Group ethics & selective "unfitness"

Part of the cost of socializing, domesticating ourselves and forming civilization/s has been a degree of loss of naturally-selective pressure toward maintaining (genetic, physiological or psychological) fitness. Civilization allows some individuals to survive (in evolutionary terms here 'survival' meaning being able to successfully reproduce) who otherwise, absent civilization, would not. This propagates a degree of unfitness across the gene pool.

This cost of a rise of unfitness is not only a necessary parallel to civilizing but is, I argue, an ethical imperative. How so? Because as humans, the "rational animal" (which is to say the animal that exercises a degree of self-control and self-direction over its own valuing capacity), we occupy a certain environmental niche unlike any other animal or living species. Our niche is one of radical environmental control and direct manipulation, and one of extremely high social dependency. Social dependency occurs in the form of language aquisition and use, establishing and maintaining a currency and other economic systems of value-extraction and exchange, prescriptive and regulative law, educating-rearing the young, cooperating in all sort of business ventures/structures aimed at producing what we humans need and want, and of course our inter-relationships, friendships and courtships and family that are a backbone of our means of surviving and thriving.

Humans are highly social beings. We are not born with sufficient instincts to survive quickly on our own without a very high degree of constant and effective assistance in the form of social intervention such as learning, guidance, protection, support and cooperation. Perhaps because of this our ethics tend to be largely rooted in our social milieu, in our inter-relational interactions and the possibilities for and implications of these. Ethical norms guide behaviors and expectations. We feel ethics most as a response to those circumstances and possibilities which most affect other humans - the closer we are to the other human the more affected we tend to be.

Many decry the unfitness allowed for and encouraged due to our collective self-domestication. Yet because this self-domestication is and has become necessary for us we must accept that a degree of unfitness is also necessary. (Forget for the moment that evolutionary fitness tends only to have meaning with respect to certain environmental circumstances and survival requirements, because we may also and indeed here are speaking of another sort of "fitness", the fitness of self with respect to individual health, self-consistency in body and mind, internal integration of the organism with respect not just to its environs but with respect to itself. The degree to which an organism represents its own self-possibility to a higher degree, what we might call "self-actualizing", becomes a standard against which the idea of fitness/health may be measured in a way that is not directly conditioned by only a reference to environmental conditions of survival at any given moment.)

So if group ethics aims to tackle the terrain of ethical valuation/s with respect to social/group organization of humans, it must first take into account that a so-called "peak level" of fitness/health, concretely defined or not, cannot be a pinnacle standard. We must accept, from the start, the necessity of abandoning any idea of raising up fitness or healthfulness to "highest possible" levels, when this highest possible reflects an (open or implicit) appeal to comparison to the relative fitness and health levels of animals "in the wild" and living embedded within a direct survival selectivity. We might say that this sort of health/fitness is pertinent only with respect to organism survivability. In this case, adaptions and gains to human survivability made by humans themselves mitigate this type of loss of "otherwise natural" health or fitness. Therefore we can see that the second type of fitness/health, loosely captured under the heading of "self-actualization" becomes most relevant to us humans. We must make a transition from the ideational conceptualizing of health/fitness with respect to so-called "natural" survival selectivity and breeding, and into a conceptualizing of fitness and health in a manner that takes into consideration 1) that a degree of loss of "absolute" or "natural" fitness is a necessary price we pay for our intellect/consciousness, which is to say for our being a social creature, 2) that survivability in the strict naturalistic sense is relative to environs, thus meaning that, for example, the fact that human eyesight is not as good as it used to be is not problematic so long as we continue to have available corrective techniques such as glasses and surgery, and 3) that survivability of the other "self-actualizing" type must be the way in which we conceptualize and evaluate our own survival potential with respect to how much (or how little) our social systems and constructs further human survivability.

