I find intrinsically valuable to me. The I-it having mode maps onto work, the telic mode, in which more and more effort means I’m not getting these things that I vitally need to get, that I need to control and consume. And so increasing effort will mean frustration, anxiety, anger, and then terror, fear. These probably map onto a predominance of which is foregrounded. This one is more spec- all of this is rational speculation. This one I haven’t- I’m not as clear about it, but I think this has to do something with, right? You can map the paratelic and the telic on, are you preponderantly, right, in, right, you know, are you in a state that, well, may be quite energetic? Is it a state that’s open to flow? I think the paratelic mode and the autotelic mode, whereas the work mode is much more open to that sense of determination to keep going. But that needs a little bit more work. But I think, I think you can make a- I’ve tried to make a very strong case. The I-it maps onto the having mode, the I-thou onto the being mode, potential for modal confusion. Those map onto, they’re not reducible to, the I-thou on the paratelic, which has a much more capacity for flow and ritual, and the I-it onto the telic, which has more- which is about work, and it has much more capacity for productivity. And so I think that should help you, Martin. So thank you for your question. We’re now going to move on to Rob. I’m assuming this is my good friend, Rob Ray. Hi, John, I hope you had a great time at your conference. I had a great time at everything, Rob. It was fantastic. I had a profound time at the conference, right? So the conference was the conference at Chino. I went first and did a workshop in Montana for Aubrey Marcus’s group. They, they meet like four times a year, and Aubrey asked Guy and I come down at the very beginning to teach, circling into a Diologos workshop. It went extremely well. I hope this is okay to say. When I finished, Guy did the first- Guy took center stage in the first on circling, and I was helping in the background and supplementing, and then we switched. I did the dialectic into Diologos, and Guy was helping, and I had to leave right at the end to catch a plane right at the end to catch a plane and got a standing ovation for that. I think, I think a real need was touched and opened and brought to life and addressed. Then I went to the conference at Chino, the quest for a spiritual home, as I said, that was there with, I was there with Jonathan Pagio, Paul VanderKlay, John Van Dunk, organized by the amazing Catherine Wilson, really, really good, really, really good. My talk was very well received, but I think maybe what was the most important feedback from that was many people, Paul included, came up and said that that discussion that became genuine Diologos between Jonathan and I was the best that he and Jonathan and I had ever done. So look forward to that. That’ll come out soon. I think it’s already on Paul’s channel, but it’ll also come out on my channel, and you can watch it there. Very soon, very soon. Then I went to the monastery, Eastern Orthodox Monastery in Aetna, recorded a discussion with, they got into Diologos, definitely, with Bishop Maximus, and then a three-way discussion with myself, Bishop Maximus, and Father Tapias, also wonderful, and then Q&A with Bishop Maximus and I and people from online and the audience. So just being there was a community, I was given so many tours and just so much encouragement, so much deep appreciation for my work. I had so much appreciation. I was invited to participate in all the services, the liturgy, there was a vigil, the liturgy service every day, there was a vigil one of the nights. It was long, right? You have to stand, you get little tiny breaks to sit, but that does something standing there, but all the music, the incense, the chanting, the icons that surround you, and they’re vibrating their presence, really, really powerful. So although I did a lot of work there, I felt like I was on retreat, like when I went to Rafe Kelly’s Return to the Source. It wasn’t as physically demanding or challenging, but there was something more going on there for me. It was really rejuvenating and restoring in a profound way. They want me to come back, I want to go back, so I expect I’ll go back. And there’s talk also following up the Chino Conference. It’s all, it’s just talk now, so don’t hold me to anything I’m going to say, but there’s some talk about the next one being in Jerusalem, and that would be amazing. I’m very grateful for everything. I’m very grateful for how Aubrey Marcus and his team set things up for Guy and I. Very grateful for Catherine Wilson and all the organization, John Van Dunk, all the, and Paul and Jonathan, all the work at the conference, but, and it’s like, it’s a significant gratitude, but the gratitude I have for the the Aetna Monastery and the monastic community there. And it’s paired, like it’s, there’s the monastery and then it is paired. They are linked and mutually supportive with a seminary there, which is going under expansion, and they’re also linked with a nunnery, and I got tours of all of this, and my gratitude is profound, so thank you so much. So Rob, I’ll move to your question now. Question, the Stoic idea of spermaticus logos, or the animating word, or numina, or kinetic vital power, create an interesting interplay between body and conception, life and movement. Robert Brandem in Animating Ideas shares three