Something that has been on my mind quite a bit lately is personal goal systems. The idea is that everyone has a hierarchy of goals. For any given goal, you can ask why, and the reason is a supergoal. Similarly for any given goal you can ask how, and the answers are subgoals. I picture it as a tree with supergoals on top and subgoals on the bottom. As you go up the tree by asking why you find are actually digging deeper into your motivations. When you reach the top, you arrive at the Supergoal, the goal that doesn't need a reason, it is good and worthwhile by its very nature.
I suspect that most people don't know consciously what their Supergoal is. They have a tacit Supergoal that probably, if it has never been examined, they inherited by default from their culture, or more likely, their genes. Let me suggest that it is better to consciously choose your own supergoal. If it turns out that you are happy with your tacit Supergoal, great, turn it into your chosen Supergoal. But in any case, choose. It will give your life meaning and purpose.
Organizations also have supergoals and subgoals. People can work toward their goals more efficiently by collaborating, no doubt this is the fundamental basis of all social organizations and civilization itself. You should seek out organizations that share your goals. Ideally you will find one with the same Supergoal. If not, then create one. Of course you can join more than one organization, and it will be a mutually beneficial relationship as long as your Supergoal is one of the organizations goals or vice versa.
Do you know what your Supergoal is? What is the Supergoal of your employer, your government, your religion? Are they compatible? Don't you think it is worth discovering?
RE: virus: Supergoals
« Reply #1 on: 2003-04-22 14:32:14 »
So, this is something which has been a mulling topic of mine for quite some time.
A lot of people tend to be completely unaware of what it is that they're going for, and see simply the next step of what they should do, and not the overall direction of what they want to do with themselves.
Every once in a while comes the question "what am I doing with my life" that can drive some and haunt others.
I've always thought about where I'm going with a rather obsessive care... I can't say for certain what my supergoal is yet, but I've got a lot of goals out there, but they don't seem to comprise a supergoal that I know of.
It's always seemed like no matter what happens, we're going somewhere, but we just need to figure out if we're headed the way we want to be...
The question of how the goals and supergoals of an organization interact with the goals and supergoals of an individual is an interesting one though. Sometimes involment in an organization is not a choice to the participants. What does it mean to be part of an organization and have the opposite goals that it does? Something that happens in employment, government, and other situations that the partcipants can't help, like being in prison.
Organizations are as much creatures as the individuals which comprise it, whether goals conflict, align, or simply are askew, some sort of symbiosis occurs. Consciousness of goals can become an important point, because that can affect the willingness of the participants to move towards one goal or the other.
Thanks for raising the topic, I'm hoping something interesting comes out of it! -Calvin
RE: virus: Supergoals
« Reply #2 on: 2003-04-22 16:22:24 »
Yes, I'm totally fascinated by this topic as well. I've sent it on to several people and written a few pages of my own musings on the subject.
This may be the closest thing to a non-religious tool for examining one's Purpose I've ever seen, and I think may be worth considering for incorporation somehow into church doctrine. Aligning oneself with those of similar goals (of whatever relevant level) would seem to be the most important form of being true to oneself. And deciding these goals and supergoals consciously may be the only way that some people who believe only in the physical can assign Meaning to existence.
Maybe I'm overly excited about the concept, but in the space of four hours since I read it, I've made some interesting and provocative strides in my own personal philosophy using that framework. It got me all hopped up on the big questions.
Re: virus: Supergoals
« Reply #3 on: 2003-04-23 09:58:47 »
Michelle and Calvin, thanks for your thoughtful replies.
One of the reasons I brought this up is I think it is time to re-examine the CoV's raison d'κtre. When I created Virus I gave it the genetically-inspired supergoal of survival, for both itself and its members: "Virus was originally created to compete with the traditional (irrational) religions in the human ideosphere with the idea that it would introduce and propagate memes which would ensure the survival and evolution of our species."
Now it is time to ask if there is more to life than survival. Perhaps if we discuss our personal supergoals we will recognize some common themes. If survival is a subgoal of a higher goal maybe we can form some consensus on a new supergoal. I think this would take the CoV to a new level, attract more members, and incite more passion in the current congregation.
Safe from the pain and truth and choice and other poison devils See.. they don't give a fuck about you, like i do. Just stay with me, safe and ignorant, Go back to sleep Go Back to sleep
RE: virus: Supergoals
« Reply #5 on: 2003-04-23 11:12:07 »
<<< I think my super goal is just "being happy." I think most people will find that when it comes down to it, that is all they really want. >>>
It's important to address here, what will make someone happy, though. And the persuit of happiness in the short run can drastically affect the attainment thereof in the long run and vice versa.
People do tend to try to make the experience of happiness over time their goal, for the most part. It's true on some levels, but I don't believe it works on all of them. For instance, to maximize my happiness *right now* I would go downstairs, play video games, and such. Instead I choose to beat my head over a graphics assignment.
On one level, happiness is supposedly attained in the long run by attaining "success", ie. getting a job, having money, and other such silly things. But overall, to me it's the project which is more important than the actual things gained by completion of it.
But generally, my greatest satisfaction is not when I get money or advance in that way, but it's when I get closer to finishing projects, and fulfilling my goals. So in that regard, completion of goals brings me happiness.
RE: virus: Supergoals
« Reply #6 on: 2003-04-23 11:59:46 »
I think the supergoal of "being happy" leads one to periodic existential crises... any seconds on that? Perhaps I was doing it wrong.
So, with a disclaimer that I do believe in intangible and supernatural things, my supergoal is spiritual evolution, which in my view (here's the correspondence to Virus) is achieved through extreme empathy. Unflinching acceptance and love (which can include a loving pity) of our fellow beings (to me this includes all types of life) (at their best and worst) through a dissolution of the egoism inherent in western society.
To develop extreme empathy one must be intelligent and observant enough to perceive the subtleties of "walking in another's shoes", and I align with the CoV in both the virtue of empathy and in the pursuit of deep understanding of memetic systems.
For example, I feel I made great strides when poked by Kharin into understanding and accepting (even loving, like a retarded sibling) the Wal-Mart shopping, Taz-tattooed, Brittney-listening masses - and confronting my own elitism on new levels (thank you Kharin!).
It doesn't preclude helping the unenlightened along on their journey toward self-awareness and control (not being manipulated by circumstance or environment without one's consent) - I just believe that it must come from love and understanding, not disgust and anger, which are often the dominant emotions among those who believe they've got the Answer. See, I think everyone's on their own journey and it's the height of arrogance for me to suggest that they ought to be more evolved. When they're ready, they will be. You can't turn a monkey into a man in one lifetime.
I'm trying to figure out how to put this in a flowchart type format as suggested by David, but it's sounding somewhat trite. More work is needed. So far:
Supergoal: Spiritual evolution / Extreme empathy for all beings leads to -> goal: true understanding (without prejudice) of memetic programming may lead to -> subgoal: loving enlightenment of those in the grip of memetic programming or -> subgoal: acceptance of fellow humans for where they are (and not hating them for lack of aspirations/awareness)
Beyond the gate of Experience flows the Way, Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world.
billroh@churchofvirus.com
Guest
Re: virus: Supergoals
« Reply #7 on: 2003-04-23 18:59:31 »
I already think in terms of super and sub goals. I always have and it seems aparent to me that this discussion, and hopefully the implementation, will lead to a more successful CoV. It's a good idea David.
Bill Roh Supergoal: Achieve "super independence" in a world of equals, reproduce and pass the "super independence" on to my offspring.
Super Independence = money to spare, land ownership, ability to design and build just about anything, freedom from dependence on others, freedom to associate, self-determination regarding employment, etc...
- Edit -
I wrote a few pages about what sub goals were necessary for the above, but decided it was unnecessary for my point. My particulars are not relevant.
If our goal is as David stated
"Virus was originally created to compete with the traditional (irrational) religions in the human ideosphere with the idea that it would introduce and propagate memes which would ensure the survival and evolution of our species."
It seems that this is 2 or maybe 3 goals:
1> Compete with traditional religion 2> Offer the advantage of survival to the CoV and it's adherents. 3> Ensure continued evolution.
It seems to me that if #2 is achieved, then #3 will follow - evolution MUST exist if survival and reproduction exists. It also seems to me that although I value greatly what the CoV has taught me, at no time has mine or others I am aware of had an increased liklihood of survival because of the CoV.
When it comes down to it, only "Competing with traditional religions" seems to be a "real" goal. Ensuring the survuval and evolution of the species would require proof that there is some threat to that survival. As it is, even the most non-progressive, backward, whacked out religion or society has no trouble reproducing and evolving. And it does not look to me like these groups and people are going to stop reproducing, or in any other way hinder their populations.
