Perhaps the Meaning of Life

An adventure in pluralistic morality.

Sept. 18, 2002

"All models are wrong but some are useful."
--George Box

At the core of every controversial issue, institutional dysfunction and inspiring human achievement is the conspicuous influence of how well a society of people “get along”. Splitting this atom exposes the sub-particles of human nature(~proton), moral agency(~electron) and the electromagnetic tension of choice around individual belief(~neutron). The following model is an ongoing effort to assemble and refine an understanding of this dynamic.

The first figure, entitled Moral Transitions, indicates the individual’s struggle against the less appealing aspects of human nature. The second, Relational Harmonics represents the near constant challenge of building and maintaining character. The third figure, Personal Growth indicates the not necessarily linear stages that can occur over a lifetime.

	Footnotes
a	Personal Growth (intellectual, moral, spiritual) "There are of course many gradations within and between the four stages of spiritual development. [emphasis added] ... My experience suggests that this progression of spiritual development holds true in all cultures and for all religions. ... Again in my experience, the four stages of spiritual development also represent a paradigm for healthy psychological development” --M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum, Chapter IX, The Stages Of Spiritual Growth, 1987 [A flawed but useful book]
b	"The world judges many things; for it is the ignorance of its natural state that forms the true tribunal of man. Knowledge has two extremes which meet; the one is that pure natural ignorance, in which all are born; the other is that which is experienced by minds of the highest order. After traversing the whole circle, of human attainments, they find that they know nothing; and end in the same ignorance in which they set out. But it is the ignorance of learning only, that knows itself to be ignorant. Those who occupy an intermediate place, — who have just emerged from their natural ignorance, and yet not attained to that of learning, — possess a sort of smattering of knowledge, and are looked upon as clever. These are the people that keep the world in commotion, and blunder in everything. They, and the common people, constitute the great bulk of mankind. They despise the latter, and are despised by them in their turn. They are erroneous in their judgments of everything, and the world is right in its judgment of them." --Blasé Pascal, Miscellaneous Thoughts, ~1670
c	"When a man follows the way of the world, or the way of the flesh, or the way of tradition i.e. when he believes in religious rites and the letter of the scriptures, as though they were intrinsically sacred, knowledge of Reality cannot arise in him. The wise say that this threefold way is like an iron chain, binding the feet of him who aspires to escape from the prison-house of this world." --Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, 1945
d	“there is a certain uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet. It consists of two parts: — 1. An uneasiness; and 2. Its solution. 1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand. 2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.” --William James, The Varieties Of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature, 1902
e	"That is why Fénelon, in the foregoing extract, insists upon the need for “calm and simplicity,” why St. François de Sales is never tired of preaching the serenity which he himself so consistently practiced, why all the Buddhist scriptures harp on tranquility of mind as a necessary condition of deliverance. The peace that passes all understanding is one of the fruits of the spirit. But there is also the peace that does not pass understanding, the humbler peace of emotional self-control and self-denial; this is not a fruit of the spirit, but rather one of its indispensable roots." --Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, 1945
f	"But it is a fact, confirmed and re-confirmed during two or three thousand years of religious history, that the ultimate Reality is not clearly and immediately apprehended, except by those who have made themselves loving, pure in heart and poor in spirit. This being so, it is hardly surprising that a theology based upon the experience of nice, ordinary, unregenerate people should carry so little conviction. ... Analogously, no amount of theorizing about such hints as may be darkly glimpsed within the ordinary, unregenerate experience of the manifold world can tell us as much about divine Reality as can be directly apprehended by a mind in a state of detachment, charity and humility." --Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, 1945
g	"There are in every generation people who, beginning innocently, with no predetermined intention of becoming saints, find themselves drawn into the vortex by their interest in helping mankind, and by the understanding that comes from actually doing it. The abandonment of their old mode of life is like dust in the balance. It is done gradually, incidentally, imperceptibly. Thus the whole question of the abandonment of luxury is no question at all, but a mere incident to another question, namely, the degree to which we abandon ourselves to the remorseless logic of our love for others.”" --William James, The Varieties Of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature, 1902
h	"The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is Saintliness.151 The saintly character is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy; and there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same in all religions, of which the features can easily be traced.152 They are these: — 1. A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world’s selfish little interests; and a conviction, not merely intellectual, but as it were sensible, of the existence of an Ideal Power. In Christian saintliness this power is always personified as God; but abstract moral ideals, civic or patriotic utopias, or inner visions of holiness or right may also be felt as the true lords and enlargers of our life, in ways which I described in the lecture on the Reality of the Unseen.153 2. A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self-surrender to its control. 3. An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down. 4. A shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections, towards “yes, yes” and away from “no,” where the claims of the non-ego are concerned. " --William James, The Varieties Of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature, 1902

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