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On Causality and Free Will (patch)

Note: the following except is a patch to the original excerpt (on Causality and Free Will) on the topic of truth. While both excerpts seek to integrate objective epistemology and subjective ontology (as advocated by science and religion), i feel that the concept of experience (ontology) was not well elaborated in the original excerpt.

This patch would have to do away with the precluding thought experiment on truth, knowledge, and belief and summarized Moore's Paradox into a single paragraph. I believe that the essence is still kept, but should you wish to have a greater insight into Moore's paradox, you may still refer to it in the original post which is still made available within this blog.


*


From our previous posts on Science and Religion we had left with various open conclusions. Re-capping, we see that both the faculties of secular science and theistic religion advocate to the existence of an objective truth. Science is practiced epistemologically by realists, and henceforth all theories formulated in the field of science tend to be true, or approximately true. Religion on the other hand, is an act of ontological personal conviction, and from Moore’s paradox we know that it is impossible to disassociate conviction from (subjective) truth. We cannot say “I know the sky is blue, but I don’t believe it”, similarly, we cannot say “I believe the sky is blue, but I know it isn’t true.”

Now, that we have seen the both advocators philosophy in regard to Truth, the fundamental question that would naturally arise would be as such: Why the irreconcilable discrepancy? This question in general may have sounded nostalgic, especially to those whom have taken the General Paper at A level. The fundamental controversy of this topic lies in the debate on whether 'There is a conflict between Science and Religion'- or rephrased in today's context, 'can there be a convergence between the two philosophies of Truth'.

Can there be? We have started this discussion from the acknowledgment of a singular objective truth, and from there we had sub-categorized to objectivity and subjectivity. And in the second excerpt we see that such objectivity and subjectivity comes in two primary forms- namely epistemology (theoretically) or ontology (experientially), and that such derivations may be realistic (materialistic) or idealistic in nature. Science being a logical (epistemological) manipulation of empirical data is seen today to clash with Religion, which derives the bulk of its truth from a subjective metaphysical (Ontological) faith. Of course both advocators have very different roles in bringing what kind of Truth to our lives today, but if we were to trace back such contrasting philosophies of Science and Religion back to their parent concepts, we see that there would ultimately be a convergence of the two contrasting philosophies at the end of the day-

That being the ultimate convergence to the Truth.

How is that possible? Moreover, why should we wish to reconcile this eternally bickering couple married by Truth and separated by objectivity, subjectivity, epistemology and ontology? Now we have to reflect the fundamental philosophy of this project, and Truth. The living best is an ideal state of life that many before us have attempted to seek out, and in project RN we wish to join them in ranks to search for this objective idealistic goal. It is imperative that we have to live in goodness and truth should we wish to live our best, and henceforth it is imperative that we have to holistically embody whatever that is true to live the full truth of truth. Indeed, truth as we know today has been sub-categorized into objectivity, subjectivity, epistemology, ontology, realism (materialism) and idealism today; with various advocators siding unconditionally that their respective takes of truth be that complete objective truth itself. We have to transcend such notions should we wish to see the full picture, and definitely such transaction can only be fulfilled by reconciliation, integration and moderation.

Naturally, the first set of concepts we have to integrate today is between empirical science and metaphysical religion.

If we were to look in greater detail between the issues that had arisen in argument against this proposition of integration, we see that of such, the most pressing issue would probably be the long-standing debate on Free Will and Causality. Science, being logical in nature- generally advocates the theory of causality; In other words, everything that exists today is actually a produced effect of some cause in the history of time. Now if everything, including us, is subjected to the laws of causality, where would the personal ontological experience and Free Will that religion advocates then stand?

From here, I would like to channel your attention to the concept of Determinism and Compatibilism.

Indeed, the argument I had addressed in the previous paragraph is one of Determinism- Determinism proposes that every event, including human cognition (thinking) and behavior, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. A ball moves as such because it is acted upon by a set of forces that determines its path of motion. We apply the brakes in a car because the car in front has slowed down, and this is in turn determined by the earlier braking action of a previous car; should we wish to trace this chain of prior occurrences, we see that it goes on ad inifnitum. Applying to the context of Free Will- Determinism suggests that whatever 'free will' we may have is completely caused and determined by earlier forces of either 'Nature' or 'Nurture', and that such determinism goes all the way beyond our existence. For that manner of speaking, we see that the ‘free will’ does not stem from us but beyond us, and that we are never 'free' in the first place.

So, are we free? And if not, how determined are we determined?

Indeed, hard-determinism had reigned supreme during the classical era of Newtonian Physics. From the electron to the heavenly bodies, physical laws reigned supreme in perfectly determining the cause and course of action. It was inevitable for the scientific community to assume that everything (including ourselves) would one day be mathematically and physically determined just as long as we have enough knowledge to embody these concepts. There was little room left beyond the imposition of determinism for randomness, unpredictability and free will. There was even less room for a God, let alone a human soul to intervene with events ad libidum.

Hard determinism had softened with the advent of relativity, and the underlying philosophy of relativity has made freedom for free will and the self to exist within a world of causality. Relativity has alluded a concept of a ‘self’ and the ‘others’, making room for subjectivity to exist while hard determinism has its loyal place in objectivity and universality. Previously, to move forward only means that one must be compelled beforehand; but today the experience of moving forward by the individual is physically valid- we know time slows down for the moving individual while not for the ‘others’. Although subjective, it is still truth that individuality exists and has its own place and time within our universe

Moreover, we should have been all aware by now that recent studies in quantum physics have found proof that not everything in this universe are subjected to the laws of causality. This can be especially seen in the behavior of quarks and strings when they seem to 'disregard all known laws of physics'. Moreover, the basic concept of radioactivity has already baffled many determinists- indeed, the decay of nuclear particles are caused by the instability of the nucleus, but there is virtually nothing that determines which particle decays at which point in time (the nucleus seems to have a 'free will' in choosing when to decay itself)

Hence, while the philosophy of science tends to that of Determinism, many of our scientists actually tend more to the philosophy of Compatibilism. Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are actually compatible ideas, and the 'Free will' in compatibilism is taken to be a 'hypothetical ability to have chosen differently if one had been differently psychologically disposed by some different beliefs or desires.' We could generally portray free will as the choices one can make in a game of chess, where we are still determined by the moves the opponent makes, but still have the free choice to choose which countering moves we wish to make on our part. It is interesting to note that the concept of Compatibilism is also portrayed in both Jewish and Christian Theology, as stated succinctly:

Compatibilism in this context holds that the sovereignty of God and the free will of man are both biblical concepts and, rightly understood, are not mutually exclusive. The all-knowing God (who sees past, present, and future simultaneously from the perspective of eternity) created human beings (who have the subjective reality of making choices in the present that have consequences for themselves and others in the future) in such a way that both are true: God is ultimately sovereign and therefore must have at least permitted any choice that a human could make, but at the same time God is right to hold humans accountable because from their perspective within the confines of serial time, humans make moral choices between good and evil.

From the above we begin to see a true world with room for both the experience of the individual self (as in the form of subjective ontology) and the (objective) determinism of the system. This world is universal and independent of our individual whims and fancies as we side unconditionally on one over the other. But while science and religion are both right in their philosophies to truth, and that subjective ontology and objective epistemology are indeed one in essence, we of course would not take the above discussion as objective proof to a conclusion that there will inevitably be a perfect integration between the two advocators.

But even with the integration of such concepts of epistemological logic and the ontological free will we know that the resultant truth is still incomplete. Even within the above mentioned concepts, we know that there is still a realistic and idealistic dimension to them, of which we will have to integrate should we wish to paint the full picture of truth. In the next post I would make a second integration between the real (material) and the ideal, basing it on the same set of examples we have discussed today; and subsequently from there see that our lives are equally dependent on such aspects just as those we have acknowledged today.

On Determinism and Chaos

Note:

This post is a patch to Part 1: Truth and comes immediately after the excerpt "on causality and free will". While "causality and free will" (I will modify its contents in the near future) focuses on the integration and moderation of epistemological logic and ontological feelings, this excerpt will focus on the prevalent need of integration of Realism (materialism) and Idealism. This excerpt also focuses closely on the scientific faculty of real and ideal epistemology; for more information of ontological realism and idealism, please do refer back to the excerpt "on Love".

As most of the following concepts are congruent to my current university module on the Chaos Theory, which i do not have a prior knowledge to initially; hence I apologize for only being able to write this excerpt 3 months after we have left the topic of truth. While what is presented here is not a complete summary of the Chaos theory, and neither is it a full account of determinism, what stands is its relevance to the moderation doctrine- and of course a personal reaffirmation and reconciliation between school, project RN, and the general knowledge.


***


The basic concept of radioactivity has already baffled many determinists- indeed, the decay of nuclear particles are caused by the instability of the nucleus, but there is virtually nothing that determines which particle decays at which point in time…

-On causality and free will, on determinism and chaos

Determinism is the philosophical belief that every event or action is the inevitable result of preceding events and actions. Determinism establishes the idea of causality, or what the layman considers as ‘cause-and effect’ or ‘action-and –reaction’. The rules of determinism govern all motions and structures on the logical level.

On the previous account we have considered in greater detail on biological determinism, theological determinism, and their corresponding regard to ethics and free will. An integration of both philosophies, in the product of compatibilism, was concluded to set the first moderation of science and religion- the advocators of epistemological logic and the ontological soul. In this excerpt today we will attempt to look at another aspect of determinism, this time with respect to order and chaos, to see the second moderation between the real (material) and the ideal.

Now for a start, what is real and what is ideal? At first thought we assume real things as tangible things- things that we can sense ontologically and explain with simple laws and relations; ideal things would be considered as abstract concepts, things that are supposedly there and yet never there, and no more than thoughts of a deranged mind. While real things exist in the ‘here and now’, ideal things seem ‘eternal’. Oxygen and nitrogen are quite real, and Ideal gases… the name really explains it all.

But most importantly- ideals are perfect in nature, while real (materials) are never perfect enough to follow fundamental laws of physics and mathematics. That be the reason why even as humans we ourselves (being real) are imperfect, but the one difference between human knowledge and natural stupidity is our ability to understand idealistic concepts. The theist draws reason to the soul; since it is in God’s image and idealistic in nature, to be able to discern perfection and idealism from the materialistic imperfections of the world. The atheist believes that such idealism stems from the human fragility and cognitive deductions. The true reason behind this is subjective but unimportant currently.

For a start humans know many things. We know that two plus two equals four, we know that squares have straight sides, that circles are round and a shove can send a person accelerating at an acceleration that is proportional to the force exerted in that same direction. We know that the earth orbits around the sun owing to the gravitational force between the two planets, and many a time we have taken all these facts for granted as the complete objective truth. While Newtonian physics sets the deterministic nature for the dynamic aspects of our objective world, logical determinism and assumption sets the causal rules of our cognitive knowledge of such materialistic phenomenon.

But we also know that the true material world, although deterministic, is imperfect. While the perfect world is idealistic, this reality that we live in, being real and materialistic, is far from it.

Counter-cognitively, it is not the determinism of the world that influences us to an idealistic logical determinism that two plus two equals four, that squares and circles are as such, or that the earth goes around the sun in ellipses. Rather, it is our idealized deterministic cognition that interprets the true dynamics of our world to our current disposition. While we can assume that the mass of two similar pairs of mandarin oranges theoretically summates to a mass four times the individual orange- we know that there is no two orange that is congruent in size, shape, and identity. Practically, the mass of an infinite pair of oranges can never be a perfect multiple of two, and if we were to weigh them out one by one we will get a string of answers that approximates to four, but in a random manner.

Four in this case, is an idealized truth- and the erratic results that normalize to four (as we assume it to be as such) are the essence of realism, of materialism, and chaos. Materialism entails the lack of idealistic perfection, and the lack of it entails chaos, complexity and disorder.

Similarly, we know that straight lines and perfect circles are no more than idealized Euclidean geometry. Where the naturalistic world tends to such ideals, it always leaves a compliment of imperfections and chaos behind for us to crudely assume as negligible. The planets move in a trajectory that is theoretically impossible to define even with the most extensive knowledge of Newtonian physics and calculus, owing to the constant flux of feedback influence the gravities of planets impose upon each other as they move around the sun. For a fact we are actually just within a window of stability of a chaotic system, and from our perspective of knowledge we believe that such windows of stability are universal and chaos being a window of error instead.

Then why still tend to the idealized determinism of Newtonian dynamics and mathematics? Why learn the impossible if the real world never produces a perfect four to a summation of a pair of twos? Why go to the science laboratory and assume air resistance and turbulence as negligible when we know that the answer will never be perfectly objective? We might as well reject all physical laws and assumptions and return back to empirical statistics.

On the other hand we could always live with the delusion that all imperfections are negligible and continue believing that the universe is run by an idealistic set of rules. We can always strive for an ideal world, abolishing imperfection along the way, and suit the real (materialistic) world (and even ourselves) to a fanciful and unattainable ideal of perfection and harmony. We can deem chaos, which is inevitable with the real world, as an aberration- a mistake to that perfect picture we had painted while we were children with our blindfolds still on.

To which truth do we subscribe to? Do we subscribe to the real world of imperfection and chaos, or the ideal world of simplified laws and assumptions from our current perspective?

Intuitively, we know that we need to subscribe to both realistic (materialistic) and idealistic interpretations of truth should we wish to understand the complete truth of things. While epistemological (ideal) knowledge can allow us to see linear relationships and trends of perfection in our universe, empirical statistics can explain to us the chaotic (indefinable) nature of things- of what’s not, in our understanding of our world and ourselves. Without an acknowledgment of materialistic chaos our knowledge is, as above, no more than a subjective delusion of the truth. Without an acknowledgment of deterministic-idealistic laws of Newtonian Dynamics, Euclidean Geometry, and Mathematical Calculus etc. we will never be able to discern patterns within this soup of chaos and disorder, nor can we go beyond the initial complexity to find out higher knowledge and truths.

Just like a series of numbers between 1 and 100, indeed, we can never find the governing laws of multiplication for prime numbers; and it is owing to this reason why prime numbers are distributed chaotically and stick out like a sore thumb in a complex mathematical equation when simplification is key. But we cannot neglect them if we want to consider each and every natural number between 1 and 100. It is the integration of both prime numbers and the other numbers (with idealistic factors) that forms the full truth of numbers between 1 and 100.

Similarly, it is the integration (or moderation) of both the reality and idealism of issues can we see the full truth of what is, and what isn’t of our world and of ourselves. This concept is partially overlapped by the complimentary doctrine- which states that a full understanding of the system can only possible when one understands both the strength and flaw of the system; of what is perfect, and what is imperfect; and ultimately what is ideal and real.

With this we have made an acknowledgment of the need of integration of epistemology and ontology, as well as the real (material) and the ideal. These two set of integrations (moderations) forms the basis of the moderation doctrine, in which we will consider in our next discussion on the ‘Introduction to the Moderation Doctrine’. We will subsequently scale down such lofty concepts to the individual perspective, and from there recreate an objective identity in answer to our quest for the living best.

On Love (rephrased for easier comprehension)

Note: there was considerable feedback that the last patch was very difficult to comprehend, even for those whom had read on 'the living best'. For easier comprehension for ALL readers, the excerpt has been rephrased to simpler English, much effort has been been exerted to ensure that the information within is preserved as far as possible.


“Man’s two greatest purpose of living is of work and love” – Some cheem guy.

What is love again?

From the previous topic of Identity we get to see what love is. Love is an experience that brings together two or more individuals (or things); when we define love personally, love becomes an emotion that brings about some sort of affection, and attachment. Love unites relationships, and indirectly affects one’s sense of self and social identity. To ‘like to do something’ comes from loving yourself, and you need to learn how to love your neighbor before you know how to love yourself.

Summarizing, love makes you know who you are, and brings things together. It is from the idea of love that humans can socialize, and from socializing we get our Ethics and Morality. Ethics and Morality are stuff that we ourselves and society takes to be important and valuable. From ethics and morality we ask why we exist and what are we doing on this earth, to finally ‘does God exist?’ We wouldn’t be bothered with such cheem stuff for the time being- for now; let us look deeper at Love and its related ideas.

Love itself is just an experience, and no amount of theory can make us understand this as a few seconds of ‘being in love’ can. We cannot learn love from books, and neither can we describe love into words, pictures, film etc. Even television and books, the love that the author (or director) tries to show (by the novel, picture or film) has to be inferred. We must have experienced love before we can understand what it means for people to be kissing, hugging or saying ‘I love you’.

But even if it’s just an experience, love is still real and ideal. An example would be when we are talking of ‘true love’ or the love that comes with a kiss (we call this passionate love): True love is ideal, and passionate love is real. We need both loves to come together if we truly want to experience love. Now we know what a passionate kiss or a hug is, so we know what real love is. Ideal love is slightly difficult to understand, this is because like ideal gases, it cannot be sensed immediately

Now, what is idealistic love? Do allow me to quote a phrase as analogy:

...There are easy farewells like 'see you tomorrow'. And there are sad farewells when we know we will never see each other again. But no matter what kind of farewell it is, I want to believe that even if we can't see each other, even if death parts us, our feelings will never change...

-Mai, from a film

I am sure we all have seen such lovey-dovey phrases before, and okay, this phrase is called idealistic love. We know that love unites, and farewells splits people up physically; but we know that ideal stuff can exist forever and everywhere. In this case Mai believes that her feelings will not be affected by ‘not seeing’ and ‘death’. Therefore we can say that whatever she says is about idealistic love

Now, many people say that ideal love is ‘True Love’ or ‘unconditional love’. We know that a simple ‘I love you’ might not be true love, because the boyfriend might ditch the girl when time passes or when things happen and another girl comes into the picture. Idealistic love goes beyond that kind of ‘I love you’, because since we cannot create love by words for fun, it can only happen when we are already in love. We all already know that when Mai says those words, she had already actually fallen in love in him by the time.

Henceforth, since ideal love has to be based on real love for it to exist (we cannot anyhow create it), we commonly heck care real love and jump straight to ideal ‘true love’. Strictly speaking, true love can only exist when love is real and ideal at the same time. Most people think ideal love is nonsense, or thinks that ideal love can be created as and when we like (since it’s just ideas), and that’s why we all say that the world lacks ‘true love’.

As for which kind of love came first, we all have different views. Christians say that comes from the soul, and shown by our body actions. The soul is eternal and dimensional-less, therefore the love that comes from it is ideal too. The body, makes this ideal love real like itself. Others may say that it’s because the human mind that wants the feeling of love to last forever, therefore making the real love ideal. Either way, we don’t really care what comes first, but we care that both need to come together.

We all know that this world don’t know what true love is. This is because we’re materialistic and selfish. Now, we have to ask why- As stated by a priest, it is because of the idea of ‘the survival of the fittest’. Therefore we all want to show our stronger side, and that we have power and are in control. Rephrasing, it is because we all want to survive, thus we stop being considerate to others and become materialistic with things (instead of idealistic), we say that idealistic things are just empty castles in the air. So we all become selfish, and become superficial and greedy.

While being selfish and materialistic lets us be powerful and successful in life, we all misunderstand love to be a form of ‘dependence’, no more than a passion and a ‘weakness’. Love is only said by priests. Love is an excuse humans give to run away from the fact of ‘survival of the fittest’, or to some teenage girl with her childish romance drama serials. As observed by some scientists: this world has no time for such childish ‘lets-pretend’ games such as true love, equality, morality and God. We all struggle to survive or die, let alone all the bullshit of meaning and equality…

It is because of these kinds of views that had led us to abandon love, to another weakness of human nature today. Selfish materialism lets us find a good way of living, but it results in loneliness and a meaningless life. We all want to earn money initially because we want to live a successful life. But when we become rich, are we already successful? We don’t know, and so we start earning money for the sake of earning more money. When we become old and think of our past actions, we find out that we have been selfish and unproductive; and we would just die a disappointed person.

While love, and the experience of love is seen as a stumbling block on our quest for knowledge, achievement, power and success- actually, we need such experiences, on top of the logic of wanting to be successful, if we really want to be successful. From the discussion from the previous project, we know that truth is theory and experience, and should we want to live our true ‘best’ we need to put feelings and beliefs and logic and theory together. Also, we have to love our friends just like how we love ourselves. Naturally love, which allows us to feel and be close to our friends, must come in to our selfish world of materialism if we want to be the best.

There are two reasons.

The first reason holds that while materialism gives us a method to earn more money and be successful, feelings from experiences makes us more committed to follow the method. It is only when feelings and logic come together can we know ‘what’ something is about and ‘why did it come about. Know what and why lets us know something fully. This point is well re-quoted as follows:

“One who does not know what love can do, can never be powerful. Love itself is something we cannot laugh at and think is bullshit; the experience of love brings about a belief, and a strong belief brings commitment and will-power. Power alone without commitment can never be truly powerful, and remains no more as ideas and meaningless moves (think kung-fu). We must be committed to our actions, and then can we really become really powerful and do good work.”

Christians believe that when God worked and created the universe, he used his infinite wisdom to create them, but the reason why he created was because of love. This is why Christianity says that ‘work is a usage of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, done in the service (love) of the community, to build up the church- the body of Christ’.

The second reason would be slightly harder to understand- known as the complimentary doctrine of life. Recalling from above, we all think that love is a form of ‘dependence’, ‘acceptance’ and ‘weakness’- although we all misunderstand it to be just weakness, we’re still quite right that if we love, we need to ‘hold our horses and rely on the map’. While we find the logical method to become successful and powerful in life; love brings us back down to earth by letting us experience and feel ourselves. Love also makes us less selfish and be share the good rewards (should they come) with our friends. We get to sit back and appreciate where we are currently in life, we get to see people’s good points, and we know what we still lack or don’t know in life was we try to be that better person.

The complimentary doctrine says that in any journey, the journey can never considered complete unless one knows the distance left to go, as well as the distance already travelled. Yes we can deduce that we are human beings from knowing that we are not a chimpanzee or an orangutan (or any other primate), but cannot be truly know who we really are until someone tells us we are a Human being. Similarly, we cannot be truly successful and powerful by finding methods to make us earn more money or improve our strength, but we also need to sit back, experience, appreciate where we are and love ourselves. This can be re-quoted as follows:

Acceptance of one’s strength and weakness is needed for if we want to be truly powerful. We cannot become infinitely clever or powerful to know that it is impossible to be perfect. You will never understand fully what you can do, until you know what you are still unable to do. Strength without acceptance of weakness is bullshit… and so is maturity without acceptance of our child-like ways… you may as well compare who’ll get the first pimple-

-Some girl

Of course we are not as extreme as that girl has made it to become, but we can see she has the same idea that we have today. Whether it is from commitment, or appreciation, the experience and love are very important if we really want to be successful and powerful, or do good work.

As a conclusion, we have discussed on the love and how does it influence work, success and the ‘living best’. In the next post we will dwell in greater detail into applied love and work, in the form of morality and ethics; to hopefully seek out the meaning behind these actions, and ultimately the meaning of life.

On Love (patch to 28th April 2009 On love and Work)

This excerpt touches on concepts highlighted on the topic of truth, epistemology, ontology, materialism, idealism, personal identity, social identity and love. For clarity and comprehension, please read this excerpt after completing the entire faculty of ‘The living Best’.

“Man’s two greatest purpose of living is of work and love” – Sigmund Freud

What is love again?

From the topic of identity we get to see the nature of love. Love is an ontological intuition that unifies two or more individuals (or subjects); when subjected to the individual perspective, love becomes an emotional experience that brings about a certain affection, and attachment. Love forms the basis of positive (unifying) interpersonal relationships, and indirectly affects one’s sense of social and personal identity. The passion towards one’s interest derives from the love of oneself, and the love of oneself in turn derives from the love towards one’s neighbor.

Summarizing, love defines the identity, and brings about unity. It is from the concept of love that socialization can occur successfully, and from the act of interpersonal socialization we build up that faculty of Ethics and Morality. Ethics and Morality are a certain set of introspection that questions the values of the individual and the community. Subsequently, the question of ethics and morality leads to the significance of existence, which then leads to the question of meaning- to finally the universal question of a God, should He exist. We would leave such lofty topics to be addressed at a later point in time- in the meantime, let us focus in greater detail on the preclusions of ethics: namely Love and Work.

Love itself is completely ontological in nature, and no amount of theoretical (epistemological) knowledge can bring about the complete understanding of love as much as a moment of intuitive experience can provide. We cannot learn love from books, and neither can we describe the true essence of love in any form of conceptual representation (be it words, pictures, film etc). Even within a medium, the conceptual representation of love (by the novel, picture or film) has to be inferred via personal experience by the individual before such conceptual representations (as in the act of kissing, hugging or declarations etc) can fully make sense.

But even in its ontological discipline love is still materialistic and idealistic in nature. A common example would be the concepts of true love and passionate love: True love is idealistic (since it is an ideal form of love), and passionate love is materialistic, and yet both aspects of love have to be present should any form of love be considered ‘complete’ and ‘true’. Now while it is simple to understand the concept of materialistic love when it comes in a form of a passionate kiss or a hug, the ontology (experience) of love becomes harder when it is applied in idealistic terms.

Now, what is idealistic love? Do allow me to quote a phrase as analogy:

...There are easy farewells like 'see you tomorrow'. And there are sad farewells when we know we will never see each other again. But no matter what kind of farewell it is, I want to believe that even if we can't see each other, even if death parts us, our feelings will never change...

-Mei, Itsudatte My Santa (film opening)

I believe that such quotes from films and other literary works are very common, and it is evident that the above quote is a quote of idealistic ontological love. Love entails unity, and farewells breaks the (materialistic) physical unity between two or more individuals; but we know that idealistic love (and the concept of idealism) transcends the parameters of physical space and time. In this case the proponent believes in an intuition that transcends the limits of ‘seeing’ (physical appearance) and ‘death’ (transition of circumstances). Henceforth, we can safely assume that should the above words be an accurate (more or less) conceptualization of the ontological sentiments felt by the proponent, that ontological sentiment is idealistic in nature.

It is also interesting to note that such idealistic love is commonly already referred to as a statement of ‘True Love’ or ‘unconditional love’ so as to speak. We know that a simple ‘I love you’ from a boyfriend to a girlfriend does not necessarily entail true love, for the fact that such love is not ‘eternal’ and might not withstand the tests of physicality, circumstantial transition (conditions), and death. Idealistic love, on the other hand, transcends passionate love, because since it cannot be created out of epistemological knowledge, it can only exist when some basis of passionate (materialistic) ontological love is already present. The layman has already assumed that the physical passion (materialistic ontology) behind such an idealistic statement is already true, and that ‘she had already actually fallen in love in him by the time she had made such a statement’.

Henceforth, since idealistic love has to be based on materialistic love for it to exist (there is no other way of epistemological creation), we commonly do away with the extra step of having to re-integrate idealistic love with materialistic love to form the ‘true love’ that we speak of. Strictly speaking, love can only be fully manifested (true love can only exist) when both idealistic and materialistic natures are encompassed within that unifying relationship itself. Most people do not recognize the idealistic nature of love, or misinterpret idealistic love to be epistemological love (since idealism stems from epistemology), and this is the fundamental reason why the layman observes that the world lacks ‘true love’.

The order of appearance of idealistic and materialistic love is still subjected to debate. The Christian Doctrine has it that love is a free act of the soul, and manifested by the body. While the soul is eternal and dimensional-less, bringing forth the idealistic nature of love that is not bounded (like the soul) by time and space; the body, on the other hand, realizes this idealistic love and manifests it. Others may construe that it is the influence of the human cognition (which understands epistemological idealistic concepts) to wish to preserve such ontological (materialistic) intuition beyond the decay of circumstance and transition, hence alluding the idealistic nature of love. But just as to the order of love to the neighbor or the self, we will not be concerned whether idealistic love came before materialistic love (or the other way around).

Now, we already know that much of this world lacks true love (which is also idealistic) due to the overemphasis of materialism and the self. The next question we would have to address would be on the reason of such- As stated by Rolheister, it is ultimately due to the biological evolution of genes that leads to ‘the survival of the fittest’, to affect our psychologies to ‘struggle to project image of calm, poise and easy accomplishment… where we never want to show signs of weakness, of being needy or lonely, of being ruffled and not perfectly in control.’ Rephrasing, we get to understand that it is the struggle for survival that compels the individual to tilt the balance of love away from the neighbor towards the self, and it is the need of evidential success that causes many to rely on materialism (physical results) rather than idealism, which they believe to be no more than empty castles in the air. As a result, many people emphasize overtly on the self, and fall into the fallacies of materialism and immediate gratification.