1, 2 and 3 above lead to a somewhat startling conclusion, not so much a direct thesis as a subtle shift in paradigm: that it is not inherently problematic that humans might be called relatively unfit animals, and that there is another more useful and valuable way to look at the notions of fitness and survivability when applied to human individuals and species. This new paradigm should be what guides us going forward with seeking to understand and envision the present with respect to its latent possibilities for being better, more improved, more useful, sane, wise, rational. Because present potentiality is mapped upon the terrain of the future, this new paradigm shift (at first perhaps seemingly small, but which leads to growing increasingly powerful and drastic changes in what it implies and necessitates) itself operates based on a perspective situated astride the present and the future, bridging both. This is a sort of "rainbow" or bridge connecting one point to another, along which more practical real-world applications of thought begin to appear and develop.

The application of theory upon reality requires mechanisms of linkage such as these bridges spanning present and future. One such mechanism is the notion of fitness/health, and it has been used in this capacity for a long time. What must now be done is to first reform this mechanism along the lines outlined above, which means adopting a more nuanced, accurate and potent form of the mechanism, and then second to affirm it as it is situated firmly "between" or rather among/within conditions of present actuality and future potentiality (mediated thus in part through present possibility). I.e. first bringing about the sufficient construction of the mechanism, and second bringing it into its contextual embeddedness, actualizing it, applying it.

What emerges from this, when the movement is complete, is a new perspective on ethics, particularly on group ethics. This new perspective tends to largely or completely nullify previous conceptions of group ethical principles and truths, being not only a better and more refined formulation of these but also providing a new platform upon which to (re)evaluate and incorporate the older ethics themselves. The mechanism/s of the past become part of a newer model, building to a thought both higher and wider, growing this ethical thought and possibility taller, more secure, more useful.

A little expansion on the above, "We feel ethics most as a response to those circumstances and possibilities which most affect other humans - the closer we are to the other human the more affected we tend to be".

This shows how we are "wired" in our valuing capacity, there are certain people we value more than others. All affective states into which we enter with others are a function of this relative status of value, of to what degree the other imposes him or herself upon our own valuing-capacity and -potential.

Part of the utility of attaining a paradigm shift and evolution with regard to our understanding of group ethics is that we free ourselves into a possibility for more direct influence over our own subjective values-judgments and constraints. The fact that we value those other humans more whom we have previous positive experiences with does not escape our attention, and this fact is brought together with the possibilities for re-orienting our valuing capacity with respect to how and why we value as we do based on this new understanding of group ethical principles. The idea of group ethics is so simple and obvious because it, like valuing, is a concept implied in nearly everything we do - implied but not understood, and rarely even seen. What is required to break this hold of ignorance-assumption is to state the obvious, plainly and simply, and let it be in such a way that it does not immediately get re-appropriated back into the status quo of our habitual conceptual formation and maintenance.

So it is imporant we break with the doctrine the of survival of the fittest as a standard to which our group ethical principles and interests must adhere or at least acknowledge - we render this issue of survivability along new lines, as demonstrated in the first post above. This breaks the ideas of survivability and fitness free from undo and harmful constraints and lets then expand and breath in the new fresh air of our human reality. Now survival, fitness, value, group ethics, these all mean something new - they are not entirely changed, but they are given over into a new potentiality and truthfulness. These begin to organize around common themes as they are allowed freedom of movement within the ideational sphere, building momentum, outlining potencies and necessities. We begin finally to see how literally the problems associated with the old ways of thinking plague even the philosophers, even the free thinkers, and how these problems directly prevent humanity from evolving, from transcending its present-day form/s into next-stage rational continuations. The present strives to break free into its future, to conceive itself thus as its own future... yet this valuing-striving is naturally blocked or redirected, limited by, among other things, our own inability to think differently, perceive differently, imagine differently.

The conditions of our survival and evolution are now our own, and as such require of us a great burden and responsibility. Ethics elevated in/to and for the group-as-individual, the individual-as-group and the breaking-down of absolute limitations and categories therein, these new mediated broken-down and intertwined categorizations now conditioned to and by a new subjective potency, as value ontology is beginning to outline.

When evolution is the aim, suicide is the fate.

"We" do not evolve. "We" get replaced by others who avoided the dangers that we did not handle. They might or might not have been able to handle them any better. They simply didn't have to at that time for whatever reason. The next generation is seldom the stronger or more intelligent, merely the smaller and more numerous.