So, if goal #1 is to be "Compete with traditional religions", then lets decide what we are competing for. Let's not stop there though, lets also set up some reasonable expectations. It is very unlikeley that we can compete for the hearts and minds of the devout. The energy, money and psychological tools involved are far beyond the ability of most people or organizations to pull off. On the other hand, the younger crowd that frequently becomes enthralled with the ideas espoused here, would seem like good candidates - if they weren't so flighty and inexperienced. However, there is little doubt that this same crowd, when good ones come out of it, can be a prime source of good minds. Then there are those that fit into the working adult crowd - as I was when I came here. Though we frequently have obligations that make working on CoV projects difficult, we seem to have more realistic expectations and a better grasp on human behaviour than the younger crowd. The problem in finding the middle age crowd of atheists is that many of us are still "closet atheists" and generally keep our religious perspective to ourselves. I have many friends that are atheists and would easily fit in - if they wanted to. Apathy seems to have struck a good many of us - a firm belief that we are so outnumbered and undesired by society, that we are better off silent, has formed.
If our goal is to compete, lets find where we compete the best and dedicate our resources there.
In order to compete, we have to have something to offer. Survival and evolution are not offerings - we might as well offer air - and time to breath. They already have survival. What they don't have is clarity. Why don't people have clarity? Because they have a hole. A hole that needs to feel secure and in the know. Normally "god" fills this hole, or other make believe entities. We need to find people that have a hole to fill (STOP THINKING LIKE THAT YOU PERVERTS - and I know you are), or something in the hole that can be dislodged. We need to offer happiness and a sense of personal control. In a nut shell, we need to offer the "drivers seat of the mind" and a community that promotes it.
Warm regards
-- Reason - Vision - Empathy Tools for a healthy mind
I found this to be an interesting perspective regarding evolutionary split-off due to rational evolution that in many ways pertains to the "Supergoals" topic. This is a fairly lengthy article, but I have isolated some of the more thought-provoking statements..."
"According to the here presented thesis, mutation is not a chance-variation through random change in an element of the genetic material, but anamorphosis: an organism's exercise of its potentialities of evolution to create an improved or a new form of life, due to or rather driven by its own intellect-pressure, where survival while a sine qua non is not the prime mover, and where diversity and not multiplicity is the dominating tendency.
A further proposition of fundamental importance is that neither the single cell as a unicellular element, or as an integral part of a multi-cellular organism nor the multi-cellular organisms as such have reached their peak or their dead end in evolution; and that their evolutionary criterion lies not in the comparison to the highest evolutionary forms, but in the efficiency with which they fill their respective ecology-niches as subjects, instruments and originators of Creation; a criterion that defines their universal life value."
"...Inspired by the great many half-baked theories of the scientific Zeitgeist, I propose a question that forever puzzled me: who and why for these double negativists, random variationists, chance mutationists, statistical transformationists, general ad-hoc-ists and mechano-biologists is being frustrated in its intension to regress towards protoplasmic existence by whom? who finds himself in a blind alley, and tries aimlessly to escape it, and why? who and why has programmed instinctive behaviour? who is that personified nature who has constructed that whom so, and why? who devised the mechanism for survival for whom? who and for what purpose wants to perpetuate himself and his species, or wants to evolve? and above all who and why wants to survive anyway, if there is no consciousness, intelligent mind and logical reason within each of those who-s, and behind the whole? And if there is, what are all the cock-eyed theories of mindless chance-happenings to unconscious chance-occurrences about? Instead of standing in awe and admiration before the wonder of it all and trying to understand!
According to the spirit of my thesis and while we are talking in metaphors : evolution is not the escape from blind alleys, but the answer to the call of the open spaces, of the wide horizons..."
"... I want to emphasize a crucial point: mental development is not the consequence of chromosomal mutation; chromosomal mutation is the consequence of mental development (first was the Logos). The first amphibians did not come out of the sea because they grew lungs by some weird genetic chance, and were forced by it to do so, or because they got stranded in a puddle and were waiting there for the same weird genetic chance to save them; they wanted to go unto the dry land because it was fascinating "because it was there!" , ergo they have produced the lungs and the legs, and all the morphological, histological and physiological changes necessary to serve them in that intellectual adventure. The initiative was theirs: the mental force of the being, directed towards an aim, challenged and energized its organism on every integrarchic level to respond positively to an evolutionary demand, and using what we call its physiological intelligence, develop a new physiological technology, and reconstruct itself according to the best of its actual mental abilities. But there is yet another crucial point: the amphibians or any organism for that matter did not adapt themselves to the physical environment that they encountered, but created for themselves a new particular mental environment incorporating the physical one the way they conceived it, and moulded their own bodily structure to it. Naturally there enters trial and error into the process, but that of the creative designer, and not that of the gambler."
"... species do not evolve, individuals do. Individuals have concrete existence; species is a biological definition. If many individuals possess quasi identical characteristics, they are called a species. The high degree of similarity is, no doubt, the result of inter-breeding, and sharing the same functions within an ecological community, but this does not account for evolution as a species, neither does it make a biological unit out of it except as a species community occupying an ecology niche in an ecological community. Even individuals of the same species forming close social units can suffer genetic drift expressed in intellectual and character differences, and differentiate into two sub-species, first psychologically, then morphologically alienated. Finally, the splitting consists of individual actions in collective manifestation, as are the psychological and morphological adaptations to the newly created situation. Nevertheless, individual evolutionary process can only be perpetuated (or wiped out) through the interrelationship of individuals, who independently and in unity perform the actions characteristic to their life-expression, and conceptualized by their collective."
"...The Universe being logical, and matter and action by the mind ordered energy, evolution is a conscious, rational, individual mental process towards higher stages of differentiation and complexity, expressed in continuously restructured abstract and concrete forms, and is happening in every sphere of the Natural Order. The higher the intellect, the more differentiated is the consciousness, and the higher is the evolutionary state and rate of progress of the individual, who, while cannot control how he is acted on, is the unique master of his own reactions, and the unique agent for his own change, these being the reflections of his individual being; and who readjusts and reorganizes himself constantly according to the external influences and his internal character."
"Major evolutionary advances have never represented the collective move of the whole race but the separation of a fraction from the others, resulting in the creation of a new species. Nor is the quantitative division into geographical specializations, or the intergradation of different species an evolutionary step; for specialization which is regressive means not diversification which is progressive and intergradation even if it is successful produces mostly reproductively and intellectually sterile hybrids, but never superior races or life-forms.
To grow from a small and stupid organism into a big and stupid organism is no progress, nor is a small and stupid group into a big and stupid one. Neither sizes nor numbers are magical: quality is. Qualitative individual mental differentiation creates the necessary tension to an intraspecific split-off, resulting in a more complex and more highly organized race, and thus in the arrival of the fittest.
The intra-specific split-off like the evolutionary history of the race is the function of the dynamic (and apparently cosmo-rhythmic) variation of the proportions and energization of the basic psychological types.
The sequence of the process is not isolation, differentiation, consolidation, but differentiation, isolation, consolidation, meaning that intellectual differentiation causes isolation, and not the other way around, and where isolation refers not to geography but to milieu. The differentiation is consolidated by inbreeding, causing the progressive disappearance of the intergrading population. "
"Applying the above exposed evolutionary theory to man, his psychological and intellectual heterogeneity, actual relation to the Natural Order, and further evolutionary tendencies have to be examined. Fixing the actual average IQ of the human race as 100, its spectrum spans between 50 and 220. The lowest natural value representing the lowest natural possibility of survival as a human with dignity should be around 80, which is the extension of the minimum survival potential of tribal times; but even this should be applicable only to the members of these natural human tribes. The creation of urban communities has reduced the relative intelligence level of minimum survival already some thousands of years ago, that has reached due to the charitable services of medical science and social institutions an ever low in our times. This meant that the median intelligence level of the species started to deflect, at the time of the first human settlements, from the constant evolutionary path of least effort. The explosive population-increase within the lower intellectual strata, and decrease within the higher ones, caused finally a regressive curve even beyond the path of no achievement. On the other end of the evolutionary spectrum, the intellectual and the accompanying cultural and moral degradation of the great masses has marginalized all above IQ125, or even maybe less than that.
The mass-cacophony on the one side, and the individual harmony on the other, has energized the natural split that has started and will consummate within this or the next generation, not as smoothly, however, as it is stated in this simple sentence.
These upper marginals are the founders of the more complex, evolution-vital new species: Homo planetaris; not by defeating the old one, but by continuing to be what they always were; this time, however, with the chance to expand, under favourable environmental conditions, their own kind. The species that stays behind is not represented by the constituents of the present so-called civilization, for they are of an unsuccessful evolutionary trend, destructive to the Natural Order, that will disappear on its own accord, but by the natural human tribes who never became 'civilized', and whose contact with this 'civilization' was everything but natural.
(Figure 14-5 shows the split and the apparent displacement of the median evolutionary level, indicative of an evolutionary split. The lighter coloured area shows the numerically insignificant upper marginals, who are turning into the new race.")
-veridicus
nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. and contrary-wise what it is, it wouldn't be. and what it wouldn't be, it would. you see?
- alice in wonderland.
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