While materialism towards self-interest promotes success and power in life, the unifying concept of love is often misinterpreted to be a concept of dependence (since love is interpersonal), passion and weakness. Love is usually reserved for the religious humanist, as a projection of the weaker side of humanity to attenuate the harsh demands of natural selection and genetics, or to the ignorant teenage girl with her childish romance drama serials. As observed by Dawkins: the naturalistic world has no time for such childish ‘lets-pretend’ games such as true love, morality and God. To chomp or to be chomped at, that had been the essence of nature itself, let alone our futile struggles for meaning and equality…

Such has been the stereotypical views of love, that had led to the abandonment of love, and yet to another futility of human nature today. Materialism towards self-interest does bring about its fair share or benefits to ‘the living best’, but beyond the glory many have been seen to live ‘isolated, meaningless lives’. The initial logical aim of ‘earning money to live a successful life’ blurs when the definition of ‘success’ gets increasingly abstract, and soon warps to an aim of ‘earning money for the sake of earning more money’. At the end of the day, should one reflect upon his life on earth on Erikson’s seventh and eighth psychosocial crisis stagnation, disappointment and despair would be the only truths he would be bringing to his grave.

While ontological love is seen as a stumbling block on our quest for knowledge, achievement, power and success- it is in actual fact that such a unifying intuition is needed, on top of the epistemological domains of the individual and materialism, should we wish to truly flourish and live successful lives. From the discussion from the previous project, we know that truth is epistemological and ontological, and should we want to live our true ‘best’ we need to integrate the conviction of experience to the wisdom of theoretical dynamics. Also, we have to emphasize equally on the neighbor as of on the self. Naturally love, being a unifying ontological intuition has to be incorporated to the dynamics of our lives should we wish to go beyond the selfish reliance of epistemological materialism. The reasons for such are two-fold.

The first reason holds that while the materialistic epistemology tends to focus on the dynamics of life (i.e. the ‘how’ and ‘what’ of success and strength), intuition in general provides the personal conviction (in a form of feelings) to drive the dynamics of success and power. It is via the integration of both epistemological and ontological domains (see the Moderation Doctrine) can we fully realize the ‘what is’ and ‘why is’ to the given subject. This point is succinctly re-quoted as follows:

“One who does not know the power of love will eternally be unable to gain true power. Love itself is an entity that ought not to be mocked; for love entails conviction, and conviction entails the will of the soul. Dynamic power without will can never be truly powerful, and remains no more as idealistic theories and meaningless stances. To the dynamics of power must be added the conviction of love, can we then bring out the essence of true power and work.”

Christian doctrine, in this respect, holds that creation (work) was based on the dynamics of wisdom and the will (conviction) of love. It is of this reason why Christianity holds that ‘work is a manipulation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, done in the service (love) of the community, to build up the church- the body of Christ’.

The second reason would be the complementary doctrine of life. Recalling from above, many have viewed love as a form of dependence, acceptance and weakness- although such views are often misinterpreted to be weakness in general, we know that love as a form of unifying ontological intuition does require us to ‘hold our horses and rely on the map’. While our lofty epistemological aspirations on achievement and power allow us to forge new paths of improvement; the ontological respect of love reduces such ‘truths’ empirically back to the fundamentals of experience and intuitive feelings, and reduces the pride of personal accomplishment to the shared success of the community. Such reductions come in a form of appreciation of where we currently are, acknowledgement of others, and allow us to understand what we have yet to know or gain in our quest for perfection and success,

The complimentary doctrine holds that the journey of knowing (or success) can never complete unless one knows the distance left to go, as well as the distance already travelled. Indeed, personal identity can be deduced by an act of dissociation and mutual exclusion, but cannot be fully realized till we know who we really are. Similarly, success and power cannot be fully embraced via the logical ‘to do’ that epistemological materialism provides, but also require the intuitive appreciation that ontology (love) advocates. This can be re-quoted as follows:

Acceptance of one’s strength and weakness is mandatory for one to be truly powerful. It isn’t until you truly do attain infinite strength and wisdom you realize how impossible attaining it is. You will never understand in fullness what you can do, until you know what you are still unable to do. Strength without acceptance of weakness is a sham… and so is maturity without acceptance of childlike-ness… you may as well compare who’ll get the first pimple-

Yue Ayatse

Of course we do not go to such commanding extremes as both quotes have presented their conceptual equivalents (in a form of you), but we can see the prevalent underlying message throughout: that be it in a form of conviction, or a form of appreciation, ultimately love and its ontological qualities are essential should we wish true work to manifest or attain true success and power.

As a conclusion, we have discussed on the concepts of love and its significance to work, success and the ‘living best’. It would be here that I would leave you with the fundamental concepts prologue to the second installation of Project Re-Affirmation. In the next post we will dwell in greater detail into applied love and work, in the form of morality and ethics; to hopefully seek out the meaning behind these actions, and ultimately the meaning of life.

Project Re-Affirmation (Thought ) 2; Prologue - On Love and Work

This excerpt touches on concepts highlighted on the topic of truth, epistemology, ontology, materialism, idealism, personal identity, social identity and love. For clarity and comprehension, please read this excerpt after completing the entire faculty of ‘The living Best’.

“Man’s two greatest purpose of living is of work and love” – Sigmund Freud

From the topic of identity we get to see the nature of love. The passion of one’s interest derives from the love of oneself, and the love of oneself in turn derives from the love towards one’s neighbor. Love defines the identity, and brings about unity. It is from the concept of love that socialization can occur successfully, and from there we build up that faculty of Ethics and Morality. The question of ethics and morality leads to the significance of existence, which then leads to the question of meaning- to finally the universal question of a God, should He exist. We would leave such lofty topics to be addressed at a later point in time- in the meantime, let us focus in greater detail on the preclusions of ethics: namely Love and Work.

Love itself is ontological in nature, and no amount of theoretical (epistemological) knowledge can bring about the complete understanding of love as much as a moment of intuitive experience can provide. But even in its ontological discipline love is still materialistic and idealistic in nature. True love is idealistic, and passionate love is materialistic, and yet both aspects of love has to exist in harmony should that love be considered ‘true’. Now, it is understandable that certain people would regard idealistic love to be non-existent. Indeed, while it is simple to understand the concept of love via a passionate kiss or a hug, the ontology (experience) of love becomes harder when it is applied in idealistic terms. Do allow me to quote a phrase as analogy:

...There are easy farewells like 'see you tomorrow'. And there are sad farewells when we know we will never see each other again. But no matter what kind of farewell it is, I want to believe that even if we can't see each other, even if death parts us, our feelings will never change...

It is evident that the above quote is a quote of idealistic ontological love. Love entails unity, and farewells breaks the (materialistic) physical unity between two or more individuals. But we know that idealistic love transcends the parameters of physical unity, and in this case the proponent believes in an intuition that transcends the limits of ‘seeing’ and ‘death’. Also, we know that this love is not theoretical, because the intuitive passion that drives the above sentiment is ontological.

It is interesting that such is commonly referred to as a statement of ‘True Love’. Idealistic love of course, has to transcend passionate love, because since it cannot be created out of epistemological knowledge, it can only exist when some basis of passionate (materialistic) ontological love is present. The layman has already assumed that the physical passion (materialistic ontology) behind such an idealistic statement is already true, and that ‘she had already actually fallen in love in him by the time she had made such a statement’.

On the other hand, we know that a simple ‘I love you’ from a boyfriend to a girlfriend does not necessarily entail true love, for the fundamental fact that such love is not ‘eternal’ and might not withstand the tests of circumstance, transition and death. Strictly speaking, love can only be true (true love can only exist) when both idealistic and materialistic natures are encompassed within that unifying relationship itself. And since idealistic love entails passionate love, therefore such statements are usually considered statements of ‘true love’.

The Christian Doctrine has it that love is an enactment of the soul, manifested by the body. While the soul is eternal and dimensional-less, bringing forth the idealistic nature of love that is not bounded (like the soul) by time and space; the body, on the other hand, realizes this idealistic love and manifests it. Others may construe that it is the intuition of passion that leads the human cognition (which understands epistemological idealistic concepts) to allude the idealistic nature of love. Either way, we still get to see that both idealistic and passionate love is essential to exist for true love to exist.

Now, we know that much of this world lacks true love (which is also idealistic) due to the overemphasis of materialism and the self. As stated by Rolheister, it is ultimately due to the biological evolution of genes that leads to ‘the survival of the fittest’, to affect our psychologies to ‘struggle to project image of calm, poise and easy accomplishment… where we never want to show signs of weakness, of being needy or lonely, of being ruffled and not perfectly in control.’ As a result, we emphasize overtly on the self, and fall into the fallacies of materialism and immediate gratification.

On the other hand, the unifying concept of love is often misinterpreted to be a concept of dependence, passion and weakness. Love is usually reserved for the religious humanist, as a projection of the weaker side of humanity to attenuate the harsh demands of natural selection and genetics, or to the ignorant teenage girl with her love drama serials. As observed by Dawkins: the naturalistic world has no time for such childish ‘lets-pretend’ games such as true love, morality and God. To chomp or to be chomped at, that had been the essence of nature itself, let alone our futile struggles for meaning and equality… Such has been the stereotypical views of love, that had led to the abandonment of love, and yet to another futility of human nature today.

While love is seen as a stumbling block on our quest for knowledge, achievement and power- it is in actual fact that love is needed, on top of such epistemological demands, should we wish to flourish and live successful lives. Part 1 has it that truth is epistemological and ontological, and should we want to live our ‘best’ we need to integrate the conviction of experience to the wisdom of theoretical dynamics. Naturally, ontological love has to be incorporated to the dynamics of our lives should we wish to live truly. This is succinctly rephrased as follows:

“One who does not know the power of love will eternally be unable to gain true power. Love itself is an entity that ought not to be mocked; for love entails conviction, and conviction entails the will of the soul. Dynamic power without will can never be truly powerful, and remains no more as idealistic theories and meaningless stances. To the dynamics of power must be added the conviction of love, can we then bring out the essence of true power and work.”

