In Pursuit of Transcendental Personality

In Pursuit of Transcendental Personality

Introduction

For a long time I’ve tried to explore and articulate a philosophy of interpersonal relationships; in other words, guidelines for positive social interaction. Since the beginning of this journey, I’ve thought a lot about the power we hold over each other and how it is wielded. Most of the time, this power is felt through the weight of expectations. Our way of approaching others carries some of these expectations forward through our manner of speech, our body language, and other choices of presentation like fashion and explicit group affiliations (Pride pins and MAGA hats); but we are not in total control of these expectations. Societal norms are insidious and sneak their way into even the staunchest of individualist minds. Often, and this is especially the case with anxious individuals, we even create norms in our own heads based on limited experiences that our brains generalize, internalize, and demonize; by which I mean make demonic, not simply portray as demonic. Although, perhaps the point is that within our deepest subjectivity there is little difference between truth and portrayal.

I describe the evolution of my ideas in this field as a journey. It is my journey of personal growth, maturity, and self-realization that compelled me to consider this topic in the first place. Though I started it in a lonely place, this journey would not have been possible without some extraordinary people in my life to inspire me and a space in which to express myself. To be clear though, the presence of extraordinary people in my life should not make my approach to interpersonality seem unattainable to anyone. We are all wonderfully ordinary, but through our relationships with others we can be more; in special cases, beauty emerges. And I don’t just mean romance, friendship is inherently beautiful; the things we can do with friendship even moreso. We can transcend the self through communication and, eventually, we can change the world.

Because this book only aims to be a reflection of my journey, any and all work on this topic is perpetually in progress. As am I. The quality of this work should be judged by its ability to inspire better relationships while accounting for obstacles within the human condition. With that said, what follows are my thoughts. I’ve organized them as separate postulates for the sake of readability. They can be analyzed individually, but contain the most meaning when viewed in the context of the entirety of my work on this subject; this meaning is the emergent meaning of story and fits within my life as one of the most important journeys I’ve undertaken.

Definitions

There are many terms I will use here that will prompt a discussion about their meaning. Such discussions are vitally important and in order to aid them I’d like to sketch my definitions here quite briefly. What I mean by transcendence should become clear over the course of my argument. Although I could give a definition now, it would not be satisfactory. Probably it would fall along the lines of reaching outside of the previously established structure towards something better. Now we can puzzle over the meaning of “structure” and “better” rather than transcendence. On the other hand, I can quickly give a relatively satisfying definition of my use of “personality,” informed by the colloquial use of the word, but fitted to my use of it. The social comportment we maintain to the world and our expression of that attitude towards existence is, loosely, how I’m defining ‘personality’ here. I will also use “Self” many times, and I want to distance my use of this word from conceptions of “ego.” The Self as I refer to it, which I will often capitalize to make stand out, is very much connected to my use of ‘personality.’ In other words, this is a relational Self, but it is more internal than personality. One might be able to associate this Self with the quality of one’s relationship with their own being. Finally, a term I will use here and there is ‘flourishing.’ To me, this essentially means living to the fullest expression of oneself. It’s much easier to imagine plant life flourishing than to imagine what it looks like for a human to flourish; a plant that flourishes is vibrant and healthy, it blossoms when it should and often is quite beautiful. So when does a human blossom? I think it should become clear over the course of my argument that I think humans blossom in relationship with others. Of course, since it is humans we are talking about, we must understand the conditions for our flourishing with the maximum possible nuance, seeing how it relates to our understanding of Self, Personality, and Others. This is why any single description will fail to capture what I mean by any of these terms; they will require most of a full-length book to explain in a truly satisfactory way. And I don’t think it should be any other way. Many readers might be familiar with the saying “the medium is the message,” there is some truth to this, but it is not a full truth. I might be tempted to rephrase it as “the method is the message,” but this does not convey the full truth either; it is the medium, the method, and message itself that all contribute in harmony to the totality of meaning. Keeping that in mind, the way I will go about sculpting these terms should be viewed in itself as my method of language comprehension, the practice of critical language -- though it may seem slow to some, the goal is exactness in understanding. It is a method that defies systematization because subjectivity plays an immutable and important role. Let me explain.

Words contain two parts in their use: denotative meaning and interpretation, which combine to create true subjective meaning; or what someone really means when they speak. Denotative meaning is something agreed upon by speakers of the same language, it is a common starting point. However, interpretation is unavoidable. We are subjective beings after all. Science attempts to go beyond this in a variety of ways, many noble (when we are granted better foundations and more solid starting points) and some misguided (when we are led to believe that there is no longer a place for subjectivity). We should not lose sight of the fact that to be subjective is to be an individual human. To be subjective is to be artistic and to be artistic is to reach towards divinity through beauty. When we are engaging with each other, we ought to embrace this opportunity of interpretation and make the most of it. It is the chance to interpret ourselves, more exactly, to interpret the Self as art. The measure of our skill then, as artistic and expressive Selves, is our ability to sensibly convey our subjectivity to others. We do not attempt to convey ourselves in order to convince others that we have the best Self, but rather to inspire them and expand their understanding of the human condition. Only through this understanding can we communally, and only communally, begin to conceive of Goodness and take the first steps towards building a more harmonious world.

Part 1: Praxis

1. We ought to do away with unsaid expectations. If it is worth expecting, it is worth talking about. And being more open in this way will, I expect, aid the mental health of those prone to anxiety. Furthermore, I think we ought to replace this method of social control (control maintained through unstated, damagingly ambiguous expectations) with a mentality not unlike what one hopes to find in an art studio or artisan workshop: critically supportive experimentation. The Self is a complex subject, it should not be handled or managed, but cultivated. Essentially, we do not all need the same foundations of personality, but we do all need generative foundations; a place to grow our roots and examine ourselves in the light of supportive others. In this way, we can all play an active role in cultivating ourselves and those around us.
   My writing throughout this work implies that I’m only really talking about on-going relationships. I should make it clear that relationships do progress through different stages. However, the progression of relationships through these stages should not be compared to things like life and death or the passage of time. Romantic relationships are often subjected to these false equivalences. In truth, our ability to engage with a relationship, no matter how alienated it may seem, always hinges on our growth. Basically, relationships fail and fall apart for reasons. Often these reasons are hidden to us until we adopt a new perspective, and often the only things clouding our views are expectations imparted on us by the miasma of society. Letting go of expectation requires that we look at life directly to assess its value. See the value in communication as transcendence, see the value in silence as generation; see that one without the other is out of balance. And if two people are no longer bound by similar goals and similar needs, why suffocate the relationship when you just let it rest?
   My arrival at this postulate is what sparked this project. It came to me through a profound sense of liberation as I met people that seemed to voice their minds and chase connection more than I had been conditioned to expect in white, middle-class Californian society. Surely there are many societal factors that limit us in this way, a simple lack of social development is an infectious force in society and it is reinforced by a lack of time for social pursuits (often due to the pressures of work). Perhaps it is also something forced upon us early through the pedagogy of American public education, which asks very little of students except that they stay quiet in class. Many critiques can be leveled at the education system in this way, but those have already been communicated in a more complete fashion than I am capable of doing here. My thoughts on the subject have been mostly shaped by my own experiences within the school system and the works Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work by Jean Anyon, The Distribution of Knowledge by Jeannie Oakes, and A Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. For now, let that overview suffice and let further questions be directed to my citational essays.