We can evolve the homosapian (and are) into something stronger than we are.
Why would any sane sentient life form do that?
How is it a higher priority to ensure that a life form that doesn't yet exist is stronger than we?
I would think making us as strong as possible would be not only more sane, but also ensures that evolution can actually work. If a life form isn't trying with all it has to survive, to NOT evolve, evolution doesn't work at all except to eliminate that type of life form all together. The aim to evolve is a con game that eliminates the mark.

Quote :

We must make a transition from the ideational conceptualizing of health/fitness with respect to so-called "natural" survival selectivity and breeding, and into a conceptualizing of fitness and health in a manner that takes into consideration;
1) that a degree of loss of "absolute" or "natural" fitness is a necessary price we pay for our intellect/consciousness, which is to say for our being a social creature, [agreed, but deciding how much from whom is a extremely serious issue]

2) that survivability in the strict naturalistic sense is relative to environs, thus meaning that, for example, the fact that human eyesight is not as good as it used to be is not problematic so long as we continue to have available corrective techniques such as glasses and surgery, and [agreed and stipulated as above]

3) that survivability of the other "self-actualizing" type must be the way in which we conceptualize and evaluate our own survival potential with respect to how much (or how little) our social systems and constructs further human survivability. ["homosapian survival" isn't the issue due to the reasoning stated above]

When the survival of the species becomes the priority, the species perishes.

I think it’s more of a lobster than that; this matter of ethics is but a tributary of the greater issue composed of proliferating double articulations, involutions and recursions. Because I feel we can only identify or locate the broader issue by marking the point of convergence indicated by the orbital trajectories of its symptomatic issues, we can for convenience’s sake dub this issue the ethical black hole. Where the black hole of physics is supposedly born from a collapsing star, I theorize our ethical black hole is born from (though now only an incipient form) the collapse of the natural order; an attempted hiatus from aeons of evolutionary engineering, a moratorium from the harsher side-effects of natural selection (or more like double interest but no payments for a century). I ask you: Is preserving life inherently good? I’ll neglect the more ambiguous issue of genetic decadence and ask of our burgeoning, soon to be (if not already) turgid, population: what of them? Death, War, Famine and Pestilence: man has systematically domesticated not himself but the four horsemen. This is indeed a black hole that I will need hours to write something I’ll be satisfied with, but let us run through this ethical singularity with a fine-toothed comb and see where we arrive…if you feel so inclined.

James S Saint wrote:

When evolution is the aim, suicide is the fate.

"We" do not evolve. "We" get replaced by others who avoided the dangers that we did not handle. They might or might not have been able to handle them any better. They simply didn't have to at that time for whatever reason. The next generation is seldom the stronger or more intelligent, merely the smaller and more numerous.

We can evolve the homosapian (and are) into something stronger than we are.
Why would any sane sentient life form do that?
How is it a higher priority to ensure that a life form that doesn't yet exist is stronger than we?
I would think making us as strong as possible would be not only more sane, but also ensures that evolution can actually work. If a life form isn't trying with all it has to survive, to NOT evolve, evolution doesn't work at all except to eliminate that type of life form all together. The aim to evolve is a con game that eliminates the mark.

Quote :

We must make a transition from the ideational conceptualizing of health/fitness with respect to so-called "natural" survival selectivity and breeding, and into a conceptualizing of fitness and health in a manner that takes into consideration;
1) that a degree of loss of "absolute" or "natural" fitness is a necessary price we pay for our intellect/consciousness, which is to say for our being a social creature, [agreed, but deciding how much from whom is a extremely serious issue]

2) that survivability in the strict naturalistic sense is relative to environs, thus meaning that, for example, the fact that human eyesight is not as good as it used to be is not problematic so long as we continue to have available corrective techniques such as glasses and surgery, and [agreed and stipulated as above]

3) that survivability of the other "self-actualizing" type must be the way in which we conceptualize and evaluate our own survival potential with respect to how much (or how little) our social systems and constructs further human survivability. ["homosapian survival" isn't the issue due to the reasoning stated above]

When the survival of the species becomes the priority, the species perishes.