Christian doctrine states that creation was based on the dynamics wisdom and the will of love.

Moreover, while our lofty epistemological aspirations on achievement and power allow us to forge new paths of improvement; the ontological respect of love reduces such ‘truths’ empirically back to the fundamentals of experience and intuitive feelings. Such reductions come in a form of appreciation of where we currently are, and allow us to know what we have yet know or gain in our quest for perfection and success, for:

Acceptance of one’s strength and weakness is mandatory for one to be truly powerful. It isn’t until you truly do attain infinite strength and wisdom you realize how impossible attaining it is. You will never understand in fullness what you can do, until you know what you are still unable to do. Strength without acceptance of weakness is a sham… and so is maturity without acceptance of childlike-ness… you may as well compare who’ll get the first pimple-

Of course we do not go to such commanding extremes as both quotes have presented their conceptual equivalents (in a form of you), but we can see the prevalent underlying message throughout: that ultimately love and its ontological qualities are essential should we wish true work to manifest or attain true success and power.

As a conclusion, we have discussed on the concepts of love and its significance to work, success and the ‘living best’. It would be here that I would leave you with the fundamental concepts prologue to the second installation of Project Re-Affirmation. In the next post we will dwell in greater detail into applied love and work, in the form of morality and ethics; to hopefully seek out the meaning behind these actions, and ultimately the meaning of life.

Topics Highlighted In Project RN (T)

Topics Discussed in Project RN (T)

Truth
- The natures of truth (objectivism and subjectivism)
- What truth encompasses of (Episte vs Onto, Mat vs Ideal)
-The advocates of objective truth (Science and Religion)
- Philosophy of Science
- Religious philosophy
- Causality & Free Will (How science & religion converges to objectivity)

The Moderation Doctrine
- Introduction
- The need of Logic
- Mainstream education (and its true aims)
- The Fallacies of Logic (logic failure, technicalities)
- Metaphysical Intuition
- Feelings and their weaknesses
- Life as an intuition (Library as an example)
- Intro to real and ideal
- Materialism and Idealism, good and bad
- The balance (the moderation)
- Introspection to various aphorisms

Identity
- Moderation and the MBTI test (The objective personality)
- What makes our personal identity? (Biology vs psychology)
- Qualitative consciousness (Erik's psychosocial crises)
- Social Identity
- Love and the community (how love truly came about)
- Loving thy neighbor as thyself
- The imbalanced love (narcissism and de-individualization)

- The living best
- Summary of concepts touched

Patch 1.1: Our take on truth

In the original discussion, the transition from Truth to the Moderation Doctrine had been a rather 'big' jump. While the concepts addressed in part 1 focus greatly on objectivity and subjectivity, part 2 suddenly jumps to the concepts of logic, intuition, Materialism and Idealism. This is owing to an inadequate address of the concepts between 'truth' and 'the Moderation Doctrine'. This excerpt is created independently to patch the conceptual information between part 1 and part 2. I hope that with this excerpt, we would have a better understanding of ourselves and truth.


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Truth is independent of the human cognition… We would have to correspond subjectivity with objectivity, lest we live in falsity.

In the last excerpt we have seen the nature of truth. We know that truth is independent of us, and that it is us that are dependent on truth instead, since we exist and are true beings. We also see a need to correspond our subjective beliefs to the objective truth should we not want to live in falsity or relativism. The human correspondence of the objective truth lies in knowledge.

Knowledge is defined in this context as the ‘justified true belief’. In this excerpt, we will attempt to explore our take (knowledge) of truth, on what we have understood, and what is implied. We would then highlight certain aspects of truth, and reserve them for a more detailed discussion in our later posts to see how these aspects affect our lives and beings.


1) Objectivity and Subjectivity

Humans have long acknowledged the existence of an objective truth since the dawn of civilization. The Greeks have come up, one after another, different theories on truth. Parmenides of Elea had personally noted in his poem ‘The way of Truth’ that reality is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform and unchanging (absolutism). Heraclitus on the other hand, believes that truth was dynamic owing to the ever-changing nature of the universe (dynamic objectivity). It is interesting to note that many of these Greek philosophers advocated to the objective nature of truth, and associated the subjective belief of the individual as the correspondent of the objective truth.

The Jews, on the other hand, believed that Abraham was a monotheist ( a person who believes in an objective God) who arrived to this conclusion on purely philosophical grounds before receiving any prophetic revelation from God Himself. It was from this biblical philosophy that the existence of an Objective God had been realized; the Christian world in this way had stemmed out of Judaism- with an added biblical passage of Christ being ‘the way, the truth, and the life’. The Christian world eluded that since God is objective, henceforth His creation (being a subset of him) must be also true and holds objective characteristics.

It was from the combination of these two ancient philosophies that had strongly influenced much of western philosophy today. Just as the monotheist Abraham and the philosophies of Parmenides and Heraclitus on the objective nature of truth, western philosophy acknowledges very much in general the existence of objectivity today- known more classically as ‘realism’ and ‘nominalism’, realism is the doctrine that abstract entities corresponding to universal terms like 'man' have a real existence via the branches of philosophy known as metaphysics and in specific ontology. It is opposed to nominalism, the view that abstract or universal terms are words only, or denote mental states such as ideas, beliefs, or intentions.

While ‘realism’ and ‘nominalism’ are the more formal definitions of the concept of metaphysical objectivity and subjectivity, the conceptual representations of these words are often ambiguous and may constitute to other unintended doctrines, for the sake of clarity and unifications, we would be using ‘objectivity’ and ‘subjectivity’ instead of ‘realism’ and ‘nominalism’ throughout this project.


2) Epistemology and Ontology

Philosophy today is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, law, justice, validity, mind and language. Of philosophy, all these theoretical studies would be generally constituted under the branch of epistemology, or ‘the theory of knowledge’. Epistemology is generally concerned with the nature and scope of human knowledge, with much of its contents on knowing, belief, truth and justification. A branch of philosophy based on pure reason, the concepts of epistemology overlap with that of Rationalism, Pragmatism, Idealism, and Logic (I will dwell into these concepts in due time). Epistemology holds that knowledge is correspondent to the objective truth of the world, and that this knowledge is acquired either via Pragmatic Rationalism (theoretically), or via (formal) Empiricism (experientially). Do note that Rationalism is conceptually synonymous with Pragmatism and is founded under the Epistemology. Empiricism, on the other hand, would be classified under another branch of philosophy known as Ontology.

Ontology in philosophy is the study of nature of being (experiencing), existence and reality in general. While epistemology advocates the theoretical study of knowledge of truths, ontology holds that knowledge (and truths) can be acquired experientially, and this act is formally known as Empiricism. Ontology forms up the basis of the Metaphysics we know of today, and serves as a conceptual predecessor of Intuition, Materialism and intuitive feelings that we know of today.

It must be understood that since the human knowledge is taken to be the subjective correspondent of the objective truth ( see objectivism and subjectivism), it is logical to see that all truths within this world are learnt Epistemologically and Ontologically. The study of Ontology definitely scopes to the ‘experiential’, ‘ontological’ nature of knowledge, yet we know that this study is impossible without any form of ‘epistemological theory’. The human being requires derivatives of both concepts of knowledge acquisition to formulate and correspond his subjective beliefs to that of the objective truth- the synthesis of both ‘theory’ and ‘experience’ forms the rationalism that we know of today. I will dwell deeper into the conceptual derivatives of Epistemology and Ontology in the Moderation Doctrine and identity. But at the very least, we know for a fact that we ‘involved’ with both concepts should we want to understand more about truth, and the truth of ourselves.


3) Idealism and Materialism

Idealism is the epistemological doctrine that nothing can be directly known outside of the minds of thinking beings, it holds that while truth exists, it is only understood by the human being through ‘cognitive ideas’ or ‘abstract concepts’. Materialism (sometimes used in conjunction with ‘realism’) states that the only truth that can be truly proven to exist is matter (or the state of actual being). In other words, materialism holds that all truths are ‘physically real’ and can be acquired through ontological experience. As a theory, Materialism opposes Idealism and belongs to the class of monist ontology.

While Idealism and Materialism can be said to be the derivative concepts of Epistemology and Ontology respectively (see above), it must be understood that while truth (and the human perception of truth) is Epistemological and Ontological, it is also equally Idealistic and ‘Realistic’ in essence. We know that some truths can only by conceptualized and never put into the ‘material’ world, we also know that some states of being can never be fully broken down with concepts. Ideal gases and the concepts of zero and infinity are just an example of idealism, indeed- we can ‘experience’ the truth of these concepts in the ontological world, but these concepts itself cannot be adequately represented by sticks, stones, or gas particles. I will also discuss this in greater detail in my later excerpts.


4) Other concepts

Of course there are other aspects of philosophy that we do not have the time to cover in detail, and there other concepts i.e. Judgment, Existentialism and Multiplicity that we have yet to address. These concepts are usually derivative in nature from these six parent concepts, and their conceptual equivalent would be appropriately highlighted from time to time should the opportunity and need arises to address these concepts.


The above mentioned concepts would be, in summary, our take on truth. While truth exists objectively and independently of the human cognition, when we realize truth, or are in a state of knowing, truth becomes sub-categorized into a spectrum between Epistemology and Ontology, and Between Idealism and Materialism. I will dwell into greater detail the entailment of these concepts in my second part on the Moderation Doctrine to see how these abstract concepts are re-presented into more familiar concepts that we know of today, and how they form to become building blocks of our identity. In the next excerpt I would dwell in slight detail onto the advocators of truth, namely that of science and religion, and see how these two proponents come to be humanity’s two greatest form of address to this infinitely abstract concept that is simultaneously real at the same time.