2. The voicing of expectations is a practical treatment for a symptom of the quietist, anti-emotional illness we suffer from, but to have some hope of a resolution we must get to the deepest parts of the problem. We need to examine the ends of social interaction. To get a grasp of these ends, I’m going to pose my views in response to a history of thoughts on the subject. Within Western Philosophy, there are a number of figures whose views are so warped by a perspective firmly ingrained inside colonial empires that extracting good ideas from their writing is like a salvage operation. It is not precisely that their views are married to ideologies of dominance, but they are undoubtedly shaped by a culture of domination. Because of this we must be careful in our approach to their ideas and determine what is valuable and what is merely a rationalization of the power structures they were born into; things they lacked the tools or the freedom to examine for themselves. From Descartes, for example, we can take the “cogito” and methodological doubt, the rest is scrap. In the realm of relationship, Kant is unavoidable and easily disliked. Still, the Categorical Imperative is salvageable: the imperative to always treat other people as an end in themselves, never as a mere means. This is a good place to start if our goal is to formulate a useful generalization. The first change I would make is expanding the scope. As a philosopher, I would be abandoning countless lines of inquiry by treating any natural (and many mechanical) thing(s) as mere means. As a simple example, if a plant only has value to me when it gives me food, I would lack an appreciation for many beautiful things and I would be a little less happy. But what does this Imperative mean for people? More specifically, what should it mean?
   I think it’s obvious that we have to be more specific in defining what these “ends” are if any of these ideas are to be actually useful in our daily lives. I see no reason to be limiting or reserved in defining the ends of human interaction; except that it would make my job of defining these things much easier, but that route would reduce my project from the transcendental task of philosophy (the pursuit of wisdom) to simple self-help. So, to meaningfully advance beyond the point of viewing Others as ends in and of themselves, let us reintroduce means, this time as transcendental means not mere means.
   The world outside of ourselves can be both an end desirable in itself and also a means desirable because of what it awakens in us. In other words, what it asks of us can be valuable because having something more asked of us can be an opportunity to reinvent ourselves. If things in the world are only a tool to us, then we necessarily can only glean a limited set of knowledge from them. The “more” I am referencing here is transcendental: it is a continual reaching for new ways to conceive and interact. Having more be asked of you in this way is an inherent critique of your prior mode of being. That is why being asked to further exhaust yourself in an unvalued job cannot constitute the type of asking I mean here; context is vitally important. In fact, a transactional context often limits the growth of the self, rather than fosters it.
   To see what I mean let me introduce an analogy that has been important to me in my life. Social consciousnesses, people, can be viewed metaphorically as part rough metal and part whetstone. By engaging in dialogue we sharpen the metal, or mettle, of our ideas and that of our conversation partners; both aspects of the consciousness are utilized in that same moment. By engaging honestly and with the intent to improve (not merely stay the same), we discover the process of continual transcendence of Self. I will describe this as critically supportive behavior. I hope that it is obvious how transactional interactions with people don’t encourage this type of dialogue; one person wants something, the other person supplies it, end of conversation. That’s why this transcendental sociality is most easily found among friends. Although there is much to be said of finding friends in unexpected places as such relationships often radically expand each person’s understanding of the human condition.

3. It must be said that transcendental interpersonality, at least in its most generative and transformational form, cannot be reached without equally transcendental intrapersonality. In other words, to interact best with others we first have to discover ourselves. That is not to say anyone should retreat from the world to contact their inner being before ever talking to another soul; far from it. Rather, I mean that an increased awareness of one’s own Self (their goals, their comportment, their own definition of beauty) is the best vehicle for this transcendence; it is not the only vehicle, but it is the most effective and as such it should be our aim to be transported by it.
   How you formulate and express yourself creates texture in the communities with which you engage. Within any community, but especially those that focus on art, inquiry, and/or the mastery of various skills, the fullest expression of any individual member increases the capacity for expression in the other members of that community through inspiration. This is obvious to those constantly inspired by their peers as it is obvious when new schools of philosophical thought or art are produced by a confluence of mutually inspired individuals (Sartre-Beauvoir, Smith-Mapplethorp, Me and the friends that made this project possible). So developing a personal artistic expression of oneself while engaging with a critically supportive community creates a kind of positive feedback loop that can rightly be viewed as trascendental socialization.
   I should warn against finding one’s Self through others in totality. That is, being inspired is the best way to grow, but before growth is possible we must be grounded. We must understand what we are in order to feel the complexity of our roots. This type of deeply personal knowledge is hard to grasp in a society that expects you to mold yourself to its needs rather than the opposite way around. On this subject, I think the idea of Socratic knowledge, the idea that all knowledge is simply remembering, is quite applicable. You always have access to the knowledge of your true personality, but first you must remember it; pick it out from the corrosive strands of scarcity-induced productivity, vampiric relationships, and unjust hierarchies that we constantly contend with. As children we know ourselves, but we do not have the experience to fully express that knowledge or even retain it consciously; hence we forget our Self if we are not taught to cultivate it. Processing all of it can be like the salvage operation I just compared the history of philosophy to, except this is much more intensely personal. Sorting through these strands of memory, scraps of trauma, and the self-destructive habits many of us have incidentally cultivated is a tumultuous and time consuming task, but I promise it is worth it. Part of why I want to stress the importance of communication (indeed, the pseudo magical nature of communication itself) is because the act of simply talking with trusted others is the best way to begin to recover this knowledge of Self. Of course, then we must determine how to cultivate that most important factor: trust.

