Logic for the Global Brain (2)
After-event reflections
In celebration of the Logic for the Global Brain conference, the next Philosophy Portal course focused on Lacan’s Écrits will be on sale until June 30th.
The Logic for the Global Brain conference is over, but the contents of the weekend will be with me for a long time to come.
The “Global Brain” is a concept that structured my doctoral training, and functions as a type of hyper object to think human society in the context of technological singularity.1
“The Logic,” as in Hegel’s attempt to update logic from its Aristotelian foundations, taking us from an understanding of positive objective substance to positive objective contradiction, is basically a way to think not only substance, but also subject, in the context of modern sociopolitical development.
In short, “Logic for the Global Brain” suggests that the logic of contradiction as both objective and positive is a way to work through the problems and paradoxes of human society in the context of a technological singularity. I think it is a unique framing with a lot of potential given the actuality of a liberalist sociopolitical hegemony that frames identity as primary to contradiction, and individualist hedonism as primary to transindividual struggle. Here the basic idea would be that we need to think in terms of positive objective contradiction in order to move into a commonist transindividual struggle for a new meaning of emancipation in a new sociotechnological context.2
In this blog post I am going to share some of the quotes that I derived from the contributions of both teachers and special guests to the conference which I think help us think through both positive objective contradiction and commonist transindividual struggle.
First, David McKerracher of
offers us sound advice which can function as a first principle for building the future of philosophical communities in his talk “Underground Theory”:“The first standard is we need is to read, write, and engage conversations, in that order. We usually skip to the conversation stage and kind of pretend we did the reading and writing stage. The other two standards is first countering tendencies of the attention economy by raising ourselves to impossible tasks when it comes to how we write, how we read, and how we engage conversations.”
All too often people in our online spaces think coming together and talking is in-and-of-itself a solution to the problems of our time. Let us say the axiom of “dialectic to dialogos,” defined as a movement from oppositional conflict of positions to a harmonisation of discursivity or circling, distances itself far too prematurely from the real mechanics of thought necessary to sustain the telos of dialogos. In other words, dialogos is destined to find itself entangled in dialectical oppositions requiring the labour of the concept in its negativity to positivise contradiction.3 Thus, if one is really interested in getting to the core of the real in discursivity, one should not forget that it is just as legitimate to think “dialogos to dialectic.”4
This dialectic-dialogos/dialogos-dialectic meta-dialectic should include within itself long-term commitment to reading and writing that is embedded within conversation and back again (to reading and writing). As is so beautiful about McKerracher’s contribution to our larger liminal web,5 his advice does not have any onto-epistemological biases in terms of a certain network or tradition of thought. He leaves such determinations up to you. Whatever theorists you find yourself attracted, go for it. But do not spend all of your time negating a certain network or tradition of thought from which you feel excluded or from which you feel hegemonic influence.6 If there is a network or tradition of thought that you find central, find the others who converge in the same direction and put in the damn work (i.e. the conceptual mediation). If this network or tradition is valuable in-and-for-itself it will naturally attract the others. That is: find the others who think X, Y, Z network or tradition is central and actually read, write and converse in a way that allows for a new subculture within the liminal web.7
However, be warned, if your work is successful, you will naturally produce oppositions and antagonisms (i.e. people who feel your network/tradition is over-exposed and in need of re-balancing or counter-balancing from another network/tradition).8 At the same time, on a personal level, what this method of reading, writing and conversing does, is actually gives you the ground work of philosophical skills to engage in the contradictions of our day towards a commonist transindividual struggle for emancipation. Thus there is a meta-loop at work:
reading, writing, conversing in a dialectical method will build a subculture that furthers or deepens the contradictions of our day, but also
this very same method will give one the personal skills necessary to engage in and productively mobilise those deepened contradictions.
Consequently, this work does not lead to a progressive harmony of dialogos, but rather it progresses discursive struggle.