Patch 1.1: On Truth - Does Truth Exist?

Guys, when I initially formulated the concepts of truth there are certain elements that may still be slightly inaccurate or inadequately addressed. This patch is basically a re-written version of my earlier posts, except that the information is now much more accurate and objective. The Patch would mostly be centered on the topic of Truth and parts of The Moderation Doctrine. The topic of Identity is generally accurate as of today, but I would still edit it if I find it to be unsatisfactory in the future.

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And what is truth? Pilate asked

Truth, or at least the concept of absolute truth, is paradoxically never absolute and host to a variety of meanings. Truth ranges from honesty, good faith, and sincerity in general, to agreement with fact or reality in particular. Up to this very day, there is no single definition of truth that a majority of professional philosophers and scholars agree, and the differing claims on related questions as what constitutes truth, how to identify truth, and whether truth is subjective, relative, objective or absolute has led many people today to have very differing conceptualizations on this concept.

Of the concept of truth, a key aspect that we would be paying very close attention to today would be the nature of truth itself. While the question of what constitutes truth can be debated to a myriad of issues ranging from the relativity of the human will to the objectivity of God, or the theories of truth range from the correspondence theory of absolute truth to the pragmatic theory of being truth; the nature of truth is generally split down into two factions. Most of the theories postulated by philosophers and theologians have their groundings somewhere within these two factions; and it is from the identification of these two factions that any form of philosophical debate or knowledge and proceed. These two factions are the objective (absolute), and subjective (relative) nature of truth.

The first faction of objectivity recognizes that there is indeed an absolute truth universally that is independent of the mind, or that is not the result of any judgments made by a conscious entity. Objectivity renders that truths are discovered rather than created, and proposes that when a conscious entity ‘discovers’ this truth with either epistemologically (theory of knowledge) or ontologically (experiencing and sensing), it is actually the correspondence theory of truth at work to correspond the entity’s subjective knowledge to the objective knowledge of truth.

Correspondence theory holds that true beliefs and true statements (made by the entity) correspond to the actual (objective) state of affairs. It operates on the assumption that truth is a matter of accurately copying the ‘objective reality’ and then representing it in thoughts, words and other symbols. Take for example a student makes a statement that two plus two equals four. The student would be rendered correct no matter where he makes this statement, and his proposition would hence be considered true. Correspondence theory states that this is because the statement of the student (subjective entity) corresponds to an objective truth that two plus two equals four. The objective truth that two plus two equals four is independent the perception of the student’s mind, lest any human being or conscious entity before the student.

Do take note that objectivism should not be confused with absolutism, although both concepts are similar in nature. Objectivism states that an absolute truth exists, and that this truth is independent of the human cognition; absolutism on the other hand, adds on and proposes that this truth is timeless and unchanging in quality. Do note that some objective truths may change over time due to the change in system of the universe (i.e. the universe is expanding or contracting), and that absolutism- being generally advocated by ancient Greek philosophers, who believed in a static universe, is a fallible theory today.

Subjectivity, on the other hand- holds that any philosophical or moral question has an answer that is not falsifiable, and henceforth is subjective to the individual cognition. When used in the context of truth, a subjective fact is one that is only true under certain conditions, at certain times, in certain places or for certain people; and this in turn is subjected to a certain perspective or opinion.

Do take note that just as how Objectivism has to be distinguished from absolutism despite their similar nature, Subjectivity too has to be distinguished from relativism. While relativism denies the existence of an objective truth, and the relativist argues that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or culture, subjectivism refers to the specific discerning interpretations of any aspect of objective experiences. Known more formally as qualia subjectivity, it states that experience, since being unique to the person experiencing, the qualia that are only available to that person’s consciousness. Though the causes of experience are objective and available to all, experience themselves are only available to the subject, and henceforth make truth subjective in nature.

Summarizing, metaphysical subjectivism holds that the truth or falsity of all propositions depends, at least partly, on what we believe. In contrast, metaphysical objectivism holds that truths are independent of our beliefs. Except for propositions that are actually about our beliefs or sensations, what is true or false is independent of what we think is true or false.

From the above, we can see that truth is generally distinct into the objectivity of absolute truths, and subjective to the individual human experience and cognition, with the correspondence theory of truth acting as a primary bridge between these two faculties of truth. Either way, we see that truth exists, and its reality transcend our primitive view of an idealistic concept way beyond our grasp. Every idealistic belief, physical experience, logical thought, and intuitive feeling (I will dwell in greater detail on these four concepts in my second part on the Moderation Doctrine) is also part of truth- and just because it is subjective it does not mean it is untrue.

Now, where are we leading ourselves to? An acknowledgement of truth in general (since we are realists), automatically entails objectivity and subjectivity- and all the other daughter concepts that go along the same lines we cannot afford to dwell too deeply into today. And it is essential to note that we cannot side one over another should we want to be realists and maintain our individuality (to be dealt in the topic of Identity). Much as all of reality (including us) is subjected to truth, we cannot be slaves to truth by siding unconditionally with the objective truth, neither can we be strict relativists and warp reality itself to our personal viewpoints, as demonstrated by the relativist constructivist theory of truth. Therefore the least we can do is to acknowledge the existence of an objective truth, and ‘live’ this objectivity with our own subjective experiences. We would also have to correspond subjectivity with objectivity, lest we do not live in falsity.

But why do we correspond subjectivity to objectivity? Why not the other way around? The relativist believes that there is objective truth, and what he believes he deems as truth (right). Morality is highly subjective, and so are ethics and the meaning of life. What if this extrapolates and we find that nothing is in fact objective? What if the world and the universe is actually a matter of perception, our perception, and henceforth relative to our personal interpretation?

Now, we have to understand that while objectivism proposes that truth is independent of the human cognition, it is truth that truth does not revolve around the individual. Our universe was created not out of the subjective human will, but objectively- with a whole set of objective physical and mathematical laws that have existed way beyond the appearance of human beings. And it is precisely in this way that truth cannot be created by human perception simply because it existed before the existence of the human perception. As Pascal has addressed us to be no more than the imbecile worms of the universe, we cannot possibly expect the universe to rotate around the world, lest on our individual selves. Henceforth it is objectively incorrect to subject objectivity to objectivity, and henceforth the other way around.

Moreover the relativist, strictly speaking, does not have the entitlement to maintain his viewpoint of objectivity to subjectivity, even if he were to adopt such a stand. For on what grounds can he stand by his truthful ideals (or so he believes) to convince others if he truly believes that truth is no more than a relative personal viewpoint? Otherwise known as the relativist fallacy, this fallacy applies when the proponent is unable to make a definite stand that nothing is definite (his beliefs) simply because he believes that nothing is definite, and for the fundamental reason because he cannot contradict himself.

The relativistic world would hence be a world devoid of objectivity, of objective ideals, and where individual ideas would be kept to oneself. Such a world would not see truth, beauty, and goodness, and progress- for progress for one may be regress to another, and beauty to one be ugliness to another. Such a world would be inconceivable, and definitely very far off from our current system.


Therefore in general, we have identified the validity of truth- and the existence of objectivity and subjectivity. We see that truth is objective and subjective simultaneously- and it is in our objective knowledge and subjective experiences that we get to live and understand this truth that we speak. We also get to understand that objectivity transcends subjectivity, for the fundamental fact that truth has existed before us. In the next post I will discuss in detail the fundamental concepts of truth, and its application to our lives namely in the concepts of the epistemological human knowledge and the ontological human experience.

Technical information:

Campaign Re-affirmation
Project Re-affrimation (Thought) a.k.a. Project RN(T)
The Series of Discussions
The first version (V1.0)

Date initiated: 21st december 2008
First post: 11th Janurary 2009
Concluding post: 16th April 2009
Time span: circa. 95 days
Total number of posts: 26

A catalogue of this project is available on demand for personal reference.

Current status: patching The Series of Discussions (V1.1)
Postualted actions: re-writing Project RN (T) to Thesis standards (V2.0) or Engaging in Project T to carry on from True Identity to The Meaning of Life and God.

The Living best

What is the essence of moderation? A life of moderation creates a life where we may totally integrate our identities to a point that we are truly being ourselves at no expense of our relationship with others… and when we can truly 'live' to be our 'best'.

The Moderation Doctrine, an Introduction- Response

A meaningful life, must involve worthwhile activities or projects that enable us to flourish as human beings. Such flourishing requires the development of our human capacities for feeling and reason: it involves cultivating the faculties that allow sympathetic emotional interaction and open rational dialogue with our fellow humans.

The Meaning of Life, on the living best.


The living best, so as to speak, is an objective idealistic goal that many have attempted to seek out. As the title suggests, this concept if primarily aimed for the ‘best’ method to ‘live’ our lives; or in other words, that method of ‘perfecting’ our lifestyles. While we understand that there is indeed no definite answer to fully address the objectively appropriate method owing to the fact that we can never achieve idealistic perfection, we have to understand that that definite answer exists and is waiting to be uncovered. We know that there are certain lifestyles that have more value than others- we know for a fact that a simple lifestyle of love and pursuit of knowledge is ‘better’ than one of drugs and alcohol consumption. If we were to extrapolate these lifestyles and compare every available lifestyle back to back, it is true that although we cannot live that objective lifestyle of perfection, we can definitely see a trend of the ‘better’ towards the objective perfect.

