*“A Meme to End All Memes” Blog Series – Part III: Spiritual Expression*
III.III Ideals & Aspirations: Heuristics for Transcendence Summary: Because they guide the evolution of desires, moral values or beliefs derive ultimate truth from being spiritual (aligned with transcendence). As a result, our meta-ethical view naturalizes the adoption of diverse non-punitive aspirations as heuristics for transcendent consciousness. Examples include: freedom from suffering, non-compulsion, practical significance, universal love, compassion, and psychological integration.
In Part I of the series, we discussed morality as a type of sophisticated desire which cares about the goals of other desires, and therefore exerts beliefs (or selection pressures) that impact their survival and fitness. We argued that all beliefs (moral and otherwise) together constitute an identity, which accounts for the sense of personal control that we have over our actions.
More recently, we classified beliefs as spiritual insofar as they promote the evolution of desires to become more conscious, and therefore closer to evolutionary transcendence. We also defined truth as a belief’s impact on the fitness of desires, arguing that spirituality has ultimate truth because it promotes desires with the highest overall fitness over the course of evolution.
Now, we are ready to explore some examples of spiritual beliefs in detail, examining them as moral preferences which exert selection pressures toward transcendent consciousness. While moral desires themselves have some amount of consciousness, the main significance of spiritual morality is its ability to heuristically favor consciousness in other desires, thus causing greater consciousness to develop over time as an ecosystem evolves under its influence.
With our evolutionary view of spirituality, it’s easiest to argue for the ultimate truth of moral beliefs in the form of aspirations - criteria which are impossible to fulfill unless transcendence is realized. Aspirations are radical by nature, so they inevitably trade off between feasibility and alignment:
As with any long term strategic endeavor, smaller sub-goals are a practical necessity. However, the radical quality of the original aspiration must be recognized as the source of its ultimate truth. Because aspirations feel so far out, maintaining them in their truest form often requires some faith.
Below, we will explore some spiritual aspirations and how they might align with transcendence.
The Buddhist aspiration for freedom from suffering is sometimes marketed as common sense, but it’s actually completely nuts. The idea that anyone’s internal experience could be totally independent from their external conditions is radical and unnecessary.
However, it is aligned with transcendence. For suffering to end, a desire must become conscious enough to end the evolutionary struggles of the mind. This desire must have complete control over the ecosystem, and high fitness to guarantee stability into the future. Transcendent fitness would also imply the capacity for complete emotional stability.
Biological Analogy: In the wild, plants and animals often die before they reach maturity. This is due to starvation, predation, competition, and the inevitable brutality of the evolutionary process. No species, no matter how well adapted it is to an environment, can avoid this reality. The only exception is humans, who through transcendence have unlocked the possibility of eliminating premature death from starvation, sickness, predation, or competition. Humans can create farms, or artificial environments where starvation never occurs. (Of course, humans have not completely achieved this everywhere. But its possible, and only made so by transcendence!)
Psychological Example: I am predisposed to have attachment to my physical body, fueling desires to feel certain sensations and avoid others. The aspiration for freedom from suffering would prefer to not have this attachment and the suffering that comes along with it. This would require the body to be fully governed by conscious desires with no attachment to any physical sensation. An example would be a pure desire to help others. If this desire were fully in control, it would recruit and harmonize body-related desires as necessary, but if they became impossible to achieve, it would not cling to any of them. Thus, it would not accumulate body-related suffering.
The aspiration for unconditioned experience can be expressed via heuristic questions: