The Hard Road Is The Only Road Left

Extended Reflection on the first part of O.G. Rose's Belonging Again: An Address

You can pick up a physical or digital copy of Belonging Again: An Address at the following link: Belonging Again: An Address.

Daniel L. Garner and

Michelle Garner

will both be hosting sessions in The Portal this May, to learn more, or to sign up, see: The Portal.

This Monday Philosophy Portal will also be live-streaming a conversation with Daniel L. Garner on Belonging Again: An Address:

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O.G. Rose¹ Belonging Again: An Address, picks up where Belonging Again: An Explanation, leaves off.² To be precise: what has been “explained to us” is that “there are no easy roads left”,³ and all that remains to us universally is a “hard road”, which although universal, must be taken up by each of us in our singularity (as the first part of Belonging Again: An Address makes clear, this is a process of “coming to terms” with “childhood”).

Why is coming to terms with childhood the “hard road”?

Well, as philosopher Alenka Zupančič has made clear in her work, we adults no longer live in relation to children via the classical mythological shadow question “where do babies come from?” — the mystery which Freud suggested haunts the childhood imagination in its own self-questioning of the origin of being⁴ — today all secrets of mythology (qua givens) have been opened until we have nothing left to do but stare directly into the self-referential mirror of the adult itself and ask ourselves the only real question left to us: “Where do Adults come from?”⁵

For Zupančič, it is not that fully self-conscious adults know the (creative) origin, i.e. base-level sexual activity, and hide it from ignorant children who are still dwelling in the mythological mysteries of their unconscious psyche; but rather, that children are themselves perplexed by the fact that there seem to be no fully self-conscious adults who know the (creative) origin, and thus confront the fact that adults themselves have an unconscious:⁶

“The further crucial point is that [the unconscious is] not enigmatic only for children, but for the adults […] — this is perhaps the most fundamental example of the famous Hegelian dictum that the secrets of the ancient Egyptians were secrets for the Egyptians themselves [—] the encounter with the unconscious of adults; not an encounter with an additional (“adult”) surplus knowledge (incomprehensible to children and hence “enigmatic”), but with a minus, with something that first comes to them only as missing from its place in the Other.”

The “hard road” is thus the recognition of the lack in the Other — that no matter how “well-intentioned” adults may be in claiming to “know the way” to solving all of the various dimensions of what is often referred to as the “meta-crisis” (e.g. potential ecological catastrophes, geopolitical tensions/fragmentation, mental health disorders, social isolationism, culture and gender war ideologies, etc.) — the the only real start to a solution for the meta-crisis, begins with accepting that no one knows, i.e. that there is a lack in the Other. As Daniel L. Garner states to me in the opening of our extended discussion of the book:

“easy solutions” = “probably not correct”

Moreover, he notes to me that we find ourself in the situation of a meta-crisis precisely because of people’s well-intentioned good ideas.

Thus, the “hard road” opens and begins with a simple recognition of an a priori existential mistake,⁷ i.e. there is something wrong with me (my self-reference): how I approach the world, the way my thinking is in relation. Here substance (of belief) contradicts itself and becomes subject (of belief), a process well described by theologian Barry Taylor in a recent Edge session at The Portal, as a movement from holding belief to the transcendental guarantee of an external standard to an internally self-sustaining autonomous miracle:⁸

“Belief is the risk of belief, belief involves dispensing with all beliefs to remain face to face with the unbelievable and yet not turn away in the place of discomfort.”

For Rose, the more-or-less explicit meta-structure by which a subject can affirm this hard road, involves a process of self-contradictory becoming that takes place in the meta-dialectic of restraints and releases — or as will become clear: Plato and Deleuze, Christianity and Singularity — and is mediated or results in something like the “Hegelianised Nietzschean Spirit Child” (HNSC). The “HNSC” is the subject being addressed in Belonging Again: An Address; an entity that is an adult, but unlike most adults, looks in the mirror with an immediacy that is a result of mediation, a child-like curiosity and wonder, and asks: how can I create my belonging-origin as a continuous process of becoming other? The HNSC does not recoil from the painful inadequacy of all myths (givens) to provide a stable transcendental guarantee to this answer; nor does the HNSC recoil from the consequence that because there is no transcendental guarantee to this answer, it means that retroactively, one never actually belonged (givens were false); rather the HNSC internalises the shock of the lack in the Other and sees this very lack as the key to the truth of belonging in the drive with higher intensities of creativity.