But why tend to the living best? We have to realize that amongst the relativism and subjectivity of this world there is always an objective truth to issues. Of course the objective truth to complex issues such as moral decisions and particular choices is obscured; and reliance of our ethics, meaning of life, individuality, and personal doctrines are required. But even these ethics, meanings, and personal beliefs that we advocate to stem from our basic identities (be it nature or nurture of our biologics and psychologies). Over the past series of posts we have demonstrated that there is indeed an objective make up of our true identity, so if there is indeed an objective idealistic make up of ourselves, there ought to be objectivity beyond the threshold of the united self, or our true identities.

Atheists and Theists alike have been seeking that objectivity beyond the united self to find the objective truth to the purpose of our existence. Otherwise known as the grand quest for ‘the meaning of life’, this faculty in our theory of knowledge is still very subjective in nature and is open for debate. The atheist believes that humans are free to expand on their domain as long as it’s within the laws of nature and human ethics; the theist, on the other hand, corresponds that objectivity to that of the objectivity of God, or the divine plan. As quoted:

For the theist, the journey that meets these conditions will be the journey of the individual soul towards God; others may construe the journey in less metaphysical terms- as a journey towards enlightenment, or as a quest to realize what is best and noblest in our nature. These ways of characterizing the journey all converge on the premise that there are objective values.

As for now, we can safely assume that most of the debate prior the united self are more or less rendered objective as far as the theory of human knowledge is concerned, and issues beyond the united self still open to subjectivity and much debate. This project acknowledges and touches on what is objective in life, and it is because of this reason why this project ends with the united self.

While the ‘living best’ does not denote our outlooks to life or confer a divine plan that we should adhere to truly be, it is true that the ‘living best’ demonstrate that our lives are built on a simple set of ideals, and it is from the correct manipulation of these ideals (of logic, intuition, material, ideals, the individual and the community) that we get the objective answer to the workings of our lives. The ‘living best’ has to be coupled with the ‘Meaning of Life’ for us to truly be in sacrosanct. I would leave the personal interpretation of the ‘Meaning of Life’ to our subjective viewpoints, but the least we can do in the time being is to acknowledge on what is objectively good, and strive to that perfection that we have objectively pointed out. That is why we want to tend to the ‘living best’, and that is why this project exists.

Recapping, we have identified various fundamental ideals that form the basis of our existence. We, being true, embody the concepts of objectivity, subjectivity, epistemology and ontology. And it is from these abstract concepts that form the four fundamental factors of our being- Logic, Intuition, Material and Ideal. If we were to look at ourselves once more, we find out that everything we know of has its corresponding placing and values with these factors. It is the integration of logic and intuition that makes our psyche, and the integration of Material and Ideal that makes our personal identity.

Since these four fundamentals stem from the parent concept of Truth, equal emphasis has to be placed on them should we wish to live our true selves. From this premise, the moderation doctrine is hence formed- to balance and moderate personal emphasis on logical thought and intuitive feelings, and from what is material from ideal. We get to understand what it means to be rational, and since we are rational we ought to live our lives rationally by integrating logical thought with intuitive experiences. We get to see that the integration of the four would lead to a personality that balances itself in the MBTI test, this balanced personality is objective, and from there we transit on to identity.

With the knowledge of what is objectively appropriate for our personalities we then dwell into the dynamics of our personal identity. The moderation doctrine creates a conscious personality that is all rounded in both logic and intuition, material and ideal. And it is from this conscious effort that is subconsciously repressed to form our full personalities that others get to see. Coupled with our biological makeup, this forms the objective individual identity. But we know even the best personal identity we have yet to live the best way of life, we know that life is not all about the individual, but individuals that make up the community. We then seek out a final integration from our personal selves and our social selves, to find out that this integration can only be made true with love.

As we place together the final pieces of that jigsaw puzzle that makes up our life, we see that the living best that we seek can only be realized only when we be what we were originally meant to be. Be it objective in our attitude in everything that we do, balanced in our outlooks to life, and social without compromise of retaining our individuality. This has always been the moral of the story many a layman has taught us even before this project is even conceived, and this project has served no more as a re-affirmation to the aphorisms and existing teachings that our mentors have offered through life experience and wisdom.

And henceforth the name Project Re-affirmation.

As I have stated earlier, the objective ideals of the ‘living best’ have allowed to see the objective method of living our lives- but it still does not serve fully to ensure the perfect life that we truly seek and that religion claims to have already sought out. The least we can do today is to know that every thought, every feeling, every action, decision that we do to ourselves and our neighbors are accounted for and objectively moderated as how it was meant to be. Till the day we find the objective answer to the ‘Meaning of Life’ and integrate this higher knowledge with what we know today, then can we truly find that complete user’s manual that comes with life to teach us how to truly live our lives and be ourselves through and through.

Interlude: From Truth to us

Attached is an overview of the concepts discussed since the very first post of Project Re-affirmation. The areas highlighted in blue are the faculties (Truth, Moderation, Identity) where the concepts lie.

On Identity - thy neighbour and thyself

Paradoxically, it is only from the love of our neighbors that we truly learn how to learn how to love ourselves.

The conceptual aspects of personal representations and interpersonal relationships are the two key factors of our sense of social identity. The first concept of personal representations, or Gesellschaft as postulated by Tonnies, touches on our need of integration and fulfillment of needs. The second concept of interpersonal relationships, or Germeinschaft, states that our need of social integration is for membership and shared emotional connection- with these being the partial concepts of love.

Of course when I speak of social identity, I do not merely restrict it to the mere involvement of the group and the ‘community’; in this context, I would wish to expand this concept of social identity to the identities that are conferred to ourselves when we partake in society in general. From the working mother to the basketball team player, from the retro-junkie to the nineteen year old girlfriend, these ‘roles’ that we play are all part of the social identity that has been conferred to us by others- be it a child, a boyfriend, a basketball team or our society.

If we are to take a step further back, we can see that when we be that mother or that basketball player, that junkie or that girlfriend, it is ultimately for our personal interests and for love of the community (or just the love of the other individual). In the previous posts I have argued that love is indispensible even if involvement in the community is seemingly for personal interests. From there we allude that the love actually stems from the love of the community, or the love of one’s neighbor.

What does this lead to? I do not intend to be idealistic about such issues, but the conclusions are as follows:

We are who we are (personal identity) and who we are perceived to be (social identity).
Love is the primary reason (why) and action mechanism (what) of our social identity.
From our social identity we reaffirm our personal identities and learn about ourselves.
Hence, from the love of our neighbors we learn to love ourselves.

But as for today, we must understand that it would be irrelevant to dwell excessively into the order of appearance of love. Indeed, it is initially from our identification and emotional connection with others we get to distinguish the objective ideals of our personality; but it is from our personal distinguishments and personal representations that we partake in further communal activities with our neighbors. Perhaps there is an objective truth that the chicken came before the egg (or the other way around), but beyond the initial recognition, we must know that it is equally essential for the chicken, and the egg, to exist simultaneously should the life cycle continue to be. Be it the neighbor before the self, or the other way around as some may wish to argue- the love for either of these two categories cannot take presidency on one over the other owing to their order. This love must be equal in magnitude and value. As embodied by the teachings of Christ: love thy neighbor as thyself.

If we are to take concept of love as a form of union (this approach is embodied by Christianity), we see that as much as we are in union with others, we be in union with ourselves.

Now, how do the problems of de-individualization, masking, selfishness and narcissism arise? On closer scrutiny, we find out that these issues actually arise primarily out of the imbalance of love of one aspect over the other. De-individualization and ‘masking’ occurs generally when social identity or the obsessive love for thy neighbor overwrites and undermines the personal love and identification of the individual self. Selfishness and narcissism arises usually when self interests come before the necessary identification and love for and from thy neighbor.

In the previous post I have made a very slight acknowledgement of narcissism in the argument of self interest being the holistic reason of social identification. As we read that paragraph (once more), intuitively, we immediately form an impression that such people who argue as such are most probably self-centered and narcissistic. This is in line with the argument today because in both cases, the emphasis (resulting from the identification, and in turn from the love) on the self outweighs that of the neighbor. I do not wish to dwell overtly into this issue today; ethics has taught us more than enough on such issues, and I believe that all of us are responsible enough to recognize the importance of the neighbor as much as the importance of the self.

Instead, I would like to focus our attention to the issues of de-individualization and ‘masking’. These two issues are commonly faced by many people today, be it the teenager attempting to find his individuality among his peers, or the office worker struggling to be a competitive colleague and a loving father simultaneously. But yet society has yet to address such issues adequately as how it had tackled the former with ethics and morality. From our general knowledge, we know that the mass media has enslaved the masses to a mindless subjugation of whatever the media has to offer. We know that our youths ‘lose’ themselves in the groups they partake and the ‘youth culture’ they follow, which actually happens to too be partially the working of the media.

In sociological terms, de- individualization occurs where the individual is totally immersed within the group and no longer functions as an individual but as a group entity. This increases responses to the situation and leads to a loss of normal inhibition of behavior which may cause a person, acting with the group, to engage in anti-normative behaviors. Indeed, our society has not placed much attention on this issue primarily because although it diminishes personal identity, it allows easy control and manipulation and has its fair share of benefits, as stated succinctly:

De-individuation weakens people against performing harmful or socially disapproved actions.
De-individuation heightens peoples’ responsiveness to external cues, which may be positive (or negative).
De-individuation increases people’s adherence to norms that emerge with the group.

Indeed, it may be perfectly fine to lose one’s sense of personal identity over one’s social roles and responsibility. As far as society itself is concerned, as long as the individual does not create disorder for the community (or be a disorder to himself so much that it affects the community), there should be little problem for de-individualization and ‘masking’ (a sub-problem of de-individualization) to occur.