In point of fact, "we" as individuals do evolve, but not in the traditional (genetic) sense. In Darwin's evolution individuals, of any species, do not technically evolve, as this evolution as natural selectivity works across generations. But for humans, we take our own evolution, as individuals, directly into our hands, via self-directed learning, our sufficiency of (our) consciousness of (our) consciousness. This is strictly speaking growth, not evolution, yet because this does involve a degree of adaptive-selection of methods, tools, solutions in the ideational and physical sphere -- which is to say because there are generations of/for ideas in the mind, each breeding that which passes after it, each passing through a process of selectivity with respect to the 'environments' to which ideation/affection are conditioned within the subject -- and because we excercise a (more or less) direct control over this process via our envisioning of it as possibility, before it is actualized, this othewise linear-natural growth-as-learning, what any animal is able to do (apply remembered patterns to present scenarios) attains, in us humans, a rudimentary evolutionary form.

The human of course also evolves as a collective species, like any other life species, but not in entirely the same manner as these others. Humans are no longer very much subject to strict natural genetic selection, since as a consequence of civilizing most humans are survivable (with respect to their possibility for successful reproduction). Therefore the human gene pool is no longer a product of active forces maintaining it toward genetic fitness. Instead, as mentioned above, we evolve in terms of our minds, in the realm of ideas, affect, imagination, reason, perception, and this new mental-affective evolutionary realm has all but replaced traditional genetic evolution (at least in terms of natural selection pressures). Of course this replacement is only partial at best, but grows in influence in tandem with the degree of civilization we humans live in, which is to say to the degree that a group has attained distance from the brutal conditions of otherwise natural survivalism and selective pressure. This as more and more humans live in this state of guaranteed minimal shelter, food and water and medical care, we escape more into a new artificial, non-Darwinian environment of new selective pressures.

Parallel to this is the need for this human animal to take into into its own hands this new evolutionary potential. The old genetic evolution works naturally, emergently, non-teleologically (the ends emerge after-the-fact, secondarily-causally; telos is absent). Human evolution works this way as well, but to a greater degree this is increasingly being supplanted by the possibility for a self-directed (and socially-directed) evolution via potentiality-as-imagining of future conditions, and direct environmental manipulation with the ability to conceptualize how this manipulating affects our own selves at the individual and species levels. This is only the condition of this new evolution, not its mechanism: this condition, the union of imagination and memory in the human being (probably largely facilitated-mediated by language), is only what makes possible the new mechanism, this mechanism being what directly impacts and shapes, leads to human environments which then end up reciprocally conditioning the individual and his or her ultimate survival, and the collective group which emerges from the behaviors of the sum of individuals. Ideas shape the world. The world shapes us. Those human worlds which tend over time to better shape conditions toward survival for the greatest number, in the most successful manner (defined in all sort of ways, of course) tend more to also therefore reproduce their own collective survivability.

We have no choice in this, it is a necessity. Unlike other animals, humans must make survival of the species a priority, because it is us who are directly responsibly for this evolution, us as creators of ideas, and of the created things (tools, machines, languages, etc) which come from ideas. We have taken a direct role in the shaping of our environment, first in a rudimentary form through tools and such, now through highly complex and direct forms of near-total control, through economics, politics, science and technology, and philosophy. Mankind directly engineers his environments, which means he directly engineers the very conditions of his own survivability or unsurvivability. We do this collectively, each individual functioning as a part of these ongoing (and competing!) social-systems. We do not have the luxury of leaving our survivability to the unconscious-automatic realm where it resides for other species, taken care of emergently across many generations through basic natural selection pressures. We will survive or perish, as humans, as we are, based on the degree to which we are able or unable to harness directly evolutionary forces and powers. We must now begin increasingly to conceive of our activities, goals, possibilities, ideals with respect to survivability, not just our own but in general, as a group, as a species, and as a future. We now have (conscious) control over the selective mechanism conditioning our ultimate evolution.