Next, I am going to draw wisdom from a man trying to play his part in birthing a wisdom commons: Peter Limberg of
.9 Limberg’s first attempt to birth a wisdom commons came as a response to the “meta-crisis” as a “hyper-object.” This led to an emphasis on meta-perspectival forms of cognition to deal with the complexities of our new disorienting realities. However, after prolonged meta-perspectival embodied reflection and discussion around this meta-crisis qua hole in the real, there is a sense and a need for a new approach, an approach which focuses less on the intractable problems provoked by the meta-crisis, and more of “less foolish” “positivisation of the negativity in art.” Limberg suggested in his presentation “Wisdom Commons” that if death was immanent, he would want to be creating art until the end.However, what seems to be the biggest shift in Limberg’s approach is a shift from taking on board a multiplicity of perspectives (feeling into them) towards the singularity of truth. Consider the following reflection:
“What about life affirming hyper-objects? What about midwifing hyper-objects? Birthing the wisdom commons as a hyper-object? The wisdom commons is simply a place that makes wisdom more common. I would argue it is already here. I think there is a great hunger to not only take multiple perspectives but to search for the truth. The movement of para-academic philosophers and returning to philosophy as a love of wisdom is coming back into public consciousness.”
Here we could frame this move from meta-perspectival cognition to the singular truth as a pathway that can unfold in ART, RELIGION or PHILOSOPHY.10 In “midwifing a wisdom commons” (simply: a place that makes wisdom more common), we (as in the multiple perspectives that cognition can take vis-a-vis the real) should naturally produce some sort of triadic geometry of art, religion and philosophy. Here, at least in my opinion:
the Art should be a singularity which speaks to the real of the historical moment on the level of universal beauty,
Religion should be singularity of practical action/belief allowing cultivation of self-discipline, family, community politics oriented towards universal good, and
Philosophy should be the singularity of thought movement itself connected to the real contradictions of life itself on the level of universal truth.
What I think is so essential in this move towards universality is fully taking on board singularity. We can no longer think of traditional universality divorced from its connection or perfect opposition to singularity, but must think singular-universality.11 In this sense, we have to think our singular involvement in the universal dimension of the wisdom commons (i.e. whether our singular engagement unfolds on the level of art (or psychoanalysis), religion (or politics) or philosophy (or science), and then what our relations could be vis-a-vis the other(s)).12
From here I want to focus on
, who is someone who certainly gives the vibe of someone already in the “less foolish” path qua performativity of “Bad Guru.” Bad Guru is precisely a signifier which inverts “wisdom signalling” in the dimension of Religion qua spiritual guru who knows the way. Ebert is always quick to point out that he does not in fact know the way, and that he lacks just as much as everyone else lacks, that he struggles with excess just as much as everyone struggles with excess. This is the position of the “Bad Guru.”Indeed, for Ebert, the signifiers of Lack/Excess run throughout his philosophical work as primary.13 At the end of his talk “Lack/Excess,” he brings our attention to the way lack/excess appear at the very core of our embodiment, our relation to the womb, and its role in “midwifing our self” (qua spirit child). This is a dimension which is often obfuscated even by those thinkers who always signal the importance of “embodiment.” And yet, if we are going to truly “midwife a wisdom commons” we should reflect the following words close to the chest:
“That return to the womb, the return to that equilibrium, of stasis, the infant and its fluid. This is a self-same temperature and density, where you have this indeterminacy of identity. This is where you are the group, and then you end up with fundamentalism and you don’t want to move. There are a lot of people who want to stick to the womb and death drive. I think the antidote to all of these things is developing that sense of confrontational self-relating negativity… courage.”