I have often remarked on my journey: home is where my creativity is.

First a little background, from my perspective, on the “Hegelianised Nietzschean Spirit Child”. This is a move that I am familiar with because it is part of the foundation of what I have taught at Philosophy Portal, most notably in my teachings from the year 2022 (combining the Phenomenology of Spirit⁹ with Thus Spoke Zarathustra).¹⁰ There is now a literature that we could say revolves around the HNSC.¹¹ Moreover, for those generally familiar with the philosophy of O.G. Rose, what is at work in this move is very synergistic with what they have developed previously regarding the “return to common life”,¹² namely:

1. that in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, we are offered a dialectical process of climbing “up” the “phenomenological mountain” — from Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, Reason, Spirit, Religion, Absolute Knowledge — via specific “negativities” or “lack” internal to each stage or form; and

2. in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, we start with a subject of “Absolute Knowing” — alone on a mountain top after years of reflective solitude — only to affirm the overflowing process of “down-going” into the human world at large, in order to spread the conditions for what he will call the “Spirit Child”.

With this background we can develop a little further the aforementioned “meta-structure” which, we might say, is being processed by the HNSC, that is a type of dialectical process between, on the one hand, Plato and Christianity, and on the other hand, Deleuze and Singularity. What we find on the side of Plato and Christianity is the intellectual and religious foundations of the Western world (or what we might want to refer to as “restraints” (constraints/givens)); and what we find on the side of Deleuze and Singularity is the intellectual and religious present of (arguably) the global world (or what we might want to refer to as “releases”). What Rose is looking for in this meta-structural dialectic is, on the side of Deleuze, a “costly” rather than a “cheap” form of creativity, that can become nested within the restraints of the historical process;¹³ and on the other side, the side of Singularity, is a “harmonious” relationality, as opposed to a pathological desire to return to the womb.¹⁴

To summarise, we have the HNSC agent of mediation as the self-contradictory becoming of restraints (Plato/Christianity) and releases (Deleuze/Singularity) with the goal of moving towards:

1. Costly creativity

2. Harmonious relationality

Now with our coordinates set, let us forge forward into the first chapter where we are confronted with the philosophical question of questions: How Does Anyone Leave Plato’s Cave? Rose frames this question in relation to an on-going primary concern for their philosophy at large, which is the problem of intrinsic motivation.¹⁵ While we may all be familiar with the Allegory of the Cave from introductory philosophy classes — as an allegory introducing us to the distinction between illusion (in the Cave) and truth (out of the Cave) — the way Rose approaches this question is unique insofar as he questions whether or not Plato really addresses both the problem motivation in the prisoners leaving the Cave. In this questioning, he asks us whether or not we can “leave Plato’s Cave on our own”.¹⁶

Throughout his exploration, Rose thus uses Plato’s allegory to explore the question of intrinsic motivation in relation to our presuppositions about education oriented towards truth. In terms of leaving the Cave, Plato seems to avoid the problem of intrinsic motivation by assuming that people can be dragged out:¹⁷

“Plato seems to be suggesting that everyone can be dragged out of the Cave”

Who is dragging them out? From Rose’s reading, Plato seems to be suggesting that the founders of education (the “Philosopher Kings”) are dragging them out, as well as justified in forcing them back in:¹⁸

“In fact, Plato suggests the prisoners aren’t intrinsically motivated at all, and that thus they escaped thanks to “the founders” who are thus justified to force them back into the Cave.”

But if we consider the allegory in light to the HNSC, we have to start, at least, with the Hegelian perspective on the absolute as substance-subject, which seems to beg the question, if the founders of education let the prisoners out of the Cave, we find ourselves in an infinite regress towards a “first mover” problem,¹⁹ or what Rose will call ““The First Prisoner Problem” and/or “The Prisoner Nobody Comes For””²⁰ This problem does not leave Plato with his hands clean, but rather forces the even more profound question:²¹

“Who let Plato out of the Cave?”