We might say that meme-selection has supplanted gene-selection as a central mechanism for directing human evolution. It is our memes, our ideas and qualities-forms of consciousness/es which directly cause and condition the myriad ways in which we humans impact and manipulate our environment(al possibilities and outcomes), and it is these possibilities and outcomes which we are (as individuals and as an entire species) subsequently conditioned by.

To evolve, other life does not need to value itself in terms of its own survival, it need only naively value, value without respect to its own survivability (as a group) and nature takes care of the rest. For humans this is no longer the case. We must value ourselves consciously, directly, actively and in terms of our own survival as a group because we are now the only evolutionary mechanism that can guarantee our survival. The responsibility is ours, whether we want it or not, whether we are ready for it or not.

Aleatory wrote:

I think it’s more of a lobster than that; this matter of ethics is but a tributary of the greater issue composed of proliferating double articulations, involutions and recursions. Because I feel we can only identify or locate the broader issue by marking the point of convergence indicated by the orbital trajectories of its symptomatic issues, we can for convenience’s sake dub this issue the ethical black hole. Where the black hole of physics is supposedly born from a collapsing star, I theorize our ethical black hole is born from (though now only an incipient form) the collapse of the natural order; an attempted hiatus from aeons of evolutionary engineering, a moratorium from the harsher side-effects of natural selection (or more like double interest but no payments for a century). I ask you: Is preserving life inherently good? I’ll neglect the more ambiguous issue of genetic decadence and ask of our burgeoning, soon to be (if not already) turgid, population: what of them? Death, War, Famine and Pestilence: man has systematically domesticated not himself but the four horsemen. This is indeed a black hole that I will need hours to write something I’ll be satisfied with, but let us run through this ethical singularity with a fine-toothed comb and see where we arrive…if you feel so inclined.

Singularity or not, this ethical black hole, as you call it, is entirely necessary and natural. What is missing in the human equation, now, is higher degrees of conscious control and will toward "ethics", ethics being (as it is being used here in this response of yours; it is also this, but much more, in my own usage here) a stand-in term designating regulative and prescriptive methods and perspectives, conditioning-delimiting of human affects and ideas and the potentialities therein. Man has come to a 'point of crisis' with his "deviation from the natural", what you mention as evolutionary engineering, the moratorium from side-effects of natural selection. This crisis is a result of the slow emergence of this new human power, the power over evolution, the power to circumvent and over-ride Darwinian selection. It has grown slowly, largely unconsciously in man for thousands of years. Now we reach a crisis point because this power is becoming so great, and so global-totalizing, that it must either be controlled (subjugated to a sane, rational will, guiding principle/s) or turn toward self-destruction and chaos. This sort of chaos has largely been diffused and siphoned in the past through inter-cultural and inter-national warfares, physical and then later in the realms of economics, politics, ideas and achievment. But today, in our global small world, the outlet for such chaotic overflow is increasingly shrinking. The forces are multiplying and becoming magified.

Is preserving life inherently good? Why would it not be? What sort of life, and why? And how? Humanity will either conceive the idea of itself in such a way that it is able to also conceive its own survival-good, in a sane-rational manner, which will involve among other things the adoption of a sort of Group Ethics of which I allude to here, or... humanity will fail in this, and probably either perish or reduce back into a largely Darwinian sort of natural selective evolutionary principle. Or probably most likely, mankind will lose its high level of scientific-technological affluence and power and regress back to a largely pre-industrual state, to begin the process of gradual build-up all over again. This current high level of escape from natural selection which mankind has earned for itself has a terribly high cost and price: the cost is massive intake and organized use of resources, along with the cost of excessive chaotic over-flow and entropy, and the price is even higher: self-responsibility, maturity. Evolution of conscience. It is most with respect to this latter that the ultimate survivability of the human species will be determined. Humanity must answer the question of whether or not its own life is inherently good and worth preserving.

Capable wrote:

What is missing in the human equation, now, is higher degrees of conscious control and will toward "ethics", ethics being (as it is being used here in this response of yours; it is also this, but much more, in my own usage here) a stand-in term designating regulative and prescriptive methods and perspectives, conditioning-delimiting of human affects and ideas and the potentialities therein.

