Homo Genesis: Future through Individuation – Equilibration - Determination
VON J MICHAEL HEYNEN
Abstract
This essay of critical-programmatic reflection describes a conceptual framework on
the imperatives of civilizational transition processes as
individual-social, equilibrating evolution. The focus is on the
category of inner and outer worlds of humans, identifying the mutual
complementarity of cognitive-aesthetic individuation and simultaneous
universality as a determination of noumenal-transformative,
future-proof development of societies.
Introduction
In the beginning there was not the word, but spirit and consciousness. The will derived from this formed the energy of the Big Bang, the universe was created: the external world - also a space of free will. Within the framework of the metaphysical, then physical cosmic law, the home planet of today's human civilization was subsequently created, vitalized ed by a leading essence, an intrinsically hybrid essence, in order to govern the mutual complementarity of idea and reality in an evolutionary manner.
This process of
so-called equilibration ensures that the spirit is vitalized and life
is spiritualized - as the primary driving force of gradual transition
and evolution. Life understood in this way forces the question: Is
the current development of man still coherent and concordant with the
universal law of development? Who will be the man of the future? -
The correlation of inner and outer worlds provides realizations for
the critical self-reflection towards the upcoming development paths
of civilizational transition and transformation.
I. STATUS QUO : TIME AND SPACE
Beginning with the industrial revolution, human development has reached an age in the last fifty years at the latest that is referred to as the Anthropocene: the extensive domination of the planet by humans.
Complementary to this development, an increasing despiritualization set in, because Anthropocene orientation is essentially physical-material. People(s), societies and their states decoupled themselves from the self and the supremacy of the spirit, allocating their existence largely to the substructure of possessions and technical functional dominance. Cultural-spiritual connections and developments faded in favor of coping with pure existence and seemingly endless resources.
To this day, this coping is about private-public / oligarchic-autocratic competing forces of egocentric profit and power concentration under the condition of purely materially understood "distributive justice". Anthropocenic domination has thus become decoupled from people and humanity - inversely proportional to external progress - and formal power to act has largely shifted to the side of the system agents. Humane principles are marginalized or paralyzed.
This also applies to the so-called western, democratic, constitutional states that are progressive in terms of humane political models and systems. Government processes that lack substance, transparency and competence preserve democratic forms and empty society and the state - both materially and immaterially.
Political power is reduced to administrative action of formal legitimacy with high control and extreme bureaucratic expenditure; substantial creative power is the great vacuum being compensated by old, mixed up political models - mostly based on ideological political marketing and egocentric substitute projection. Highly complex pseudo-regulation and staged crises, conflicts and wars camouflage the structural legitimacy deficit of factually autocratic-feudalistic systems. Humans become persons, life becomes a function.
The critical, enlightened and analytical person might not fail to notice that such systems of rule cannot function in a sustainable manner on either the micro or macro level and are obviously unsuitable for establishing and dynamically sustaining a humane order and world order. Irritation, disharmony and disorientation are the predominant consequences. Rigidity through constantly repeating antiquated, dogmatic-ideological power formats of autocratic-imperial pseudo-greatness leads to a final loss of legitimacy, dissolution in chaos and finally complete paralysis.
Despiritualization, decoupling, emptying lead to entropy, desolation and nihilism; even quantitative attempts at control through artificial intelligence will of course not remedy this, because so-called transhumanism ignores or negates the inexhaustible creativity and cognitive quality of human-metaphysical potentials. But these are based in the inner space of man, who has currently exhausted himself in the outer space. And here - in the inner space - lies the source and the reason for civilizational transition, which describes a quantum leap. Because in the end it is always man himself: the phoenix rising from the ashes.
II. METAMORPHOSIS: INSIDE AND OUTSIDE
Anyone
who agrees with the above anamnesis will have an idea of the
reason for the regression of civilization: the increasing loss of
external freedom as a consequence of the self-inflicted abandonment
of internal freedom. In any case, in Western civilization, the
fathers of the freedom struggle came from the internal determination
of freedom in order to organize and order the conditions of external
freedom accordingly. The external constitution essentially became a
reflection of the internal.
Today, the external world is
in increasing disorder, as its conditions are largely decoupled from
internal determinations or these are not identifiable and effective
as leading ones. For a situation of transition that appears urgent, a
reversal of thrust in the sense of conscious will formation to
identify and dynamize necessary potential for change appears
inevitable:
1. Inner and Outer Space
The Neo-Platonist Augustine conveyed the knowledge of inside and outside. According to this, humans are hybrid beings in which inner and outer worlds come together. And yet humanization develops clearly distinguishable modalities of movement depending on the space in which the respective activity is centered: being or consciousness. Inner and outer space therefore describe different sources and potentials for aggregating life processes and fulfilling life.
While the outer space describes the space of conditional and limited incorporation and materialization in the outer world, i.e. the space of learning communication, sensory experience, material-physical coping with life, etc., the inner area is to be characterized as the space of all consciousness processes and classified as follows:
The inner space contains the developing, autonomous potential not only of the mental and spiritual processing of external experiences, but also the sui generis initiated determinants of thinking and feeling processes. The emancipating self becomes the bearer of learning and perceiving consciousness, which generates the driving energy of the formation of ideas, beings and will and continues to scale it qualitatively. The mind and reason help to organize intellectual developments and results as intermediate steps, to keep them available in order to return them to consciousness in accordance with a control loop and to correlate them with feelings and thoughts.
This process - controlled as an internal one - is autonomous and thus the foundation of individual freedom, since it is completely removed from sensory experience and thus from possible external, limiting influence. In contrast to the external world, the internal world is not bound by conditions, i.e. unlimited and open to universal endlessness and eternity. The inner world of man is therefore suitable for developing and realizing the absolute, the totality of his self. This inner, formative reality of unlimited imagination and vision formation fills and shapes the respective personality, forming the consciousness of a unique essence. This also describes - analogous to the universe - an ever-expanding developmental dynamic of spiritual-psychological identity and energy.
2. Subject und Object
Comparable
to the distinction between inside and outside, the differentiation of
subject and object describes the central function of an intelligible,
perceiving human consciousness (based on Karl Jaspers). In the
identification of the human being as a subject beyond the pure object
function lies the emancipatory, independent, and thus always
individual mastery of existence - each from the individual self, the
actual humanization according to the potentials and dimensions of the
inner space.
While the object keeps external, adjustable,
quantifiable materiality available up to scientific objectification,
the subject is the open source of mental and spiritual, feeling and
cognitively comprehensible processes including the dimensions of the
absolute and the totality. The object refers to normative /
standardized quantity and conditionality, to form and symbol, the
subject to unlimited qualification / quality and determination, to
substance and meaning, to idea and deduced will.
Objectivity
questions provability and external, conditional truth, subjectivity
generates inner world movement and imagination as well as processes
of decision-making and finding the interior truth. The subjective
leads the inner world from idea and will as the driving force, the
objective offers material formation and serial conditions for
existential implementation and development.
Subject and
object describe a mutually complementary relationship, decoupling
them means "disembodying" the spirit and "despiritualizing"
life, emptying its meaning. And a life without meaning and sensuality
from subjectivity becomes "objective", at the same time
cold and nihilistic, and above all the least humane. The subject
therefore needs the object to vitalize the spirit, and the object
needs the subject to spiritualize life, to form the basis and the
initiatory energy of consciousness, to humanize being.
In
the current Anthropocene, material-technological domination has
seduced people into almost complete objectification. And transhuman
quantification marginalizes societies into unified, controllable
masses that, in the false security of the enslaved collective,
replace a kind of being with having and compensate for "freedom
from meaning." Humans become objects by giving up their
subjectivity, and the subject's individually based freedom becomes an
"objective" threat to the politically economized or
eco-politicized systems.
As a result, nihilism, inner
emptiness and vegetative existence leave behind an external world
without human ideas and imagination, without reason and fantasy - in
other words, everything that is so urgently needed beyond the
current, small-scale system relevance of the objective as a
prerequisite for successful and sustainable transition. This
assessment provokes the question: How can people and societies
overcome this dead end of any kind of humane development?
3. Individuation und Introversion
The ability of humans to learn is based on cognition and experience, the latter can serve knowledge and finding. At the same time, cognition - the area of inner space - has much more extensive dimensions, which it places independently of experience in the outer space and elevates above it: the dimensions of reflection, perception, imagination and contemplation as well as empathy and feeling as a method of a- priori exploration of complementary inner and outer worlds.
The increasing consciousness of the adult human being is developed from the process of being as a child. This type of emancipation - like a quantum leap - brings about the reversal into the supremacy of spirit-supported self-determination, the autonomy of the subject, i.e. dependent on conscious cognition processing, to deduct leadership and responsibility from its inner world and to correlate and communicate with the outside. Only this opening to the inside, introversion, creates the foundation for inner leadership from the self in order to give space to the absolute, the totality of the human being's inner world and - depending on the condition - to represent it on the outside.
In this way, humans mature into individuals, while at the same time increasing their potential as free, communicative social beings. And further: humans as subjects of their respective individuation, guided by the infinity of their consciousness, are largely aware of their relativity in physical-material reality and choose appropriate positions and processes to position themselves socially and legitimately within society. Their inner formation becomes a creative impulse, an inspiration for social, non-violent processes of will-formation, decision-making and qualitative growth.
4. Equilibration und Elevation
Man
becomes a human being from a person - see above - through his natural
hybridity: correlating inner and outer spaces, transcendence and
spiritual worlds with real and material ones. Intertwining
consciousness and being privileges and liberates in the independent
potentials of universal control and design. The human capacity to
design and understand the interface between inside and outside,
between subject and object - comparable to a control loop - and life
processes from this is all the more essential.
This
process of equilibration is a vertical (re)connection from and with
the self of the subject. Consciousness takes the lead, the process is
simultaneously and first of all a mental one. The soul, still part of
the inner space, is the perceiving connection to the outside, the
inner eye to the outer world. Imagining, contemplating, finding and
learning connect subjectivity and objectivity, connect inner and
outer impulses, inspire and facilitate.
This type of
equilibration is one of the greatest challenges of human interaction,
because inner totality meets reality, the absolute meets the
relative, determination meets conditionality, the will of the spirit
to create meets finiteness and the conditionality of the physical and
material. It is therefore a specific learning and performance
capacity of humans and in particular of their constant mental
development to approach potentially opposing energetic "aggregate
states", to coordinate them adequately, to balance them
integratively and to harmonize causes and effects as transformatively
as possible.
In any case, humans have a solution for this connection and transformative fulfillment: the
dimension of aesthetics and cultures with all their multiple levels
of design and expression. "Objective" reality is bound and
sensitized, high consciousness is aesthetically grounded. The
experiencing soul becomes a dynamic space, mediating and moderating
inner and outer worlds and perception processes between substance and
form. The perpetuation of this equilibration leads to a kind of
constant conversion, transition and transformation.
Thus
the a-posterior mutates into the a-prior and opens consciousness to a
creatively effective subject in increasingly reactive objectivity. In
this way, vertical and horizontal equilibration are crossed and fused
in an emancipatory manner: the object is subjectivized and the
subject is objectivized, thus life is spiritualized and spirit is
vitalized! The middle, the "arithmetic mean" of the
resulting decision-making and action processes of the individual
human being is cognitively and communicatively raised and describes a
permanently available elevation as a core element of human
development dynamics: the foundation of a cultural human.
The
equilibrating solution of subject-object differences and opposites
can serve the fulfillment of the human being in forming a reality
from his dreams and fantasies, visions and imaginations. In this way,
the civilized human being – each with a sense of freedom and
peacefulness – can also succeed in configuring and shaping
concordant social worlds of humanity that prescribe an adequate
statehood, insofar it’s still needed.
5. Free Will and Societal Worlds
Consciousness determines being. Thus, the inner space (see above) comprises the basis of freedom, the cause of free will. Individual totality, the absolute, purified by mind and reflection, feeling and contemplation, norms the determination of the subject. These exclusively internal processes are to be connected with and in the external space through adequate communication and negotiation. The inner determination is correlated and equilibrated with the external conditions (see above), thus creating free groups, societies and unlimited inter-societal interaction.
Of course, societies can exist that constitute themselves exclusively from a collective will (volonté generale), foregoing individual consciousness and free will (volonté de tous). In this case, the conditions of reality are elevated to determination, being determines a limited consciousness that follows the so-called knowledge into necessity. This can result from a final act of free choice, but can also be based on physical or psychological violence. If the source of the norm lies exclusively in the external space, the internal space becomes the vanishing point of a mental and spiritual emigration. The dominance of external pressure to conform dissolves the humane connection between the inner and outer worlds and sacrifices individual existence to a mostly ideological and/or religious totality and absolutization that lacks any legitimacy in the external space. The exclusion of human subjectivity leads to slavery, spiritual impoverishment, nihilism, morbidity and overall to social decay; a future that at least meets the standards of a humane existence is thus probably unattainable.
The existence and future viability of a society therefore require the spirit to bring it to life and the spirit to guide its development. In constant equilibration, the change and transition processes of internal and external sources of norms must be classified, adapted, balanced in negotiations and the formation of will - from individual freedom – is to be coordinated. This function of representation shapes governance and creates the statehood that a society can give itself to control its living conditions, as long as and to the extent that the categorical imperative (Kant) has not yet been essentially fulfilled.