There are many strains of thought creatively combined here, a bit of Freudian Oedipal drama, a bit of Nietzschean lightning striking, a bit of Hegelian metaphysics, a bit of Lacanian drive, a bit of thermodynamic metaphor, a bit of real life experience, and a lot of Ebertian creativity. Here we should always be aware of our relation to the way, bringing “embodiment” on board vis-a-vis our psyche and thinking processes, must involve a type of primordial encounter with the lacking Other (the first traumatic experience of existence, of course, but more importantly, the constitutive non-experience of the womb state itself). Most of what goes on in ideological drive is the drive towards making what cannot be experienced, experienced, that is the drive which Ebert links to the “return to the womb.” This is where we want that “self-same temperature and density” where you have this “indeterminacy of identity.” In other terms, this is where the I and the Other, freed from their dialectical entanglement in a strange speculative third, collapse into a No-Thing or Non-Thing.14
I certainly do not have all the answers here, but in my experience of working with the constitutive non-experience, what cannot be experienced, we need to work through the real of our sexual fantasies and their entanglement with our own death on the level of moment to moment Being-Nothing towards truthful Becoming. Now that would be an interesting artistic/psychoanalytic, religious/political and philosophical/scientific project to think through.
If we are to work through this, the reflections of Bruce Alderman may come in handy. Alderman is currently thinking about education in and as transition.15 The old neoliberal models of education no longer work in an increasingly digital global world. We are at the end of a model and potentially on the very edge of a new model that not only combines many different subjective modes from different historical time periods and cultural spaces, but also does so in the novel spatiality of the present which cannot be reduced to any other time or space. Here Alderman, like Limberg, is feeling into the truth of aesthetics and art:
“The Owl of Minerva always flies at dusk. I have been hanging in dusky and twilight times in my art, feeling into thresholds as a mode of aesthetic expression. The twilight times are the threshold times. We feel it at the end of some period, and the coming of another period. I really believe if we become more conscious threshold dwellers, magic will happen, in whatever madness is afoot right now.”
I would like to connect this idea of “threshold dwellers” where magic can happen to both Limberg’s idea of “midwifing a commons” and Ebert’s idea of “courage for self-birthing” (opposed to “womb returning”). Is not birth itself a type of magic? Birth is truly a fresh start, a new opening, a new beginning, a chance to wipe the slate clean and open a new drive-pathway. Here sensing into the immediacy of the aesthetic dimension, to find what really moves you, what really motivates you, what really attracts you at a primal/primordial level, could be the key to unfolding a new drive-pathway.16
In such a space, you can quite frankly scare the shit out of yourself. You can be truly terrified by what genuinely moves/motivates/attracts you. It is much easier not to question these things and to continue an unreflexive unconscious movement. Here it is not so much a process where one makes everything unconscious conscious, it is more feeling into the reflexivity of the unconscious as such. It is more feeling into “what is in me more than me.” One never really reduces or eliminates the reflexivity of the unconscious, but one can take responsibility for the unconscious, one can work with the unconscious, one can incorporate it in such a way that one is less terrified by one self, or more comfortable in the terror of one self on the level of desire and sex as anxiety itself. The point, I think, is not to directly affirm the aesthetic contents of the unconscious intelligence, but to play with it in such a way that its materials move from the cringe of their singularity to the potential divinity of their universality.
Here, perhaps, we move to the idea that Alderman seems to have taken to: the idea of education as transition itself. In education as transition itself, we stop thinking in terms of one world dying and another world being born, and think the gap between death/birth, the gap between old/new itself, and we “make a home” in this gap which is constantly rethinking death/birth, old/new. Perhaps it is this gap itself where creative genius, on the level of art/psychoanalysis, religion/politics, and philosophy/science, can truly be sourced.