lessons cogsight can learn from philosophy about the nature of concept, and introduces this nice list. Concepts that label and concepts that describe, yes, I’m aware of this. Dan Schiappi and I have just been going through Brandem’s brilliant, brilliant Reason and Philosophy, where Brandem represents this current new scholarship about the interpretation of Kantian, and much more importantly, I think, to the overall argument, Hegelian notions of rationality, and especially the Hegelian stuff, which, and it’s just fantastic, really, really good. I still think there’s something missing, but I’ll come to that. And to contents, concepts that label and concepts that describe, yes, content versus force of application, and concepts complexify, yes, they do. I find a lot of beauty and power, potential power in exploring these principles, and they seem to both prove their relevance and afford insight. I agree with all of this. What do you think about them, in particular, related to shared cognitive cultural grammar, ecologies and practices, or relevance to science or wisdom pursuits? So I’m going to come back, I think there’s another question that involves Brandem, but I’m going to come back to, I think about the Hegelian and the Platonic dialectic that we’re going to get to. I think these are important ideas. We are, so Dan and I are writing a book, something like, something like the reason of, the being of rationality and the rationality of being. That may in fact be its title, in which we are wrestling not only with all the current cog-sci about rationality, Steven Pinker and other people, but also deeper philosophical reflection about rationality, like the work by Brandem, the work by Ruchnik, the tragedy of reason, Whitehead, the function of reason, and then also deeper into the Hegelian reflections on rationality, but deeply influenced, deeply influenced by D.C. Schindler, Plato’s critique of impure reason, the capitalisticity of reason. So all of this is going in, but the Brandem ideas are definitely going to be taken into this work. And given a, I think all, I think the Brandem distinctions are good. I think, I, one of the criticisms that I have after all that well-deserved praise, and Dan shares it with me as we’ve been going through his work, Dan is going through the work even more deeply than I am. I’m going, I’m going through Brandem and then some Pickard and other people on Hegel’s notion of rationality and Hegel’s notion of reason and religion. But Dan is working through Brandem’s massive work, Spirit of Trust, which I think I’ve now purchased, I need to go into. And so this is all profound, but we think that for all of this, Brandem stays on the propositional conceptual level and does not address the non-propositional aspects of rationality in a sufficient enough fashion. So I think all of these distinctions, concepts, labels, and concepts that describe content versus force of application and how concepts complexify, I think these are all good. I would even say necessary to a deeper understanding of reason and rationality, but I do not think they’re sufficient. I think they’re definitely needed to significantly, like, explicating, drawing out, reducing, articulating, and enhancing our grasp, our understanding of propositional knowing, and taking it to a level that is profound enough so that it can properly orient to and enter into reciprocal realization with the other kinds of knowledge. So I hope that answers your amazing question, Rob. Yeah, I like Brandem a lot. So thank you for that wonderful question and the suggestion to bring it in. Ah, here’s the question from Anonymous. How do you see the significant distinctions between Platonic and Hegelian theories of rationality and how can they be integrated? Yes, so I’m going to talk about emphasis here. So I’m going to talk about emphasis. I’m not going to claim that this is exclusive, that what I’m going to say is exclusively Platonic or exclusively Hegelian, but I’m definitely going to talk about emphasis. So the Hegelian is very much directed to the horizontal, meaning the aspect of dialectic and to dialogous that’s happening between people and how they are getting into mindsight resonance, shared flow, opening up, but extended. Brandem talks about that very well, by the way, with the notion of reciprocal recognition being central to rationality. Now Plato, of course, especially in the Socratic dimension, has the horizontal, but the aspect of the horizontal that is missing is Hegel has this tremendously developed and extended notion of what I would now call distributed cognition and of the historical dimension of distributed cognition. And he brings out the perspective and retrospective aspects. So Hegel’s idea is the Kantian notion of coherence in our A perception, our coherence in our fundamental attempt to bring coherence to our sense making is evaluated and judged by judged by how much we earn reciprocal recognition from other people. So if you, if I’m willing to recognize your take on reality, very, you have to take that very broadly and deeply and you recognize mine, then we start to get that’s reciprocal recognition that I am the type of being that can be held responsible for being rational. This water container can’t, it’s not irrational, it’s irrational. I can be judged, I, and I frequently am and should be judged for being irrational and I’m sometimes praised for being rational. But for Hegel, right, there is something like a