There is a force at the heart of all ethos- at the heart of the "valuing animal," which is what man is after all, rather than the "rational animal." ... A force which is preventing the "evolution of conscience" which you are pointing toward. Something I wrote:





In nature, the animal man’s instincts were coordinated in such a way that the expression of one instinct was not merely the expression of its own force, but that of the entire organism, that of the consciousness. Consciousness is only this unified force, this reflexivity. To call forth the greatest store of consciousness with the slightest amount of sensory excitation, that was the “goal” of nature. Man’s reason eventually separated the instincts from one another, it introduced discontiguous states of mental affect into a consciousness born out of the need to grasp through continguous impressions relations of temporal and spatial nature. Such discontiguous states of affect we now recognize as “ideas,” words, abstractions. To reason, to arrange aesthetically the same kinds of relationships arranged metonymically by the early consciousness, relationships between events, things, and feelings, that is to say, to arrange them in accordance with these abstractions and the relationships suggested by an appeal to their standard (such as causality) man would have been provided with an advantage over the other beasts, the advantage of anticipation, imagination, and strategy.


His reason, in short, had the psychological consequence of a disruption in the metonymic structure of consciousness so that man began to experience the force of the instincts individually. The sensation of distance and gulf within himself inspired him with the thought of the soul, the thought of a self. The self represents a kind of abeyance of consciousness, the repose of a continuously discharging instinctual organism, a fragmentation of this activity in accordance with which the instincts could be re-coordinated, through “thought.” But this “thinking” could not realize a harmonious order of the instincts like that which nature took thousands of years to produce. The first thoughts to lend their coloring to the humans soul were accordingly very painful, and constituted a kind of negative expression of the organism, the force not of an organization but of a disorganization, from which man still suffers, for this disorganizing power of thought was doubtlessly very seductive, the force it was capable of generating far surpassed that of the organized instincts and the individuated instincts, and was in its power very compelling to early man, offering to him an impetus toward action and life that could not be denied, even if the life and the acts it led him to were dangerous, painful, tragic. It took root in the deepest parts of his consciousness. It is his conscience. The conscience juxtaposes instincts and passions of contrary dispositions, as the sexual drive and the metaphysical need are counter-poised to produce the inspiration of the Christian saint, and grasps this disorganizing power, this inspiration, in an abstraction, in a discontiguous state of consciousness. The disorganizing power of thought is the most seductive and powerful impetus to life that has been produced by nature, and for this reason it persists in man. This is only because thought has still been unable to realize a harmony of the instincts equal in power to that of his original nature.


The conscience, then, is the perishing and diseased nature which still lives within a consciousness attempting to actively realize an organization of its constituent drives, attempting to attain through discontiguous abstractions a new organization of the forces engendered by these drives as well as by the senses which disturb and incite it to life. In short, it is the voice of a disintegrated nature, a compendium of all bestial life, it is the voice of a being trying to become human.

Parodites wrote:

His reason, in short, had the psychological consequence of a disruption in the metonymic structure of consciousness so that man began to experience the force of the instincts individually. The sensation of distance and gulf within himself inspired him with the thought of the soul, the thought of a self.

Very interesting. The notion of the self then as resulting from the absence of the effective, continuous integrity of - well, the self. That make sense. Of course here we get the concept of the "higher self" which is then indeed a good term, as it is something to be attained by conscious and creative effort, not given by animalistic nature.

"The ego" falls in a strange void here -- what would it be? The remainder of the integrity of the animal, which can only be a perversion, as, as a passive given, it must be incomplete, un-integer. Mans struggle between ethics and survival/power -- between power in the world and a feeling of power over oneself is hereby understood quite well.

What is a healthy ego? Surely the ego of someone who is not blessed with a lot of consciousness. This would explain why it is so attractive for humans to be dominated, to be told what to do -- not to think. Why humans are seeking dogma -- "God" or "Der Führer" in whichever form, as long as He is not experienced as part of the sel, as long as his rules are simply obeyed as they are conveniently written down or dictated, allows for the instincts to remain more or less animal, for the ego to be a simple expression of instinct.