The state and government form of the constitutional monarchy and in particular that of the constitutional democracy are particularly suitable for organizing the objectification of subjective social dynamics and for correlating them synthetically. However, this form of governance is subject to the highest demands: maximum legitimization for the minimum necessary regulation, consistent promotion of individual and social freedoms, unrestricted transparency, personal integrity and professionality. Otherwise, governance becomes rigid in form, empties social resources, delegitimizes state power and reverses the state's monopoly of power entrusted and granted by society against the substance of its mandated existence. Feudal-autocratic overstretching of state functions and - especially evident in foreign policy – (post-) imperialist policies counteract freedom and peace in social living conditions. After statehood has solidified, society then takes on the emptied form again in order to reposition itself substantially. The process of subject-object equilibration as described above organizes innovatively and at the same time creates truly legitimate sovereignty if the a-priori cognition primarily includes the historical process: the social dynamics, drawn from the individual's free consciousness and will, guarantee future developments in constant, equilibrating internal and external transition.
Ultimately, it can be recognized that the reasons for good governance and wise politics - as well as for economic processes - lie in the responsibility of societies and their future-oriented responsibility, in terms of power control and, above all, the free will to shape things. And these depend on a consciously and intentionally de-personalized, i.e. transpersonalizing, social leadership culture in accordance with universal laws of thought. The equilibration of the creative tension between adequately corresponding essences and external resonances creates the transformative synthesis of a humane fusion of present and future. In this sense, the free will of man is the energizer and the conditio sine qua non of his free societies.
III. FUTURE VISION: CIVILIZATION AND HOMO GENESIS
Anyone
who looks at the current world situation and, above all, the current
development of humanity in the ongoing Anthropocene can identify
three directions of egocentric "vision formation":
transhumanist projection, perceptions of the threat of an end of the
world and the traditional persistence in ideological and religious
patterns. However, all attempts of this kind also deliberately fail
to recognize the centrality of humans for their future development.
Or have humans largely become alienated from themselves in the course
of the Anthropocene?
As already stated in the introduction
above: Human life and the sustainable design of their development
processes remain intrinsically linked to their individual human
identity and the quality of their implementation. The supremacy lies
in the autonomous subject, not in the vegetative object and its
tendency towards entropy. The obvious self-alienation can be reversed
through a re-connection with the human self - the "eternal self"
(Sörensen Kierkegaard) - through remembering and revitalizing it,
its inner spaces and processes. This revitalization of inner "radial
energy" (Teilhard de Chardin) from the totality of reflective
consciousness is to be understood as the basis of the present, from
which a humane future can be developed. The humanization in the
waning Anthropocene is at the same time the building of a bridge to
the Noocene: from the balancing guidance of human consciousness and
being to the process of fulfilling its self-according destiny.
1. Noumenality und Normativity
Leadership into the future of man and for man is firstly inner leadership from the self and thus from and for freedom. The most essential immanence is that of freedom. Successful leadership comes from individual determination, never from the immanence of external conditions. The necessary potential for change towards the future follows the processes of inner spaces, which are to be correlated afterwards with the outer spaces in a way of guiding implementation.
Leading development understood as evolution, transition and transformation towards humane future evaluation is based on the - necessarily individual - capacity of the mind, on the cognitive, reflective and feelingly contemplating use of universal laws of thought and human consciousness. The 'cognition / knowledge based on mind' - noumenality – being independent of limited reality offers the unlimited scope and autonomy to identify and decide on the future. The a-priori cognitive consciousness of the individual can sovereignly emancipate itself from the normativity of the factual and organize the relevant living conditions. And so it is possible to use inner spaces of freedom to reorganize and shape the external living spaces of people in a formative way and to constantly qualify them in an equilibrating way. The largely superficial circulating present processes (“dead end”, see above) are thus replaced and dissolved by the noumenal and normative (maxims) inner guidance of the creative human, who knows about his future and makes it manageable for his society.
2. Will of Creation and World Formula
The
human who acts and equilibrates from within comes from the “cogito
ergo sum” (Descartes) as an autonomous subject and thus controls
his identical and social positioning. From substance and “radial
energy” (see above) he transforms his internally matured process of
finding into the life processes of society – creatively,
subjectively and communicatively objectifying. Its radial energy is
transformed into a "tangential" one (also Teilhard de
Chardin) and internalized and formed socially in a clarifying
resonance process. Individual creative will is transformed into a
process of persuasion in order to inspire further social development
on a large and small scale. In this way, in constant equilibration of
individuation and universality, (inter)social interaction can be
consolidated as a transition and transformation process.