However we have to remind ourselves that life, as nature has created it to be biologically, is structured to diversify. The simple fundamental reason for heterosexual reproduction, and the concept of forming a completely unique DNA (that forms our personal identity) out of two different existing set of DNA, is to ensure personal identity for every individual. Be it the religious reason of God wanting each and every one of us to be unique, or the secular reason for the prevention of cloning and its disadvantages (that one virus can wipe out humanity); either way, it is evident that we were made to be individuals as much as we were made to be social. And since true identity (the united self) comprises to both aspects, it is imperative that should we wish to seek out the objective living best of our lives, we have to identify, and ‘love’ our neighbor just as how we identify and ‘love’ ourselves.

We now know that love has to be incorporated for identification to truly manifest. This is the reason on why professor Morrie had stated that in a tension of the opposites, love always wins. Be it for the self or for the neighbor, that balance of love is essential should we make the moral choices of following our personal identities or our social identities. This is owing to the fundamental fact that our identities are formed from the premise of love. And hence should we attempt make a decision, and should we wish to be ourselves all the way, it is imperative that we make this decision by love- to ourselves, or to our neighbors.

At this point in time I believe that I have made a holistic address on the topic of our identity. I have touched on the fundamentals of our personal identity: that our consciousness depends on the moderation of the four factors (logic intuition material and ideal), to interplay with our subconscious to form our psyche. With the combination of our psyche with our biologics, our personal identities are formed- to be realized only with the integration of our social identities on the aspect of love. And just as we are made for union (intercourse), we have been created unique individuals (genetics). The true identity, or the united self, would be an identity comprising of all of the above- with equal emphasis, identification, and love on the neighbor as of on the self.

It is from here I would leave you with the objective identity- and the pre-requisites of the ‘living best’ that we speak of. My next post would be a short address on the Meaning of Life- I would attempt to be as objective on my address on this issue as I can be, but nevertheless we must understand that from this point onwards most of the concepts raised would be essentially subjective in nature. I personally hope that all of us, now with the knowledge of our true identities and the fundamentals to the ‘living best’, attempt to live this ‘living best’ with our knowledge of the Meaning of Life, and from then onwards be ourselves, with or without this project.

On Identity - the individual and the community

The community, as we understand it to be, is an interdisciplinary concept that is very abstract in nature. Shared by the disciplines of biology, sociology, psychology and anthropology- even these disciplines themselves have yet to reach agreement on a definite definition of the term. Dictionary has eluded that concept to the concepts of ‘group’, ‘similarity’, and ‘togetherness’, but biologists tend to further define it to be the group of interacting organisms sharing an environment. Sociologists traditionally understand the ‘community’ to a group of interacting people living in a common location, but with the advent of the internet geography no longer poses a limitation to the concept today. Psychologists identified four distinct elements from ‘communal identity’- namely: membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection. Anthropologists tend to limit the community to ‘settlements’ and ‘culture’.

While these definitions are diverse and infinite, certain definitions tend to overlap and re-iterate themselves. One of the more notable conceptual definitions of the community is the address on personal and communal individuality within the group. Shared by the disciplines of sociology and psychology, this introspective tends to understand the community as a system of personal representations and interpersonal relationships.

German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies distinguishes two types of human association within any community. Known to him as Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, Tonnies argues that ‘family’, ‘Kinship’ and ‘ideals’ comprise of the Gemeinschaft while Gesellschaft is a group in which individuals who make up that group are motivated to take part in the group purely by self interest. These two ideas are shared by Mc Millan and Chavis, who spearheaded the psychological understanding of ‘community’. They believed that the motivation was sparked by influence, the need of integration and fulfillment of needs, and sustained through the ‘kinship’ of membership and shared emotional connection. As exemplified:

Someone puts an announcement on the dormitory bulletin board about the formation of an intramural dormitory basketball team. People attend the organizational meeting as strangers out of their individual needs (integration and fulfillment of needs). The team is bound by place of residence (membership boundaries are set) and spends time together in practice (the contact hypothesis). They play a game and win (successful shared valent event). While playing, members exert energy on behalf of the team (personal investment in the group). As the team continues to win, team members become recognized and congratulated (gaining honor and status for being members). Someone suggests that they all buy matching shirts and shoes (common symbols) and they do so (influence)

It is understood that there is no particular order of the elements.

While the first idea of personal representation is synonymous to the concept of personal identity manifestation, and this is in line with Gesellschaft, ‘influence’ and ‘fulfillment of needs’; we can see that this need for integration is personal and logic orientated. On the other hand, we get to see that the second understanding of interpersonal relationships (Gemeinschaft/ membership/ shared emotional connection) as a foreclosure to ‘sense of community’ is a concept that alludes to one of ‘love’ and ‘intuitive emotions’. Indeed, when we tone down these complex ideas postulated by sociologists and psychologists, we get a very concise and summarized statement:

The community, or the sense of community within the individual, is founded from two primary (and inter-linked) elements- namely for 1) personal interests, and 2) for love and belonging.

In the last post we have made light on the concept of social identity and its relevance to our individualities. We have touched in considerable detail on the possible contradictions of social expectation and personal aspiration and concluded that simple moderation is inadequate a technique should we attempt to find our objective selves and the ‘living best.’ We also understood that love is essential should we attempt to find and integrate our individualities with society. Today, I shall attempt to make the connection between the self, the community, the identity and love.

Do pause for a moment to re-consider the concept of ‘personal identity’ and its relevance to our ‘objective identity’ (or our full identities as of today). Personal identity tells us more about our biological makeup, our personal character, and the way we perceive things around us (via our thoughts and feelings at the changing world). But as I had iterated it is seemingly irrelevant to our well-being; for that is no more than for your personal reference and understanding. I had given a light-hearted example of ‘knowing the nineteen year-old girlfriend’ to highlight this point in my last post. But the essence of this point is that it’s fact that even our personal identities cannot be manifested unless there is someone else (different) to re-affirm our personal individuality.

Consider this thought experiment: imagine you are living in a world exactly identical to this world we are living in. All the buildings in this world are present in that imaginary world, in perfect order and structure- and the same applies for all the flora and fauna of this world. The only difference is in the imaginary world, you are the only person living there. Then one day you ask yourself this question: who am I? You immediately dwell into the concept of personal identity of what you think of the buildings and the flora and fauna and the weather, and you look at your own body to distinguish yourself as a ‘thing’ with a pair of arms and legs. But how do you know these thoughts and feelings make you, you? The only sense of identity awareness is probably you sitting there and considering your existence in that imaginary world. You would not even for a fact that you are a human being unless you’ve seen another human being before- and even that act of seeing and associating, requires sociological identification and emotional connection.

Indeed, the identification for oneself can only realize only after we have associated ourselves with others. Our unique characteristics- our interests, our agendas, thoughts and feelings remain no more as idealistic concepts unless we are able to act upon. Our subjective truths cannot be objective unless there is a form of re-affirmation and correspondence; which in this case, lies in the identification of the ‘others’.

Now that we have understood the essence of sociology and its relevance to our identities, we look back at what we have discussed earlier- immediately, we see that all types of human association are for the primary purpose of personal interests and for love and belonging. Integrating all of these together, we find out that it is actually precisely on the points of personal interest and love and belonging we have actually built our personal identities upon. Without love or the manifestation of our personal interests, we would be just like inhabitant(s) of that imaginary world- soulful, but identity-less.

But why for love and belonging? A personal sense of community entirely out of selfish personal interest may possibly suffice and manifest adequately our personal identities to the point of self-recognition. Alternatively, an identity formed out of hate and mutual exclusion could be founded too- perhaps in the imaginary world we do not need to associate with another human being to know who we are, perhaps the alternative solution is to de-associate with all the animals in that world and shrink down our possibilities to the ‘last option standing’. Analogous to ‘striking out incorrect answers in a multiple choice question to the last available option’, we could still find out our objective identities, without love-

Now, if we were to look back to the dictionary, we also get to see that the concept of ‘togetherness’ is incorporated into the concept of the ‘community’. It is notable that even within the concept of ‘togetherness’, a certain conceptual allusion of ‘unity’ and ‘positive relationship’ is evident throughout. It is even more notable that when the partial concepts of ‘unity’ and ‘positive relationship’ are integrated with ‘togetherness’ and embodied by the individual to his personal viewpoint, it in actual fact is re-represented by the concept of ‘love’. I am positive that we are all familiar to the layman’s aphorism “love unites”; we also know that the concept of love transcends the superficiality of romance and passion. Putting it in a much generalized form, we can say that any form of ‘unity’ between two or more individuals already has a partial concept of ‘love’ within the attachment.

Moreover, while Tonnies had formed the theory of the Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, he had proposed that in the real world, no group was either pure Gemeinschaft or pure Gesellschaft, but, rather, a mixture of the two. Integrating once more, we see that the concept of love (or the partial concept of it in the form of unity) is in every case indispensible in any community. Indeed, we may join a certain community for a particular personal interest, but the concept of personal interest requires a ‘love’ in certain traits of oneself, and we know that it is impossible to love without prior personal identification of the traits of oneself, which requires a sort of ‘positive relationship’ with the prior community. In either equation, we can never escape the requirement of love with the communities we are engaged in. Of course we can maintain that we never loved the previous community but the actions of the previous community; that would now be a question of narcissism, but I believe that is already beside the point.

The concepts of love, unity, self, community and identity are interlinked and come hand in hand. We know from our previous posts that personal identity, although meaningless without social re-affirmation, contributes greatly to our individualities (or what I term as the united self). Personal identity distinguishes us from our peers, while social identity re-affirms our distinguish-ments. We know now that love for oneself can only be true after the realization of others, and that social attachment entails love and belonging. In the next and final post on identity, we’ll have a glimpse of the problems of over emphasis of social identity over personal identity: de-individualization and ‘masking’. We’ll attempt to integrate both ‘identities’ with the same concept of love, and from there find the living best as we speak of today.