Quote :

The self represents a kind of abeyance of consciousness, the repose of a continuously discharging instinctual organism, a fragmentation of this activity in accordance with which the instincts could be re-coordinated, through “thought.” But this “thinking” could not realize a harmonious order of the instincts like that which nature took thousands of years to produce.

Naturally it could not as long as thinking represented simply that very aberration of the instincts, their estranging from each other. But thought struggled to become its own antithesis -- perhaps this is all thought is! But then, by understanding thought, we have arrived at the end of thought.

Quote :

The first thoughts to lend their coloring to the humans soul were accordingly very painful, and constituted a kind of negative expression of the organism, the force not of an organization but of a disorganization, from which man still suffers, for this disorganizing power of thought was doubtlessly very seductive, the force it was capable of generating far surpassed that of the organized instincts and the individuated instincts, and was in its power very compelling to early man, offering to him an impetus toward action and life that could not be denied, even if the life and the acts it led him to were dangerous, painful, tragic. It took root in the deepest parts of his consciousness. It is his conscience. The conscience juxtaposes instincts and passions of contrary dispositions, as the sexual drive and the metaphysical need are counter-poised to produce the inspiration of the Christian saint, and grasps this disorganizing power, this inspiration, in an abstraction, in a discontiguous state of consciousness.

Right. Christianity then as the honesty of the aberration toward itself as such -- how natural then that humanity is here seen as inherently sinful! How well we can now understand the profound inspirations of the "Fall" and the hallucinogenic imagery surrounding it -- amazing how human history is coming together now.

Quote :

The disorganizing power of thought is the most seductive and powerful impetus to life that has been produced by nature, and for this reason it persists in man. This is only because thought has still been unable to realize a harmony of the instincts equal in power to that of his original nature.

Until finally, perspectivism arose, and thought overcame its honesty toward itself, that is to say, learned to dismiss itself, broke out of its short-circuiting. With thinkers like Nietzsche, thought shifted its focus from its own nature to the nature of the animal that was still present in its most integrated, immoral and triumphant acts, as well as its least conscious dwellings. And now perspectivism has led to value ontology, which gives us a rational conception of the animal as unity that may be applied to man as it can be to animal. With value ontology, the self-estranging rational process has re-joined the road of unified experience, and enabled at least the conception of the possibility of a new harmony of the instincts, under a 'command' that resembles 'nature' -- nature becomes conscious, consciousness become natural.

Quote :

The conscience, then, is the perishing and diseased nature which still lives within a consciousness attempting to actively realize an organization of its constituent drives, attempting to attain through discontiguous abstractions a new organization of the forces engendered by these drives as well as by the senses which disturb and incite it to life. In short, it is the voice of a disintegrated nature, a compendium of all bestial life, it is the voice of a being trying to become human.

The final battle, the theatre has been erected -- yes, a beginning of an understanding of what humanity would mean to itself without the need for this conscience, has been created. But consciousness is still alive and well because it has come to represent the best of our values... That which in the end must be discarded as the hindrance to direct valuing, at this point encompasses our values! The struggle will mean the disentanglement of values from conscience, the disintegrating of values based in notional morality and at the same time the re-integrating of values into a living ethics, a 'higher self'... not only of the individual, but of the self-image of mankind.

If Man is indeed the "rational animal" and we have arrived at the end of the line of this rationality, then it seems to me that we have in fact arrived at the power to manifest the object of Nietzsches longing - the Übermensch.

Fixed Cross wrote:

And now perspectivism has led to value ontology, which gives us a rational conception of the animal as unity that may be applied to man as it can be to animal. With value ontology, the self-estranging rational process has re-joined the road of unified experience, and enabled at least the conception of the possibility of a new harmony of the instincts, under a 'command' that resembles 'nature' -- nature becomes conscious, consciousness become natural.

Due mostly to the inability within me to be certain of what is being meant by much of what is being said in this thread, I can't agree to much of it. But that one quoted bit is probably the most significant thing revealing the value of "value-ontology".
(from my perspective )