Inner
peace and freedom leads to movement: the revitalization of spirit,
the spiritualization of life. In this process, the "one decisive
formula" - usually from and for the ideological-religious
fixation of external power conditions - is replaced by the world
formula of creatively and interactively connected, multilateral and
unconditional processes: the future is development based on the
presence of consciousness, and an infinite process, and a process is
ultimately the limitless human metamorphosis of civilization. This
world formula also offers the potential to revitalize human beings,
to experience the often sought-after redemption through precisely
this kind of fulfillment – individually generated and
socially supported.
3. Cultural Human and World Order
The
above statements may provoke the objection that not every person can
meet the "high" demands of this so-called ideal/idealistic
image of man. And whoever or what this objection is intended to
justify or protect, it is certainly not wrong, because people are not
equal. At the same time, as introduced above, the following applies:
Man is born in a space of free will and can have every natural
potential to develop into an autonomous subject. This development is
always open-ended, as it is probably the greatest challenge: the
cultural man is - in his infinite variety, diversity and quality -
the bearer of his civilization and thus the „principal“ of his
own further development.
Thus the cultural man - grown
from consciousness and being - is inevitably the master of his
future, this cannot be compensated for, egomaniacally projected
and/or sublimated. His fate and thus that of his society lies in his
inner leadership. Because homo sapiens, an evolutionary act of
creation in external space, has individually taken over the further
process of creation with the development of his consciousness,
incarnated and emanatively shaped it from the inner spaces of his
self: homo genesis. The people of the Renaissance had already
preluded it: homo genesis - comparable to a "pole shift" -
comes from within and carries out a kind of individual self-creation
within the framework and as part of the universal overall creation.
In this way, the cosmic balance arises in connected spaces of
consciousness and being and equilibrates radial and tangential
energies.
This cultural human, the individual homo
genesis, who is evolutionarily responsible for himself from the
"knowing human" to the (co-) creative human, also expands
his progress in recognizing himself in other people and their
self-consciousness. Body, soul, spirit are basic elements of human
nature, from which exponential variations in perception and
perceptibility arise: love and solution, communication and
understanding are essentially possible from and on all levels –
transpersonal, not transhuman!
The knowing and perceiving
subject therefore has infinite opportunities to connect and engage
with other individuals and/or their groups and societies in a
balancing and objectifying manner. From this connection (see above
III, 2) of the cultural human being, creative and constructive
synergies are created for the constant, even optimizing development
of societies. The potential of humane progress and its order can be
facilitated in a constant correlation of individuation and
universality. In this way, these communicative clarification and
ordering processes give rise to orders and a world order that can
continually develop / deepen justice and the dignity of human beings
as to be justified and fundamentally guaranteed even in transition.
Outlook
On
the one hand, the development of human civilization is essentially
admirable and successful in its control of the biosphere and
geosphere, as long as these do not lead to their destruction. On the
other hand, homo sapiens has largely abandoned the balance of
internal and external development spaces, since it no longer or not
yet recognizes and understands itself as a human being who
proactively creates from within, as homo genesis.
Anyone
who takes up Teilhard de Chardin's concept of cosmogenesis can
recognize that evolution and the future are always constitutively
linked to the further development of consciousness. Evolution first
formed the conditions for the emergence of consciousness, then
expanding consciousness became the intrinsic core element of human
development and its societies. The reverse is also true: a being
without sufficient consciousness leaves behind a stagnating evolution
without elevation and provoces an end time that does not exclude the
end of civilization. At the same time, an end time contains the
essential ingredients of a new beginning: the self-determined
rebalancing of the external and internal worlds of individual and
societal humans under the supremacy of the inner space.
Cultural
man has the creative and energetic potential to resolve social "dead
ends" (see last paragraph II 2 above), which have repeatedly
materialized in political and economic, autocratic and
neo-feudalistic dominances that are ultimately turned away from man.
Man, as the subject and facilitator of his culture, will always be
able to regain the determination and the power to act for
sustainable, humane civilization development: sovereign and
dynamically balancing, at the same time free from ideological and
religious messianisms that have to be overcome.
If the
cultural human being as homo genesis succeeds in shaping himself
creatively and innovatively from his inner destiny - transcendence,
spirit and feeling - he can fulfil his humanity from within. And if
he begins to "not look outside for what he carries within
himself" (in reference to Gandhi), but to carry from within to
outside what he wants to find and shape, then he rises towards the
often-invoked redemption. The future is then not the substitute
projection of a limited ego, but timeless elevation, the opening into
the universality of equilibratingly developing societal worlds as part
of a cosmic continuum. For the so-called paradise may have been lost
on the outside, but never on the inside.
© J MICHAEL HEYNEN | FOUNDING PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE OF CULTURES