One of the coolest connections I have made from the Philosophy of Lack series was a connection with emerging philosopher Thomas Winn.17 Winn reached out to me after watching the series and we have had a productive dialogue at the intersection of figures like Nietzsche and Heidegger.18 From my interpretation, Winn is less focused on the gap itself and more focused on the opening created by the gap, the opening to a different world, a world of life’s becoming. His “Master Signifier” to “capture” this perspective (at least at the moment) is “letting”:19
“You let your perspective be and you catch the letting as an event. What remains is the clearing where you keep stumbling upon this nihilation. And nothingness in the nihilation of today’s scene is the possible inverting moment of what remains. This is what inversion means. Nietzsche’s life affirmation arises from nihilism where you find the opening in which life is still becoming. Life is happening of itself. Hegel does the same: the absolute is happening of itself, then you are in the clearing.”
There is a lot going on here. I think first and foremost we are dealing with letting as an existential or phenomenological disposition that allows you to reconcile yourself with the actuality of what is. Often times we can become crushed by the feeling of impotence in the face of what is. It is this crushing feeling of impotence which can lead one to desire the womb state (a total withdrawal from the world). But we can invert this feeling of impotence (in the gap) and open to the process of nihilation. We can paradoxically find an affirmative moment in the negativity, where we can learn to desire differently, where we can see an opening which may contradict what we think we want, but what is really calling for a challenge to actually live.
A lot of what is at stake here is challenging your own “absolute ideas.” Your absolute ideas don’t matter. Your absolute ideas are not the thing. Life doesn’t care about them, the absolute doesn’t care about them. The impotence of your absolute ideas will make the desire for the womb-Other grow and grow. But if you recognise that, following Winn, “the absolute is happening of itself,” then your absolute ideas dissolve (or shatter), and you find yourself in what Winn calls the “clearing” (the opening of the gap itself). Does this clearing open a world of pure perfect positivity. Of course not. This clearing only opens one thing: the possibility of really living (with all of the contradictions that really living actually entails).20
From the desire to impose absolute ideas to the opening/clearing provided by the gap which opens us, precisely, to contradiction, we need contact with “real religion,” that is, religion opposed to any denominational ideology,21 and in concert with the “beating heart of real relation.”22 I think there is no person we can learn more from in this department than Daniel L. Garner of
. Here Garner offers us an invaluable perspective:“The shock of similarity with the other is the revelation of difference. Here people say ‘we are all children of God’ and turn away from the other person to the third as ideological system, as opposed to locating the third in the relational system. People do this because you avoid owning this third dimension that people don’t know how to think or relate to or put into action. Religion needs to be more like real situations in which you can see what it takes to rise to the goal of a specific community.”
What is really crucial in this reflection is the way similarity/difference operate within the relational field. We are often attracted to people who are “similar” (thinking here of the unconscious drive that Ebert highlights of the attraction to that “self-same temperature and density” of the womb-state), but what this attraction inevitably leads to is an immanent confrontation with a radical difference. It is precisely at this point where there is an absolute recoil23 towards a propositional position qua absolute idea as opposed to engagement with the real of the absolute idea as such that is becoming in the sociohistorical process as such.
As Garner notes, people do not know how to think or relate or put into action this “strange third,” and I would wager that it is precisely at this point where the stakes of actually internalising the function of dialectical logic is so important, even indispensable. Dialectical logic is not related to supporting this or that thinker, or this or that proposition. Dialectical logic is how sociohistorical thought moves, at least in part.24 To take on board dialectical logic is to shed the tendency to look for perfect self-similarity that would no longer have to tarry with real difference. To take on board dialectical logic is to build in real difference into your mental models so that they can actually move with the real of sociohistorical processes as sublation (that is a cancelling and lifting to a higher level).
Garner seems to suggest that this is “real religion” where one is capable of facing real relation and rising to the occasion of the situation produced by a real relation.25
In many ways the situations that constitute our real relations are becoming more complex because of the sociotechnological landscape in which we find ourselves overwhelmed by the presence of artificial intelligence. Thomas Hamelryck, a computer scientist by day and Girardian theorist by night, attempts to think the strange coincidence between the new technological landscape which connects the entire world (the global brain) and our primal drives which inevitably get caught in strange webs of desire and mimicry (i.e. Girardian anthropology).