4. Building trust is a tricky topic, given how we relate now. The current practice of relationships allows for many situations where opportunities to be vulnerable and move to recover the knowledge of ourselves are shunned, shot down, or overlooked. For the sake of our very beings, that cannot continue. To that end, I would like to examine a term I’ve used a couple times now: critical supportiveness. What should it mean? At the most general level, it is blameless analysis combined with a radical positive honesty.
   Blameless analysis means separating the person from problematic actions while maintaining a sense of responsibility toward the action committed. This idea has some contradictory elements, but that contradiction is incredibly important. If we seek to hold someone responsible for their actions, we must blame them for those actions on some level. The critical part is understanding the banality of people’s mistakes, conditions in their lives have led to those mistakes being made. They did not choose the worse course of action with full knowledge of that action’s unfavorableness. When the mistake of another awakens anger within us, we have to properly cultivate that anger into supportiveness; into a method that actually prevents future mistakes, rather than simply punish the offender. Punishment does not necessarily entail a lesson being learnt. Only through a meaningful conversation and an undeniable look of realization on another person’s face will we know a lesson has been learned; even then, we must maintain ourselves as a force of caution in that person’s life until they demonstrate the lesson in their life. But mistakes are only a small part of relationships and a critically supportive attitude never goes away. Equally, if not more important than collectively analyzing mistakes is praising goodness.
   Radical positive honesty essentially means being supportive in the general sense. This idea also connects to the main point of the first postulate, our subjectivities need to be voiced to facilitate quality interaction and reduce anxieties. Practically, this means being invested in showing others that you care about them. Tell your friends you love them. View their success as your own. It’s simple and it makes a difference. Lastly, the reason I formulate this as honesty, rather than simply intentional supportiveness, is because praise will only truly be worthwhile when it stems from honesty.
   Most importantly, these two parts of critical supportiveness cannot function alone. It is how we go about melding the wisdom in each of them that we find something transcendent, hopefully it is understanding that emerges. The way we handle this melding must necessarily be fit to the situation and the individuals therein. So, I cannot offer too much explanation here or else I would be promoting something eerily Freudian. Instead, I will offer this question that should give a shape of the feeling I’m chasing with this description. “Do you feel like you’ve been able to grow?” It sounds like a therapy question, but in truth it is a question we should all be more concerned with. While therapy is undoubtedly helpful, in some ways it is the modern day confessional booth; a place where emotions are felt and then left behind. Not in the practice, but in the conception of it as an isolated session. The emotional illnesses we face cannot be contained to an hour-or-so time frame once a week; they are always with us, but more so they are relational issues. So we must solve them relationally. Many people suffer from a lack of human connection, therapy might help you realize this, but it does not grant us that connection because therapy itself is still transactional. We cannot grow if growth is something we exchange money for because that very action poses growth as something beyond us that can only be attained inside of the system that has hurt us, rather than as something innately accessible to us which allows us to surpass the harmful structure.
   The hardest part about making more personal conversations work is imbuing them with the positive affirmation of friendship. The questions I posed above are purely analytical, in order to ask them well one must first see their conversation partner as fully human and fully capable of bringing forth inspiration. We cannot just expect others to lay down their vulnerabilities without first convincing them that there is a chance at overcoming those vulnerabilities through an acceptance of growth. In other words, do not ask this question. Instead, talk humanly with this question at the back of the mind.
   These short descriptions are meaningful, I think, but they do not capture the revolutionary relationality that I am trying to express. To understand the actual functioning of critical supportiveness, I need to revisit my previous definition of “transcendental” and examine the ideas of structuralism.