common law. There has been all of this work and this is, that’s what I meant when I said the GPT machines are like common law. All of that, all of those individual acts of reciprocal recognition that help guide and are grounded in, right, the ratio religio, the rational A perception, those coherent sense making of reality, coherent connected sense making. All of those have something like a common law. We recognize precedents that have been set, or at least the network of distributed cognition recognizes as trustworthy, worthy of being saved, worthy of entering into the history. And so we start to develop something very analogous to Anglo-Saxon common law where we have previous judgments that take on precedents and they build a history of precedents. But every time somebody is making a judgment in the current period, they are not only trying to be deeply responsible to that precedence, they’re also wanting to be deeply responsible to the future audience. So they are trying to set precedents, to set precedents, and they are trying to set precedents. They’re going to, they’re trying to make a judgment such that it will be taken up by the future community of rational sense makers. And then of course the whole process is massively self-organizing, even self-correcting, and it’s seeking out the truth of the truth. And so we have a lot of evidence that says that the system of evolving intelligibility, evolving normativity, enhanced distributed cognition that is enhancing individual cognition, he thought of that as God, because of the way it’s not just a system of self-organizing, it’s not just a system of self-organizing, it’s not just a system of self-organizing, it’s not just a system of because of the way it’s not just rationality in a single argument, it’s this more comprehensive connectedness to the world. Now that’s, so he takes the platonic and he blows it out into the horizontal and this profound historical, and this is what Brandon’s work is so strong about. And so there’s a spirit of trust, as Brandon says, at work in Hegelian rationality. But because there’s less of an emphasis on the sort of one-to-one horizontal, I think there’s also a missing of the vertical dimension, and this is the platonic dimension. This is the contemplative rationality, the rationality that connects this level with more encompassing levels of reality that moves up the levels of being. And I hope, I can’t review, but you can see two of the recent talks I’ve given on this, the ancient Neoplatonism, ancient Neoplatonism, still vital, something like that, the talk I gave at Ralston, Neoplatonism, Neoplatonism, ancient but still vital, I think it is, and the recent Science of Spirituality, which I think is my better talk, which was given at the Consilience Conference organized by Greg Enriquez, where I talk about strong transcendence and the ability to level up. And I think, and brings in therefore also all of the non-propositional access, right, and the more properly apophatic, where we move in, we move into the non-propositional. I think that dimension emphasized and discussed very well, also by DC Schindler, by the way, Drew Hyland in Affinity to Transcendence. All of that, I think, is that vertical dimension is not well integrated in Hegel or well developed, and the two need each other. This is going to be one of the main theses of the book that Dan and I are creating. The two need each other, they need to be integrated, they complement each other, they supplement each other, they deal with the horizontal and vertical dimensions that show up in dialectic, in the dialogus, in a profound way. And so that gives you, I hope, a foretaste of the deeper argument that Dan Schiappi and I are now making. So thank you very much, anonymous. Okay, we’ve come to that point where we’re shifting to live questions from the chat. I’m going to take a drink first because I’m drying out. I want to thank all of the Patreon subscribers and everybody watching right now. Your support is crucial to continuing to produce these videos and for supporting the science and the philosophy and the practices we’re doing to find solutions to the meeting crisis. Okay, the first question from chat is from Dally Fernall. What is the musicality of being? What is the wave function of the musicality of being? And is the musicality of being connected to the flow state and transdictivity? This is a wonderful question. So the musicality of being comes from this term and the idea come from John Roussin’s amazing book, Bearing Witness to Epiphany, where he talks about how there’s a rhythm to reality. There is a sense in which there’s sort of repeating invariant patterns. And then he talks about the melody. There is these individual lines of development. And then he talks about the harmony. There’s sort of principles of order and harmony, of composition. And so his point is that when we’re making sense of the world, you can see this, right? You can see how there’s some, and when you look at intelligibility unfolding, just how you’re making some sense of something, and I’m making sense of this object. There’s something that’s getting repeated, not necessarily identical, but it’s like the rhythm, right? It’s the remote, it’s the remote, it’s the remote, it’s that through line. There’s something invariant. And then there’s a melody of aspects. These are like different notes as it unfolds in aspects and also in the rhythm. It unfolds in aspects and also how it unfolds