Here Hamelryck has become increasingly fascinated by the surprising relevance of philosophy at the intersection of computer science:
“What I think is very interesting about the current times is that classical philosophical issues that were very academic now become eerily relevant. What logic do we want our AIs to have? Does Hegel have something to say here? Do we want to go beyond induction? And what exactly is sentience and consciousness? People are already getting very confused. Just because it behaves and talks like a human, does that mean it is sentient? All of these things become practical problems.”
In short, for many thousands of years the types of questions that would perplex and busy the philosophical mind were mostly of abstract significance, i.e. the nature of consciousness/mind/psyche etc., the relation between mind/matter, the difference which makes the human being different from natural objects or biological organisms. But now all of these perplexing questions, which seem absolutely irresolvable on scientific terms, are emerging internal to the most advanced scientific disciplines (in terms of technological output/product).26
Here the deepest reflection that emerges from my long-standing relation with Hamelryck, is what would it really mean to put the discourses of artificial intelligence, cognitive science and so forth into closer contact with the deepest philosophies and psychoanalytic perspectives? The deepest philosophers and psychoanalysts are really inspired by and submitted to the real of the mind and thinking the irresolvable paradoxes of being human. Whereas the deepest artificial intelligence and cognitive science is really technically precise, offering profound abstractions that really move things in the technological real. We could explode the coordinates of both discourses if we could find the right connecting points, the right openings, between two discourses.27 But first, we would need subjects that were capable of Winn’s letting, and Garner’s capacity to relate to real difference.
The return of metaphysics is at work here. The thoughts of the great philosopher of mind,
, are here so important.28 What Sjöstedt-Hughes has been developing lately is the relation or even the deeper symbiosis between mysticism and metaphysics.29 The two are often seen at odds with each other. Mysticism is the inexpressible and unsymbolizable truth of an immediate revelation that seems to personally address the singularity of the self, whereas the metaphysical is the realm of logic and conceptualisation which makes everything clear in explanation on the level of a systematic universality. But what if the two are fundamentally connected?:“There is a mystical-metaphysical symbiosis. Mystical states inspire metaphysics and metaphysics helps explain mystical states, which can have very practical benefits. These practical benefits come down to ethics: what is the end? What is the purpose? Where does the value lie? And I think that brings mysticism to metaphysics.”
Here one cannot help but put Hamelryck’s questioning of the connections between philosophy and artificial intelligence into conversation with Sjöstedt-Hughes ideas of the link between mysticism and metaphysics. At the end of the day: what is the end, what is the purpose, what is the value of artificial intelligence for human beings?30 This is what requires metaphysical mediation: we have to take the mystical jewel as the heart/soul of the human being and mediate via metaphysical conceptualisation towards a new paradigm within a hyper-technological/globally interconnected world.
There is a lot of work to be done here, and far more questions than answers. Or perhaps one can say, there are many answers to the real to deal with/accommodate here (qua subjectivity in-and-for-itself). For Sjöstedt-Hughes (and presumably also figures like Carl Hayden Smith), the connection here between psychedelics and philosophy will be an important bridge: psychedelics for the direct connectivity to the mystical/ineffable, and philosophy for the conceptual mediation of that mystical/ineffable core. What other bridges between the mystical and the metaphysical might be at work? How might the mystical be connected, for example, to the dimensions of art/psychoanalysis or religion/politics?
Again, lots of questions in the form of answers for the real.31
Finally, we have the thought of pyrotheologist
.32 Rollins directly asks and answers the question of what a community like Philosophy Portal’s value is in a situation like ours:“What is the purpose of this type of community? What is the value of it? Everyone thinks they are outside the sacred and ideology and they don’t believe. The point is no, to say, you do believe. Whether its commodity satisfaction or sexual liberation, all of these new gods, promises of wholeness, completeness, is bad news. We need a church that preaches the good news of unknowing brokenness. That’s the message: freedom from the tyranny of happiness in the space of negativity.”