Indeed, it is this question, which forces us to move from a Platonic to a Hegelian philosophy, indeed that may be the question that Hegel is himself trying to address in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Instead of assuming that we can leave unaddressed the issue of how we leave (and return) to the Cave, Hegel rather gives us a type of philosophical manual for creating philosophers, or rather, for creating oneself as philosophical mind.²²

As I have taught, it is in this context that we should start to see the tradition of German Idealism as the condition of possibility for a Nietzsche, as opposed to how Nietzsche tends to be represented in 20th century philosophy, as radically separated and opposed from this tradition. Here Rose uses this link to address the question of leaving Plato’s Cave in light of what we can learn from Nietzsche on the question of intrinsic motivation,²³ with reference to the issue of external/extrinsic education (Platonic model as Bestow Centrism, i.e. founders forcing prisoners out/into the Cave) to an internal/intrinsic education (Nietzschean model as Becoming, i.e. of spirit children).²⁴ Here Rose explains the move and the stakes:²⁵

“We have not yet thought Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” without being dragged out, and this is what Nietzsche challenges just to do. For us to succeed (or succeed more than fail) is for us to become “The Children of Zarathustra” (they walk out of the Cave into the sun alone). If we do not accept this challenge, we will not encounter the limits of what we can accomplish, which Nietzsche, after “the death of God”, believed we had no choice but to try[.]”

The crucial thing to re-emphasise in this move is that Rose is not talking about a “childish immediacy” (and this is also key to ensuring we work towards a costly rather than a cheap Deleuze), but rather a “child-likeness” as an immediacy that results from a long-term conceptual mediation (which is why it is so important to keep Nietzsche nested within the tradition of German Idealism, and specifically the work of phenomenological mediation that we find in the Phenomenology of Spirit). In Nietzschean (or rather Zarathustrian terms), while “childishness” is a state of immediacy that has never bothered to pick up something heavy through self-discipline (camel), the state of childlikeness is a state of immediacy that is a result of not only having picked up something heavy through self-discipline (camel), but also the result of having questioned the underlying reasons why it is picking up something heavy, i.e. the level of intrinsic motivation (lion). It is only when we see the triadic logic of the camel-lion-child as a type of negation of the negation, that we see also the capacity to “leave Plato’s Cave on our own”:²⁶

“Nietzsche intuits that Western Philosophy skips the question of how someone leaves Plato’s Cave, on their own (without being “dragged”), and furthermore the West has depicted the philosopher as mostly somehow who “enlightens” and “teaches” people, which is to say “drags out others” — a role Nietzsche resists in his Zarathustra. Nietzsche locates a “background” of “bestowing” versus “becoming” in religion, science, education, culture — everywhere — and proceeds to critique “Bestow Centrism” wherever he sees it.”

In this context, it is important to note that in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, what we find is a precise inversion of the Cave Allegory, where Nietzsche seems to be using Zarathustra, not only to “spread the conditions for childhood” (teacher to student bestowing), but also to work through how Zarathustra himself can become the type of being that embodies that “other becoming” which is capable of embodying joy inclusive of all the negativities of the process in relation to the imperfections of other human beings (teacher/student becoming). As I have written about extensively, while the first order narrative of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is about spreading the conditions for childhood — with the First Part and the Fourth and Final Part representing the overflowing abundance of the Spirit Child as such — the higher order discourse, I would argue, can be found in the way the transitions of the First to the Fourth and Final Parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, present to us the secret inner torments of Zarathustra’s own challenge of becoming:²⁷

1. First to Second Part: the problem of student identification/idolisation

2. Second to Third Part: the challenge of the courage to command/lead

3. Third to Fourth Part: the self-mystery of his own ingratitude for life

What is important about paying attention to the higher order logic of the book, is that we find an “enlightened leader”, not in a pure inner joy and stillness (meditative calmness, etc.), but in a whole new level of tensions and vicissitudes, tensions and vicissitudes he is actually unable to discuss with his spirit children, but only about to discuss with his inner voiceless voice. I claim that this process embodies “spirit’s logic” as a becoming which must include being-nothing. Thus, I would like to strongly emphasise, that if we move from bestowing to becoming, what cannot be missed in this transition, especially if we want to win for ourselves a “costly” rather than a “cheap” Deleuze, is a becoming that sublates being-nothing, rather than just a transition from being (bestowing) to becoming. Here I will quote at length from “Spirit’s Logic”:²⁸