5. For philosophers within academia, the ideas behind structuralism seem to pose a challenge in their articulation. I’m thinking of the notoriously hard to read writings of Derrida here, which I will attempt to do justice while still making sense to most people. I hope to bridge this gap by assuring readers that the term itself, structuralism, is as simple as one would hope. The idea is that the concepts we use to understand the world, organize and express ourselves have structure. They relate among each other and to themselves in certain ways that can be defined as structure. This is a necessity of the forms these activities take. Science must have structure or it loses its objectivity and rigor, government must have structure or it cannot organize itself and it loses the ability to lead people, and language must have structure or it ceases to function as a tool for communication. The “post-structuralist” critique of these views is that, while structure is necessary, it is also limited. Structures emerge from practice, they do not appear fully formed as if by magic. We obviously cannot do without structure, but the process of its creation should inform our response to it. Why conform to a structure if we can just improve the structure, salvage what we can, and repurpose or dispose of the scrap? That is the heart of my argument here, that our structure of relationships has placed limits on our development as human beings and we must now find a way to transcend this structure that restrains us. The structure of relation we have now is one mostly constructed from cultural norms, or unstated expectations. It is not a structure that anticipates critique; in fact, it represses refutation by upholding a myth: the myth of total normalcy across individuals. This myth breaks relationships, tears apart families, and will lead to larger and larger intracultural conflicts until it is finally addressed. Just because we do not have bird-headed individuals and beings made from mist does not mean each and every human being is not unique. Subjectivity is necessarily unique and so are coping mechanisms, expressions of joy, the depths of sadness, and the triggers for anger. The similarities we can draw between individuals in the realm of subjectivity are always surface level, they help us relate to each other, but they should never be viewed as grounds to assimilate another’s experience into your own. That is why we need to be better at communicating and seeing the subjective meanings that emerge from individual experience as it is communicated.
   The truth is that we as individuals need the freedom to express ourselves in whatever way suits us, whatever helps us grow. As individuals within communities we are presented with another opportunity of interpretation, the choice to mold our expression toward the benefit of our fellow beings. This goal is the one for which I will accept no substitution or subversion. Recognizing that helping your community flourish is a fundamental Good is the first step towards one’s own flourishing. This goes back to the idea of mutual inspiration as a positive feedback loop and pursuing that inspiration requires that we abolish the normalcy myth.

6. With these understandings; the need for a relational solution to our emotional crises, a suitable overview of structure, and a staunch opposition to the myth of normalcy, we are in a position to discuss language. Specifically, how to practice the “critical language” I mentioned earlier. This practice is essentially a war against the common conception of dictionaries as the makers of language. Speakers make language through the act of speaking, new meaning emerges with each and every instance of communication. If we are to accept the role of subjectivity (and I think it would be dehumanizing to reject it), we can only take the written definitions of words so far. Once words are spoken, we must contend with at least two layers of interpretation, speaker and listener. Again, we can either view this interpretation as an obstacle or an opportunity. I prefer the latter. In the essay I take the term “critical language” from, Derrida uses a comparison between language created as if by an engineer and language created as if by “bricoleur” (or tinkerer). The engineer builds the whole structure from a predetermined plan, whereas the tinkerer builds the structure piece by piece. I think we ought to communicate more in the second way and use the language of the engineer only as a starting point. Because, whether or not we realize it, the meaning of language is inherently transcendental because of the interpretive step. Our use of words is guided by steady definitions, but there is always the trace of the individual’s use of the word. When did you first encounter the word? What was the context? Who taught it to you? What color do you associate it with? There is a lineage of experience that all culminates in the true subjective meaning of a statement, this meaning changes throughout time and it interacts with the present moment that it is spoken in to create even further layers of meaning.
   Yes, we could get by simply going off the most surface level of meaning, but such an interpretation is dead and cannot grow. Such a view of language practically transforms all interaction in transaction, a simple exchange of information, and precludes real understanding.
   I said in my introduction that the entirety of my argument should be viewed as my proposed method of critical language, be most assured that what you are reading now is only a part of that argument. My life is the other part. The critical use of language is only truly possible through dialogue; a book, like a dictionary, is dead and cannot grow. However, I can still imbue this writing with the imprint of life and the seeds of understanding by approximating my role in the explanatory dialogue. I’ve mentioned this idea before and it is central to practicing critical language because it allows us the tinkerer’s view of language. It allows us to pick up each stone of the structure we are building, interrogate it for faults or cracks, and determine if we truly want to include it in the whole as it is. And since words are not actually stones, thankfully, it also gives us the chance to change our definitions in order to create a better structure. In this way, dialogue allows us to create a growing structure or an informed structure; although, truly, it is a philosophical structure. The whole of dialogue consists in these parts:

   1. Active interpretation (both listening and speaking). If we are to become better at this part I suggest we all get very comfortable with the question “what do you mean by that?” and increase our imaginative capacity for explaining what exactly we mean; in order to do either of those things we also need to be comfortable being in conversation, without placing a “word-limit” on ourselves. Interpretation can be the most important step for many of the relational hardships in our lives because understanding the subjectivity of another requires us to set our egos aside, to embrace the Self as a metaphysical organ of growth. The criticisms we face can either be ignored or incorporated, one of those paths is generative while the other is stagnating. For the practice of critical language it’s the step of interpretation that is most important, since true understanding is the best foundation for all later actions and all further analysis.

   2. Action. This can be affirmation, supporting the health of other personalities. Theorizing, deciding what exactly to do is an important and unavoidable step. Or organizing, which sounds intimidating, but can include a wide variety of actions; use your imagination.

   3. Examination. How did the action go?

   4. Repetition. This process is just life now, do it all the time and maybe you can teach the people around you, and yourself, how to understand others better. As a person who has always desperately wanted to understand others, but failed initially at understanding myself, I have had to teach myself in this way and I’m still learning. I can only hope I will have the presence of mind to continue this cycle of learning throughout my life.

7. Fundamentally, critical language is the application of critical supportiveness to language itself in an attempt to increase our communal capacity for understanding. This extension of the theory can be even further expanded upon. We can adopt the stance of critical supportiveness in relation to anything, but we do need to be mindful that a different subject implies different specific methods. Still, the critical nature of the relationship pushes us toward growth/improvement while requiring the highest levels of nuance. Understanding the nuance is what enables us to be critically supportive as opposed to simply supportive. In all cases, this means we must learn about the structure we are relating to; whether that is the life story of a dear friend, the social expectations around building new friendships, the language that we use to communicate, or the functioning of political and economic structures that we wish to change.
   When it comes to political and economic structures especially, this learning is going to take time and many have already done a better job than I could of critiquing the systems we live under. So, instead of tackling those structures directly, I’d like to just illustrate how they impact our necessary human relationships. The most pressing issue, which presents a horrible inequality we should not abide by, is time. The section of society that is forced to sell their time as labor in order to live has long been overworked. This is because our productivity is not for the sake of producing the resources for survival, but instead for the sake of producing profit. Longer hours is a necessary evil because of the structure of wage labor, not by some metaphysical decree. The limits our working hours impose on us inhibit our ability to pursue human connection, and therefore our capacity for transcendental interpersonal experience. This inhibition affects all those who must derive profit from selling their time, as opposed to those who have other things to sell, but it affects women as caretakers most brutally. The idea of care work/child rearing as second and third shifts in the realm of unpaid domestic work has been present in feminist critiques of the economy basically since women entered the workforce, but it is no less important today. Overtime by Will Stronge and Kyle Lewis makes a strong and succinct argument for a shorter working week, which would allow many people the freedom to pursue the human connection that is necessary for our flourishing.
   Lastly, the functioning of American political bodies is eminently critiqueable on transcendental grounds; they have no reverence for the act of communication and the way they go about it is the furthest possible practice from dialogue. It has progressed to the point of an old and bad joke that our Congress doesn’t do anything and the Senate stops them from even doing that. The way that argument is treated in these governing bodies is effectively that it can be pursued for its own sake. We must reject this endless debate and view the goal of argument as agreement. Under a just system, all politicians would be locked inside their councilroom only to be let out when a democratic majority of the country not only agrees to their proposals, but to the subject of their proposals. As it stands, all of it is a performative sham not aimed at any material improvement for the people of this country. On that, I doubt we are very divided.