One could say that a community like Philosophy Portal is a space where one can move from a logic of substantial identity to a logic of contradictory identity in the “space of negativity.” Here we confront the “unknowing brokenness” internal to “knowing unity” of the logic of substance. We do not obfuscate this unknowing brokenness, not only with a traditional notion of God, nor modern fetishes of commodity satisfaction or sexual liberation.33
What becomes possible in this space of negativity opening to the positivity of contradictory logic? Well, to recapitulate what has been written here:
The emphasis on a community committed to the dialectical struggle of really reading, really writing, and really conversing (and in that order, repeat)
The emphasis on birthing a wisdom commons (simply: making wisdom more common) in the real act of philosophical midwifery (birthing self-concepts)
The emphasis on the courage required to embody self-relating negativity and free oneself from the unconscious reflexivity that leaves one motionless and stuck
The emphasis on dwelling in the threshold between one world and another as the very educational process itself where new aesthetic processes can unfold
The emphasis on confronting real situations over ideological obfuscation where we can rise to the challenges that emerge from really building together
The emphasis on taking the great philosophical questions and paradoxes seriously even if it means labouring with dense and impossible texts
The emphasis on the unity of the mystical ineffable and the metaphysical conceptual so that we can give philosophy its soul and give soul its reason
These are some of the major take aways that I am ruminating with after the third Philosophy Portal conference: Logic for the Global Brain.
In celebration of the Logic for the Global Brain conference, the next Philosophy Portal course focused on Lacan’s Écrits will be on sale until June 30th.
Last, C. 2020. Global Brain Singularity: Universal History, Future Evolution, and Humanity’s Dialectical Horizon. Springer. (link)
My latest book is not unhelpful in this context, see: Last, C. 2023. Systems and Subjects: Thinking the Foundations of Science and Philosophy. Philosophy Portal Books. (link)
This is not just an ideological assertion, but a wisdom learned from the real of circling.
There is more of a paradoxical loop at work here than is often recognised. What is at stake in this paradoxical loop is actually learning how the mechanics of dialectics works in the real of sociohistorical discursivity. Obfuscating these mechanics leads one very quickly to recoil against language because of the inherent negativity one finds in the discursive.
Theory Underground is a fantastic place to develop one’s philosophical-intellectual capacities. I myself have taken two courses this year, David McKerracher’s course on Karl Barth’s The Idea of the University, and Michael Downs’s course on Slavoj Zizek’s For They Know Not What They Do. I highly recommend their work.
This tendency is primally motivated by an unreflective desire to “kill the Father.”
The reason people do not do this is because they would have to take responsibility for their symptom and find a way to enjoy their symptom.
The emergence of genuine oppositions and antagonisms is actually proof that your work is effective/valuable and so forth, i.e. moving something in the real.
You may know Limberg for his work as steward of The Stoa. The Stoa was born in the COVID-19 pandemic and opened space for leading thinkers of our time to reflect on the hyper-objects of global post-modernity. For an overview of The Stoa’s history, see: “Midwifing a Wisdom Commons Part 2.” The Stoa also played an important role in bridging my intellectual career in academia to becoming more and more engaged in the online culture, see: Sex, Masculinity God w/
, Daniel Dick; Sex, Masculinity, God Pt. 2 w/ Kevin Orosz, Daniel Dick; Ontological Design w/ Daniel Fraga, Owen Cox, Raven Connolly, Carl Hayden Smith; Being a Man w/ Jack Donovan, , Ole Bjerg; G.W.F Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (in preparation for the first Philosophy Portal course); Game B: A Dark Renaissance Response w/ Alexander Bard, Owen Cox, Raven Connolly; Game B Meets Dark Renaissance w/ Jim Rutt, Zak Stein, Alexander Bard; Nietzschean Interpretation: A Field Analysis of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Influence (in preparation for the second Philosophy Portal course).This is of course a reification of a Hegelian triad proposed at the end of the Science of Logic. Here one need not focus on a reification of these categories, for example, it is possible that religion could be replaced with some other political project or art could be replaced with psychoanalysis, or philosophy could be replaced with a reflexive science. Ultimately, what is important is thinking the way the singular truth seems to actualise itself, not simply in a multiplicity of different perspectives, but in a multiplicity of different perspectives meta-structured by a triadic logic.