“Consequently, from First Part to Second Part to Third Part to the Fourth and Final Part of the text, Zarathustra oscillates from being an enthusiastic teacher for his spiritual children (a bright sun of a being), to withdrawing back into solitude, whether in his mountain stillness or in his hiking difficult and impossible pathways (a simple nothingness). With each oscillation his being seems higher (what he often expresses in relation to the “high noon”), and his nothing seems to be deeper (what he often expresses in relation to “deep midnight”). The higher being allows him great strength and glow for his potential higher men, and the deeper nothing challenges him with new riddles about the mystery of the soul, time and tragedy. Here it is important to note that both his “high noon” and his “deep midnight” are necessary for the form of greatness that structures the becoming of the overman. Zarathustra always reminds us that the overman “wants it all”, i.e. the “joy and the sorrow”, the “wickedness and the kindness”, the “pains and the pleasures”. And perhaps this is part of what separates the enlightened being and the enlightened leader: not only the capacity to know the deepest joy and kindness and pleasure, but the capacity to work with the paradox of these dimensions in a becoming. This means that while the stereotype of the enlightened being is a being who sits in a meditative joy without inner difficulty or troubles, the enlightened leader is someone who actively exposes himself to new dimensions of becoming (perhaps beyond enlightenment itself), in ways that will make life even more difficult and challenging, but at the same time, richer and fuller (like a “thick honey”). What is joy without sorrow, kindness without wickedness, pleasure without pain, day (high noon) without night (deep midnight)? Or, as is now infamous whenever discussing Nietzsche: good without evil?”

The question here, in relation to “who let Plato out of the Cave?”, is that on the level of the absolute as substance-subject, it is not clear whether we get the equivalent depth of inner/intrinsic revelation that we find in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, about the being of Plato himself. This is not to say it never happened, but it is to say that it was perhaps not sufficiently integrated into Plato’s own philosophical work.

If we can make the HNSC move from “Bestowing to Becoming” we get a totally different view of the “Sun qua Truth” on the level of historical spiritual gravity that allows us a “middle way” in-between “Plato-Christianity” and “Deleuze-Singularity”. As opposed to a world that has to revolve around the “One Sun” of the “Philosopher King” (where students forever remain students under the one teacher), we get a world that can revolve around a “Multiplicity of Suns” (where we find a multiplicity of teacher/student becomings), which in many ways can be seen as the sublation of Fundamentalist Christianity (One Sun) and Cheap Deleuze (Individualistic Multiplicity). Rose frames this “cosmology” in relation to the embodied historicity of Simone Weil, and her linking of grace to gravity, in the Absolute Knowing made possible by the generosity of God’s absence:²⁹

“Weil speaks of “grace” and “gravity”, and tells us that ‘the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity’. For me, this suggests that souls naturally seek “givens” and want to be supported by “givens”, and when they are gone, the soul naturally falls [in] despair […]. If the soul is not to so descend, it must act unnaturally, and that would entail “Absolute Knowing” or the Childlikeness of Nietzsche[.] How can we act unnaturally? Weil tells Christians to pray ‘with the thought that God does not exist.’ The “Absolute Knower” believes “Absolute Knowing” is unobtainable. The Children of Nietzsche do not believe Nietzsche has been created yet. ‘God can only be present in creation under the form of an absence.’”

What all of these “grace-gravity” moves include within their singularity is an openness to lack (of Absolute Knowing, of Nietzsche, of God), and thus an openness to truth without transcendental guarantee. The paradox at work here is important to dwell on in the sense that, the principle being explored here is to put the immediacy of truth first, without presupposition, as the path of mediation, as opposed to, in a reactionary fear of the truth, putting some transcendent guarantee as the principle for becoming. Rose explains this well when he articulates the paradox at the centre of Weil’s philosophy:³⁰

“Weil believes that it was ‘easier for a non-Christian to become a Christian, than for a ‘Christian’ to become one,’ […;] she famously refused baptism, and arguably ‘she was [not] even troubled by the question of formally becoming a Christian[.]”

What is at work in this paradox is the wager that if you follow the truth without transcendental guarantee (doing the shadow work/tarrying with the negative) you are more likely to become in/with/as Christ as opposed to if you strongly identify with Christ as a transcendental guarantee as a way to obfuscate the truth of shadow work/tarrying with the negative. Religious identity is overrated, and while it has its place, it is obviously a form of bestow-centrism that obfuscates what is required to become. Here, to further illustrate this crucial point:³¹

“Even Christ himself could be a threat to Attention: as Weil wrote, ‘Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.’”

