This One Fact
From Emerson’s Self-Reliance: This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds…
Humanity has mostly functioned in a world that was mostly the same from one generation to the next. Life, business, technology, competition, and coordination from one generation to the next were remarkably similar until the mid-1800s (and much later in the developing world).
The meaning crisis we’re enduring at present in the developed world is inherently tied not only to Nietzsche’s “death of God,” but also to the trembling mostly-still-denied reality that the human form and human condition as it is will be radically transformed in the near-term, and our identity is being stretched to something beyond human.
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In this brief article, I’ll outline the role of older wisdom traditions (primarily one of enduring our present condition) and contrast that with the kind of wisdom we need in the fast-evolving future we’re entering (primarily one of how to participate in the great evolving process).
This will not be a call against existing traditions, but a call instead for a consummate evolution of our ideas of “wisdom,” and of the role of “wisdom” in a world that will soon likely bubble beyond humanity and human-led (or even human-conceivable) order.
We’ll begin by looking at the historical role of wisdom:
Old Wisdom and Consolation
The world we live in now stands on the shoulders of older wisdom traditions which – for all their flaws – undergirded our coordination, and gave people a shared set of assumptions and ways of being that doubtless made civilization possible.
A shared and mostly static version of “the real” (what is) and “the good” (what should be, or how we should be) has been absolutely essential for humanity – and many previous wisdom traditions have achieved wonders by discerning remarkably durable principles around things like justice, kindness, punishment, hierarchy, respect, etc.
We shouldn’t call these past discoveries “truths”; we should label them for what they are: Durable but conditional beliefs that help allow people to operate within the reality they find themselves in at the time.
In these older traditions, “meaning” generally stems from enduring our condition well. Reducing suffering for the “wisdom” practitioner, and possibly for others:
- Stoicism: Align with fate.
- Epicureanism: Secure tranquility.
- Taoism: Flow with the Way.
- Buddhism: Escape the wheel.
- Christianity: Suffer faithfully and be redeemed.
It would be ridiculous to reduce these traditions entirely to consolation, but it is important to note that they were not instructive to aid man in building an evolving, emergent, higher-order future of technology, intelligence, and coordination – because those demands were not pressing down upon us as they are today.
Many civilizations that rightfully taught men to be warriors from a young age – for that was best for that civilization at that time – even if it be woefully limiting and counter-productive today.
Adapting implies change.
Our sciences have evolved. Our political theories have evolved. Our notions of culture and technology have changed dramatically.
“Wisdom” must change in kind, as must our idea of “identity” (which must switch from the static human form to a greater self-overcoming process-of-life).
New Wisdom and Participation
Like old wisdom, new wisdom should prepare us for right and productive action in the present (see Spinoza on adequate ideas).
Unlike old wisdom, new wisdom must embrace drastic and expansive change beyond the present human condition, and drastic changing demands of cooperation and competition in the new, vastly faster AI-augmented state of nature, which we are already in.
I hold that this deliberate preparation for transformation is the fundamental distinction, as this enmeshment with the great process of life is what fundamentally makes our present time (the cusp of the singularity) so fundamentally different from all other epochs.
This meshes well with the torch moral perspective and the flame moral perspective:
There may be many other kinds of new wisdom ideas which may use other analogies, or draw other distinctions, but again I hold that they’d fundamentally help to prepare man to change himself and his condition, rather than endure and act in it as it humans-as-they-are will remain unchanged “main characters” (top of the food chain) of the future as they have for a few thousand years going backwards.
A Transition to New Wisdom
This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. – Emerson, Self-Reliance
Wisdom must move from the cloister and a relatively static present to the frontier, and a constantly and acceleratingly changing present.
This transition will not be easy, as the shift involves directly facing something that humans would rather resist:
Becoming has always been more real than being, and now we’ll have to face it squarely.
When Heraclitus wrote of the all-changing process, there wasn’t any appreciable way he could influence it.
When Emerson wrote of the becoming of the great process, he could see technology and culture evolving quickly, but didn’t yet know how that would impact the future of life itself.
Today, at the dawn of AGI and the beginnings of serious efforts around brain-computer interface, we have an opportunity to participate in that next stage of becoming, rather than merely poetically gesturing at it.
But in order to participate, to make the most of this fleeting window of time to contribute, we need notions of “the real” and “the good” that are geared specifically towards becoming, and not merely being.