This is often a problem for traditional worldviews because of actually working with processes of development where one encounters the real of evil or negativity.
For Limberg as singularity, he is mostly concerned with the contradictions involved in “wisdom signalling,” where one signals to the world one’s own performative position of being wise. In contrast to this position, he suggests being oriented towards wisdom but under the axiom, not of “being wise,” but under the axiom of being “less foolish.” Here one starts from the position that one is a normatively foolish (not wise), and yet organising oneself or striving for wisdom. Again, for Limberg’s singularity, what is at stake in the movement from “wise” meta-perspectival cognition to '“less foolish” striving for the singularity of truth, involving the universality of art and beauty (which he suggests trumps false consensus).
This engagement drives our primordial engagement in the Philosophy of Lack series with Daniel Garner of
and . See also: Ebert, A. 2023. Excess/Absence: The Mask of the Child. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. p. 273-301. Philosophy Portal Books. (link)Das Ding.
You can find our full discussion on this topic here: Education in Transition Between Worlds.
Is not birth itself something caused by sensing into the aesthetic dimension? In short: by being moved by what is most beautiful to you?
You can find our conversations here: Overcoming Nihilism in The Nietzsche Dialogues; Heidegger’s Hegel in The Logic Dialogues.
See also: Winn, T. 2023. On from Zarathustra: From Becoming to Letting. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. p. 683-705. Philosophy Portal Books. (link)
Note that one of the biggest mistakes people can make in this area of philosophy is turning the clearing or the letting itself into an absolute idea, as opposed to actually being in the clearing and actually embodying letting. The same mistake is often made by religious subjects vis-a-vis God and mystery.
Derived from “Religion and the 21st Century (Part 1),” by
, and inspired by “Religion and Spirituality for the 21st Century” hosted by in collaboration with and .To use the Žižekian phrase.
There is of course a non-dialectical core of sociohistorical thought.
One should note here that one needs to think the difference between sublation as ideal and sublimation as blind repetition, the difference between the ideal of lifting to a higher level and the real which threatens to corrode every ideal. Perhaps this is the location of the difference between Religion and Absolute Knowing, the difference between the real of a particular constellation of relations qua community, and the real which prevents any particular community from totalising itself as the universal All.
Approaching paradoxes of this nature is one of the practical values of a book like Systems and Subjects. Thomas Hamelryck’s reflections on the book are also top level, see: Systems and Subjects: Book Discussion.
Again, my latest book is not unhelpful in this context, see: Last, C. 2023. Systems and Subjects: Thinking the Foundation of Science and Philosophy. Philosophy Portal Books. (link)
For a discussion between myself and Dr. Sjöstedt-Hughes, see: Metaphysics in Psychedelic Therapy.
See also: Sjöstedt-Hughes, P. 2023. On the need for metaphysics in psychedelic research. Frontiers in Psychology 14: 1128589.
Theses types of questions could be connected with Carl Hayden Smith’s ideas of hyperhumanism, where as focus, not on technology as an end in-itself (as is done in the transhumanist paradigm), but on technology as a bridge for humans to an other world, see: Smith, C.H. 2023. Overbecoming: Hyperhumanism as a Bridge Towards Interbeing. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. p. 547-574. Philosophy Portal Books. (link)
Or the Orthodox Heretic, see: The Orthodox Heretic.
This was one of the reasons for our focus on Alenka Zupančič What Is Sex?