in time, because it will degrade, perhaps get broken. But there’s this melody of aspects, diachronically and synchronically. But there’s a harmony to that. This isn’t cacophonous. They all flow into each other. They make sense together, like the notes of music. What’s the wave function? The wave function is the movement of relevance realization, the opening up of variation, and then the killing off of most of the options with selection, from which variations grow out again. Most of them die off, but not all of them. And then this is the wave function. This is the oscillation function of intelligibility within relevance realization. Is it connected to the flow state? Yes, in the flow state, that oscillation has fitted well to the variant, but also specific sets of constraints and trade-offs, so that you’re doing the kind of opponent processing that is tracking and is conforming. The complexification of cognition that is happening with that differentiation, integration, differentiation, integration is more and more conforming with the complexification of reality. More and more, there’s an equal instantiation of the same fundamental principles. There’s a co-shaping by the same fundamental forces. So it has a lot to do with transdictivity. And the musicality is about, sorry, with the flow state. The musicality is in fact, right, and the musicality, especially when it’s enhanced in the flow state, is a way of getting a more phenomenological presence of transdictivity. Think about how music is transdictive. It is simultaneously within you and in the environment, but it actually is between you. That’s why we put music into the soundtrack for a movie, because the music binds us. What’s taking shape in the movie, and what’s taking shape within us, are conforming and thereby flowing and being bound together. So yes, that’s what the musicality of being is. The wave function is the oscillation of relevance realization as it complexifies our optimal gripping, especially our meta-optimal gripping in consciousness. And that’s how it comes out in the flow state, as it enhances our awareness and experience of transdictivity. So Andre Kiss, as you mentioned in the AI essay, the stealing, the culture, cultivation of wisdom should ramp up. How would you see this happening, or whose help would you want to need to achieve an actual change? I need to make something clear that Andre is right. I wasn’t just making a point. I was issuing a call to action. So the call to action is whenever we are trying to steal the culture, we are doing much more to bring a sense of urgency to it because of the threat on the horizon of the advent of AGI. I need as many, as much people help as many people as possible connecting into the Raveki Foundation, connecting into the Respond network, connecting into the broader, this little corner of the internet. Paul Van Dyckley made an excellent argument, inspired insight at the Chino conference that this little corner of the internet is the proper place for trying to address the AGI, the advent of AGI and the looming threat. So by galvanizing this little corner, getting it connected, getting more and more people talking about this, getting more and more and more of us organized to put pressure on the movers and shakers to take these arguments into consideration, to realize the importance of the connection between the AGI threat, the alignment problem, and the meaning crisis. To get more and more people putting it out into social media. So working with Sean Coyne and his amazing team at Storygrid, we’re turning the AI video essay and some of the responses into a book. It’s almost, it’s almost, the first draft is almost done. We’re going to try and get it out very soon so that we can help disseminate and increase the amount of engagement with this project. I don’t know if there’s, we’ll be able to make much appeal to most politicians. I think most politicians on all sides are too corrupted by the deleterious effects of the meaning crisis, the tyranny of the propositional, adversarial processing, ideological warfare, ideological identity, and the political and political and ideological warfare. But if we could find, if we could get some that genuinely care, that would be good. Perhaps, like I doubt if the mega corporations are going to do anything, but if we could get maybe the mid-sized businesses and corporations, I know there’s a lot of people in the business world that care about this, we could get them speaking about it, bringing their resources for organization, for fundraising. Yeah, that’s, that’s the most I could think of right now. So thank you very much. Jonas Svec, hey Jonas, it’s good to hear from you again. Quick question, good resources on the Axe of Revolution. I’ve been struggling to make the case for the power of that time. I see, so I think the Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong is one of the best. I’m going to go off camera a second for everybody because I want to grab another book. I don’t remember the author’s name and I know the book is right here. Here it is. Practicing Transcendence Axial Age Spirituality for a World in Crisis, which I think would be an excellent book. So if you start with those two books, and then there’s a great anthology, What is Axial about the Axial Age? I would read the two books first in that order. Read, read the Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong. Read Practicing Transcendence by Christopher