This is a very Hegelian point, insofar as Hegel makes clear in the Phenomenology, that the path to truth is a part of the truth itself, and that this path is marked by what I mentioned earlier: existential mistake, where we tend to “bestow ourselves” with “given identities” in order to guard ourselves against the fear of truth. Here in Hegel’s immortal and unsurpassable reflections on the topic:³²

“74. Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science, which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognises something, it is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself? Indeed, this fear takes something — a great deal in fact — for granted as truth, supporting its scruples and inferences on what is itself in need of prior scrutiny to see if it is true. To be specific, it takes for granted certain ideas about cognition as an instrument and a medium, and assumes that there is a difference between ourselves and this cognition. Above all, it presupposes that the Absolute stands on one side and cognition on the other, independent and separated from it, and yet is something real; or in other words, it presupposes that cognition which, since it is excluded from the Absolute, is surely outside of the truth as well, is nevertheless true, an assumption whereby what calls itself fear of error reveals itself rather as fear of the truth.”

We can go so far as to say that Plato himself may have been guilty of instituting this separation between cognition and truth, as well as not going through the painstaking labour of outlining, precisely that the path out of the Cave as being marked by a constitutive fear of truth. As a result, if we have a truth that remains stuck or tethered to givenness of “One Sun” (bestow-centrism), we risk something which is no longer possible to risk — that is the risk of reacting to the real of the “plurality of Suns” and truths which are the result of the mediation of a subjective multiplicity — in the form of either isolationist individualism or tribalism. As mentioned, on the side of isolationist individualism we have the cheap Deleuze, and on the side of tribalism we have the fundamentalist Christianity. What both of these moves share is the obfuscation of the truth of real difference and otherness via rationalistic coherence. As Rose will often express in their philosophy: the true is not the rational. Or as Žižek teaches, if we move from the Kantian negative judgement (the negation of a predicate) towards the Hegelian infinite judgment (the affirmation of a non-predicate),³³ we find something like the following: the true is non-rational.

To affirm the true as non-rational is to walk that “Weilian” path — which moves from “One Platonic Sun” (which risks tribal coherence) and avoids the Deleuzian rhizome of “A Thousand Plateaus” (which risks falling into an unintelligible multiplicity) — of what I have called “A Thousand Plato’s”:³⁴

“The final horizon for the subject […] is the cultivation or generation of the highest state of self-being that is possible. This can be conceived […] as “A Thousand Platos”, in terms of aesthetics, morality, and truth. There is no a priori standard to measure what is the perfect aesthetics, morality or truth, as they are all in a becoming, filtered as they are through our biocultural drives. It is up to each individual subject’s own alignment with its conscience to know whether or not it is acting in the most beautiful, good, and true modality for its own drive in the world. To live a self and collective project that builds towards the beautiful, the good, and the true, is more than enough of a challenge for any subject to really see if it can carry the concept in history, and whether it can appreciate eternity in struggle.

Such entities (“A Thousand Plato’s”) are essentially engaged in a process of self transformation, capable of consciously reflecting on the deep inner and outer problems, individual and collective problems, that need to be reconciled in the here and now. The more the self is capable of identifying inner and outer problems, individual and collective problems, the more beautiful, good and true will its creations become in time as the concept”.

We can perhaps frame this nature of “A Thousand Plato’s” as a movement from either a geo/heliocentric cosmos to a multiverse of singular-universalities, which in their singularity do not lose universal intelligibility, and in their universality do not lose their singular difference. Thus, what we aim bring together in the HNSC is universal intelligibility and singular difference.

Rose himself relies on my work on the technological singularity³⁵ to bring this contradiction out in what we might call the confrontation with real difference and otherness that does not repress/foreclose/disavow universal intelligibility. What we find here involves the self-differentiation of RSI’s where we can find (1) the problem of effacement as a result of failure/negativity (which risks the return to womb dynamic) or (2) the possibility of sublation of failure/negativity (which opens the condition for a new harmony and higher organisational capacity).³⁶ Here is Rose on the aim of mobilising the RSI:³⁷

“We will discuss RSIs, which is enough of our purposes, and, to cut to the chase, the argument is that we need to seek a Technological Harmony which doesn’t efface RSIs, but instead helps RSIs “harmonise” by accepting the necessity of “lack” (thus leaving Singularisation behind). Technological Singularity would erase “lack”, thus (unintentionally) effacing RSIs, subjects, and us. It is very possible that “harmony” without technology is impossible, so we are not arguing against or demonising technology. Rather, we need to use technology according to different metrics than metrics which define success as “removing lack” (which leads us unintentionally into A/A and Affliction). There is good reason to think RSIs are essential to human subjectivity and that subjectivity is essential for the universe reaching “highest being”.”