8. In the interest of being attentive to the maximum possible nuance, I should put the subject of inspiration into perspective. Inspiration comes to us more easily when we have what we need to survive. That’s why we cannot have this discussion about improving our relationships and the way we communicate without also talking about political and economic realities.
   The only reason I’ve been able to write this at all is because I’ve been blessed with time. I haven’t needed to spend excessive time selling my labor (a freedom we all deserve). During that time I tried my best to nurture my growth by finding joy doing things that are good for me; moving my body, eating well, being a better friend. I could’ve made better use of some of that time, but I think I did just well enough to understand the type of personality I needed to express to help me navigate this crazy, technological world of nations and currency. So, I wouldn’t describe what I do as smart, I would describe it as honest. It is an honest attempt to find what is beautiful in a world full of scrap. It is an honest plea for us humans to treat our power, especially that of communication, with the reverence it deserves. It’s a plea to understand that we are in a relationship with the rest of the world whether we acknowledge it or not, and right now it is a relationship built on the domination of nature and of people through markets. We cannot cultivate the spaces we need to flourish while operating in this way.
   I have tried to explain my response to the world as it is with the hope that it might help someone else in some small way and inspire them to help another in some small way. Ultimately, my dream is that we can all treat our relationship to the universe the way that I think we ought to treat ourSelves: as art. In my introduction I said myself and all work on this topic of relationship would be perpetually in progress, that’s the kind of art I’m talking about. It will never be done and I wouldn’t want it to be. It will never be sold, because that’s not what it’s for. The art of mySelf is purely the pursuit of transcendent beauty. If it were a painting, I would keep my palette and colors on me always and add another mark whenever I pass by and inspiration strikes me; never finishing it, always wondering how it could be more.

Conclusion

I have said that this work represents my personal growth, but if that were all it was it would remain in my journal and I would not be seeking readership. Truthfully, I believe that the goal of Philosophy as a discipline should be transcendental communication. The pursuit of wisdom should lead us into dialogue with others about the way we live our lives and how to improve it, how to do so right now and in the future. Those that call themselves philosophers should be experts at facilitating understanding between subjectivities and teasing out emergent meanings.

Astute readers will have doubtless caught on to the fact that I have not given any concrete advice for how to engage with people. All I have offered is goals and ends to pursue, things to keep in mind. I believe I have a very good reason for this and it is epitomized by the transcendental nature of relationships I have proposed. I do not think it is important for anyone to do exactly what I do. Actually, I would very much prefer it if that were not the case at all; think of how boring it would be to visit an art gallery that only displays the same single artwork over and over without change. I want you to grasp the shape of my argument here and feel the hope that I have for healing the deep wounds in our society and in ourselves. And I give my word that it is not blind optimism, I know that making the world a more harmonious place will be a monumental task. I doubt I will be alive to see such a world. But that is what makes inspiration so important. It is the snowballing momentum of will, Good will, that has the power we all lack individually. That inspiration is all I can hope to impart with this project. So, if I have been at all successful in that effort, I want to see it. I would like to be inspired by you, dear reader, so that we can reach even higher together.

As I write this, I am reminded of two wildly different philosophies. The slippery earth of the Aztecs and Leibniz’s metaphysics. The Aztecs had a conception of ethics that understood how hard it is to be a virtuous person. As we go about our lives, it is easy to slip and fall, it is easy to make mistakes. But if we find other people, who we trust, who we can hold onto, that helps immeasurably. In Leibniz’s Monadology, he says that all “monads” (all humans are their own monads) “reach confusedly toward infinity.” If we could simply combine these two conceptions, perhaps we can at one point reach toward something better, some divine state of being, with hands steadied by those we love. Each of us strengthened by our understanding of our own being and supported by a community founded on the cultivation of inspiring growth; we could scream into the darkness of the universe with smiles on our faces, “Watch us fall! And look how easily we stand again!”