Peet, P-E-E-T, Christopher Peet. And then what is, oh I think it’s What is Axial about the Axial Revolution. It’s actually, I’m trying to remember who it’s edited by, but it’s a very good anthology. And there’s an essay entitled that What is Axial about the Axial Age Revolution, which is also a very good place to start. So Jonas, I hope that’s helpful to you. Now we move to Griswold Grimm. Gris, it was great meeting you at the conference. Really great meeting you at the conference. So thank you, thank you for being here. Fringe Networking and the Symphony Harmonics of Small World Network theme. Is you and Chino and at the monastery how we connect subcultures to the radical as our offstage question at Chino? Yeah I think so. So you’re mentioning that. Yeah you’re mentioning that. Yes. So yeah that networking, fringe networking, symphony harmonics of small world networking. Yeah you and I talked about. So the networking that was going on there and at the monastery, yes. This is integral to all the project I’ve been talking about. I’m hesitating because I mean most of this has to happen virtually, but a lot of it has to happen personally and off screen in order for the networks to come to life. And I’m bumping up against my ignorance here about like I don’t know what the proper ratio is, what the proper proportioning of those is to give a more refined answer to your question. But I ask other people to think about it, other people who probably have more expertise than I do. Like how do we figure out because we can’t, we’re going to have to rely on the virtual, but we need the in person, the in person, the interpersonal and the off screen, excuse me, that plays an indispensable maybe even an essential role. So yeah getting that balance is really important. If people could start a discussion about that and we could start thinking about how to make that work and possibly integrate it with some of the work that Daniel Schmarkenberger is doing, I think that would, yeah I think that would be good. Thank you for your question, Grizz. Really good meeting you by the way in person. Next question is from Mike Gerrigan. So there is not simply a desirable human trade or quality such as goodness. Oh this is like te. So in Chinese there’s a phoneme that’s kind of like t but you slap your tongue across your palate there. So it sounds kind of like t or d that t. So it’s not simply a desirable human trade or quality such as goodness. The virtue equates to moral good and chivalry is not simply a desirable human trade or quality such as goodness. So I think that’s a good question. So the Chinese virtue is not simply a desirable human trade or quality such as goodness. Is virtue an essence? Such as goodness is virtue and essence. Equates to moral good. I’m not quite sure what you’re meaning by essence here because there isn’t a single meaning for that term. There’s a platonic meaning which is not definitional as Plato repeatedly shows. There’s an Aristotelian meaning which is precisely definitional. So that’s a necessary and sufficient condition. And then there’s a quiney and take on that. Those sets of conditions that are found in our most universal generalizations and therefore are essential to scientific practice. I don’t know which one you mean. I’m going to presume you probably mean something like the Aristotelian one. But I would argue that I think if you’ll allow me to shift it to the platonic one, which I think can actually be reconciled to some degree with aspects of the quiney and one. But let’s say the platonic one. Yeah, I think this is sort of the realm where we’re moving into the meta-virtues. And then the meta-virtue of sopherson. Sopherson is that you’re tempted by what is true, good, and beautiful. So it naturally flows out of you and you naturally moderate and modulate your action to be in the most living and evolving conformity to what is true and good and beautiful. What is most real and most relevantly real. But also probably overlapping rationality, raccio religio, broadly construed of the Socratic platonic tradition that I’ve been talking about even today. And then the meta-virtue of wisdom, which is taking place at the level not of even of our individual. So each virtue is a way of being wise in a particular context. And is probably at the level of wisdom when it has to do with your meta-optimal gripping, right? Your orienting stance towards reality that gives you, puts you in the best place to adaptively fit yourself to the specific optimal grips that are the virtue of that particular context. And so in that sense, you’re getting to something at least primordial and that is distributed across all of the domains of your experience and interaction, its domain general. And in that sense, at least sapientially, it’s like Aquinian essence and it’s very much like the platonic notion of wisdom. All right, I hope that was helpful, Mike. So thank you everyone for joining me in this wonderful Q&A. Thank you again to Madeline for all of her amazing and ongoing wonderful work. I hope you all remember that I rely on her continuously. She’s always there. She always has my back. She’s always working hard to make everything work smoothly, especially the Q&A’s. So our next Q&A is on January, sorry, on June 11th. We have posted the schedule for spring summer Q&A. So please check out that post on Patreon. And finally, and again, one more time, thank you for your support and thank you all for your wonderful time and attention.