Rose is suggesting that Technological Singularity, which is arguably embodied by the “cheap Deleuze”, erases lack in the “collective immersion” that is often represented in/as “mind uploading” to a digital surface. If we take a close look at the visions and fantasies of Technological Singularity, it is hard to deny that they revolve around visions and fantasies of becoming like God’s “omni-properties” via technological means, and thus may be a symptom of not facing/confronting the truth of lack. The alternative path, that of embracing the new technological universe, but through the subjective truth of lack, may give us both the capacity to extend our skills and possibilities through technology, while at the same time finding a new pathway to higher order organisation and collective intelligibility. This would be where we find the “costly Deleuze” that is both bringing to the centre the values of higher order creativity, while not avoiding the process of embedding those powers of higher order creativity in a universal sociohistorical matrix.

The obvious problem we encounter here involves the mega-philosophical problem that comes directly as a result of Hegel’s philosophy, that is the problem of self-differentiation. The “cheap Deleuze” in many ways obfuscates this problem by just emphasising the process of individuation,³⁸ even if there is a post-Deleuzian literature that tries to outline the conditions of possibility for transindividuation, and thus approach a more “costly Deleuze”.³⁹ However, even if we are able to hold “harmony” or “harmonies” between highly creative networks of self-differentiating RSI’s, we still are left with this process of “becoming other” (which is the nature of the HNSC), and most importantly, the mystery of this “becoming other”. Is this mystery of the becoming-other that we are really on a collision course with a beyond of the “human being”? Are we, pathologically or harmoniously, creating the conditions of possibility for our transcendence as a species? Or are we, pathologically or harmoniously, creating the conditions of possibility for the reification of our species with higher-level social organisational capacities? (what has traditionally been referred to as the movement from capitalism to socialism to communism?). Here is Rose on this topic:⁴⁰

“The multiplication of RSIs is not a bad thing if we expect this multiplication and understand it is a necessary feature of history and subjectivity; in fact, the multiplication could be essential for the universe realising its highest development.”

The question is thus: what is the universe’s highest development? Is it the human being or is it the human being’s overcoming? Is it communism? Is it God? Is it post-human? Is it something so totally other that we cannot think it? I think about this issue in Systems and Subjects as being “doomed” to higher organisational capacities:⁴¹

“Whether the religious mind views higher organisation in relation to God, or the modernist mind views higher organisation in relation to morality or economics, or whether the scientific mind views higher organisation in relation to technology, what brings them into a type of higher unity, is their collective relation to the absence of higher organisation.”

When subjects think about higher organisational capacities, they tend think about them in terms of some utopian positive end result of the historical process (ideal result in the real), but what if higher organisational capacities are both a necessary part of the historical process (real), and involving the transcendence of what we have come to assume or presuppose as the human being (post-human-ideal)? What would this higher organisational “object” be?:⁴²

“The question then becomes, does the totality of spiritual, moral, economic and technological organisation, the immanence of its processual mediation by subjectivity [… have itself a unity?] Can we think of an “object” that does not exist, which is the very mediation of actual processual ideals in human history? All we know of such an “object” is that it is highly organised. For the Christian it is the “revelation of God” (and simultaneously the redemption of man from sin), for the Buddhist it is the “actualised great wheel” (mediated by compassionate others), for the Kantian it is the “moral law” (enacted by aligning action to the categorical imperative), for the Marxist it is the “communist state” (which is free of property and ownership), for the Kurzweilian it is the “higher computational intelligence” (which processes information at speeds and efficiencies beyond human comprehension). Are all of these descriptions of the same qualitative transition to some otherness[?]”

I’ll leave this as an open-question to the mystery of higher organisation, but what comes towards the end of the first half of Belonging Again: An Address, is the way this entire mystery involves the necessity of including self-reference:⁴³

“The world today increasingly forces us to “self-reference,” which is to say we are trapped in having to undergo self-reference.”

In other words, if we are to maximise the possibilities of immanent higher order organisation, we have to recognise the unity of the absolute systems/substance and subjectivity. This means we have to recognise the way in which the higher order organisation directly involves the total multiplicity of our subjectivity, and thus; our capacity to integrate our partial drives through existential error, and become the type of being whose self-reference is a gift. It is precisely this inversion, of turning our capacity for self-reference in relation existential error (self-relating negativity) into a gift, that opens up the possibility to affirm singularity towards a new universality. Rose links this to the capacity of turning entropy (disorder) into negentropy (order):⁴⁴

“Self-reference brings about a different “mode of being” in the world, and it can inspire us into developing skills and abilities (bringing Ivan Illich to mind) which might align more with negentropy than entropy.”

The power of this way of thinking, especially in the context of the becoming-other, is that self-reference becomes a new given.⁴⁵ In other words, we may be losing the givens that stabilised the traditional world, but we are gaining a new, and arguably a more true given, the given that we cannot escape our own self-reference, or as Rose states:⁴⁶

“We can only think the future if we accept that we must think us.”

What better way to bring thinking of the first part of Belonging Again: An Address? The explanation is over: there is only the hard road before us. That hard road must start with addressing the universalisation of a deep self-questioning, a universality that brings us to one end: self-reference or “singularity-reference”.⁴⁷ The first part of Belonging Again: An Address brings us that singularity-reference, so that we may in turn, re-confront the nature of the mystery of higher organisation, or the process of moving from our singularity-reference into contributing to a new higher order universality. As Rose ends the first part:⁴⁸

“This will require a “faithful presence” of Children in places of influence admidst “the loss of givens” and in preparation for “The Technological Singularity”.

Planning is no longer enough, we must prepare. And in beings that are prepared, we can make plans, and endure the immanent negativity of their failure, and have faith, that the result of our mediation will still be positive. But can we scale? I will save that for a future reflection on Belonging Again: An Address.

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You can pick up a physical or digital copy of Belonging Again: An Address at the following link: Belonging Again: An Address.

Daniel L. Garner and Michelle Opperman Garner will both be hosting sessions in The Portal this May, to learn more, or to sign up, see: The Portal.

Daniel L. Garner will also be leading a Book Club at The Portal this June 30th to discuss the book:

This Monday Philosophy Portal will also be live-streaming a conversation with Daniel L. Garner on Belonging Again: An Address:

1. Husband and wife team composed of Daniel L. Garner and Michelle Opperman Garner, see:

O.G. Rose

.

2. See: The Conclusion of “Belonging Again” (Part I).

3. Rose, O.G. 2024. Coming to Terms with Childhood. In: Belonging Again: An Address. O.G. Rose. p. 7.

4. Freud perceptively notes: “It seems to me to follow from a great deal of information I have received that children refuse to believe the stork theory and that from the time of this first deception and rebuff they nourish distrust of adults and have a suspicion of there being something forbidden which is being withheld from them by the ‘grown-ups’, and that they consequently hide their further researchers under a cloak of secrecy.”, see: Freud, S. 1908. On the Sexual Theories of Children. In: Freud — Complete Works. p. 1969.

5. Zupančič, A. 2017. What Is Sex? MIT Press. p. 8.

6. Ibid. p. 10-11.

7. Žižek noted to me in our discussion on Christian Atheism that the road from religion to absolute knowing is governed by the recognition of an existential mistake, something wrong with my being, see: CHRISTIAN ATHEISM (w/ Slavoj Žižek).

8. See: Taylor, B. 2024 F*cking Comfort. The Edge (The Portal).

9. See: Phenomenology of Spirit.

10. See: Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

11. For a few notable examples, see works by

Dimitri Crooijmans

,

Alex Ebert

,

O.G. Rose

, and

jameswilliamwisdom

: Crooijmans, D. 2023. The Birth of the Spiritual Child. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books. p. 251-272.; Ebert, A. 2023. Excess/Absence: The Mask of the Child. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books. p. 273-301.; Rose, O.G. 2023. The Overman and the Allegory of the Cave: The Problem of Intrinsic Motivation and Living as the Children of Zarathustra. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books. p. 49-140.; Wisdom, J. 2023. My Wild Wisdom: The Becoming of Creative Spirit. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books. p. 485-496.

12. As Rose states explicitly, see: “This can open up discussions on “The Hegelianization of Nietzsche”, the role of “intrinsic motivation”, the need for “a return to common life” (Hume), and so on.”, see: Rose, O.G. 2024. Coming to Terms with Childhood. In: Belonging Again: An Address. O.G. Rose. p. 9.

13. Ibid. p. 12.

14. Rose, O.G. 2024. Plans of Affliction or Preparation for Singularity. In: Belonging Again: An Address. O.G. Rose. p. 96-7.

15. Throughout Rose’s work there seems to be a linking of the problem of intrinsic motivation to the desire-drive distinction, at work in Žižekian philosophy, from Rose: “Drive is when the “Big Other” is overcome in desire serving Drive (which “is” already): desire is a servant (of “intrinsic motivation”) more than a searcher. It is a “clearing servant” of Drive or it is likely a search for a “Big Other” (choose): we sit in Plato’s Cave waiting or feel Driven to walk. Life is “glimpsed” more than an “object”, something which inspires us to “move” more than something we forever own (“unmoving”).” Rose, O.G. 2024. Belonging Again: An Address. O.G. Rose. p. 739.

16. Rose, O.G. 2024. Coming to Terms with Childhood. In: Belonging Again: An Address. O.G. Rose. p. 16.

17. Rose, O.G. 2024. Chapter I: How Does Anyone Leave Plato’s Cave? In: Belonging Again: An Address. O.G. Rose. p. 25.

18. Ibid. p. 27.

19. Ibid. p. 18.

20. Ibid. p. 22.

21. Ibid. p. 31.

22. This is why I started Philosophy Portal on the foundation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy Portal is not interested in teaching “this or that” philosophy, but rather in creating philosophers because it is historically necessary for our moment.

23. Ibid. p. 36.

24. For an extended reflection, see also: Rose, O.G. 2023. The Overman and the Allegory of the Cave: The Problem of Intrinsic Motivation and Living as the Children of Zarathustra. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books. p. 49-140.

25. Rose, O.G. 2024. Chapter I: How Does Anyone Leave Plato’s Cave? In: Belonging Again: An Address. O.G. Rose. p. 37.

26. Ibd. p. 38.

27. See: Last, C. 2023. Spirit’s Logic: Zarathustra as the Becoming of Being-Nothing. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books. p. 19-48.

28. Ibid. p. 24-5.

29. Rose, O.G. 2024. Chapter II: Neurodiversity, Simone Weil, and Nash Equilibria. In: Belonging Again: An Address. O.G. Rose. p. 77.

30. Ibid. p. 61.

31. Ibid. p. 70.

32. Hegel, G.W.F. 1977. Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford University Press. p. 47.

33. Žižek, S. 2012. The Non-All, or, The Ontology of Sexual Difference. In: Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London: Verso. p. 796.

34. Last, C. 2023. 4.4.1(b) — A Thousand Platos’. In: Systems and Subject: Thinking the Foundation of Science and Philosophy. Philosophy Portal Books.

35. Last, C. 2020. Dialectical Approach to Singularity. In: Global Brain Singularity: Universal History, Future Evolution and Humanity’s Dialectical Horizon. Springer. p. 293-312.

36. Here in a “Dialectical Approach to Singularity” I emphasise the way in which Lacan’s RSI triad complexities in the temporality of desire to drive into a the geometrical dynamics of a cyclohedron and ultimately towards the not-One as a model for drive itself (which is an infinite judgement, i.e. the affirmation of a non-predicate), see: Ibid. p. 296-7. Moreover, I suggest that these models can be used to analyse the meta-structures of social dynamics on the approach to technological singularity, see: Ibid. p. 302.

37. Rose, O.G. 2024. Chapter III: Plans of Affliction or Preparation for Singularity. In: Belonging Again: An Address. O.G. Rose. p. 98.

38. Weinbaum, D.R. 2017. Chapter 12: Open ended intelligence: The individuation of intelligent agents. In: Open-Ended Intelligence. Doctoral Thesis, Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

39. However, it should be noted that often even Deleuzian discourses of transindividuation are basically pointing towards this transindividuation as either including or being totally dominated by, post-human intelligences, see: Veitas, V. & Weinbaum, D. 2015. A world of views: A world of interacting post-human intelligences. In: The Beginning and the End: Life, Society, and Economy on the Brink of Singularity. New York: Humanity+ Press. p. 495-567.

40. Rose, O.G. 2024. Chapter III: Plans of Affliction or Preparation for Singularity. In: Belonging Again: An Address. O.G. Rose. p. 106.

41. Last, C. 2023. 2.1( c ) — From Physical History to the Beyond of Physics. In: Systems and Subject: Thinking the Foundation of Science and Philosophy. Philosophy Portal Books.

42. Ibid.

43. Rose, O.G. 2024. Chapter V: May Gödel’s River-Hole Move the Sun and Other Stars. In: Belonging Again: An Address. O.G. Rose. p. 130.

44. Ibid. p. 137.

45. Ibid. p. 138.

46. Ibid. p. 141.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid. p. 150.