Book1

Inspiration 5


The Virtuous Person and His Connectedness



Summary

To find peace, prosperity and cohesion we need to be connected. This can only be achieved by virtue. There are four basic civil virtues in society for the regulation of our connectedness with the Person of All Virtue. To be comprehensive in describing these virtues we depart from two basic dualities. Quality and quantity are two ways of relating to the Person of the Complete. As for quality we speak of concrete and ideal interests of regulation. There is a material and a spiritual quality. As for quantity we speak of the individual interest as opposed to the social interest. Thus we have two times two is four basic fields of interest for our civil virtues to regulate our connectedness. Concrete and individual interests are typical for the virtue of regulating the economy. Concrete and social interests are typical for the regulation of our identity of emotional preference, our so-called lust. Our language, clothing, physique and ego is the lust of our life. Properly regulating this lust we defeat our irrationality of preferences and find ourselves in a mutual respect of free association. Ideally associating in society we have the regulation of our club life. It is not just the religion, but any kind of club that serves the regulation of this civil virtue. This is how we find social cohesion freed from interests of profit minded work. Serving this interest we call the virtue of liberation. Next we have the fourth interest of regulating the individual activities of our ideal interest. This is the individual department of religion. The purpose is to find one's original form of service, one's actual nature in self-realization, thàt is the true meaning of religion, to reconnect to one's original purpose of service.

After having discussed the wisdom of the timeless person of continuation, the topography and integrity of the person, the intelligence of the person and the duality of the person in consideration of his coherence, we arrive at another crucial distinction. The person can be good or bad.  The difference is understood in terms of virtue and vice. A virtuous person we call good and a vicious person we call bad. Still a criminal may have many virtues having a good character and a saint may be full of vices having a lot of bad habits. So be it. Making such a distinction we are subjected to the laws of relativity of course. What is the standard we use? The subject of virtue is essential though for that is how we find stability with the person. Virtuous conduct may be boring and unappealing, but our society is built on it. Education is aiming at teaching virtues and our reward system is tuned to reinforce virtues. Virtue is the backbone of civilization and the pride of civil conduct. So let us consider what personal interest we are talking about. The difference between virtue and vice amounts to the concept of regulation as opposed to chaos. With regulated behavior we find order and security, with the opposite we fall in disorder and insecurity. Thus we equate vice with chaos and virtue with orderliness, given the thought that matters in this must be taken relative. Thus what is there to put in order, to regulate?

Regulation has a qualitative and a quantitive aspect according to the basic duality of the small person and the Big Person of the material universe. Existing with the Ideal Person we know that He is us in a certain way, but that we are not Him. Our virtue culminates in Him, for He is the quantity of virtue, that is why we call Him ideal and our purpose. The Person of Perfect Quality ànd Quantity is an inexpressible, unknowable entity covering all people in all universes up to the complete of our cosmic reality. Historically we have coined many terms for this entity, but as for now - not to be tempted for the G-word - let us simply call it the Complete Whole. In the analytic interest of filognosy we always derive from the complete, being motivated to cover with our analytical divisions that completeness. We do not wish to overlook or exclude anything or anyone. Thus beginning with the notion of quality and quantity to cover the Complete of the Person, we may say in front that we may be complete in our quality of self-realization, our individual virtue, but never be able to cover the quantity, the universal reality, of all virtue. It is like the difference between a hologram and a piece of that hologram, all information is in the piece, but the complete hologram shows the full glory of the object information. So we may acquire - or possess already - all possible qualities, but we can never be or realize the complete of them.
Considering the two dualities of 1) quality as divided in a spiritual and material interest and of 2) quantity as divided in an individual and social interest, we arrive at four different basic virtues that combine these four basic interests of order: the individual matter and individual spirit and the social matter and social spirit. Thus we know what to regulate in order to cover the complete of the quantity and quality of our personal, moral and behavioral goodness or our virtue. In the line of this argument we first have the notion of a single world like our local culture we can oversee. This singular notion in the sense of an area of control for the individual, means the concrete reality of our single personal culture. The concrete singular notion we have of the person concerns his individual material interest, his possessions, control and economy. Has he all he needs at his disposition, is he well provided, does he make a living, is he free to endeavor in the pursuit of his happiness? With the regulation of this virtue, doing well in this first department of virtue, we speak of the regulation of economy, of business simply said. All individual, legally identified persons demand for means and goods. This demands business regulations in the sense of a marriage contract, a mortgage of rental agreement, an individual labor contract, a pension, unemployment compensation, health insurance and agreements about time and the like. This department of business is usually ruled by means of money, settled by the legal freedom of enterprise and its result is material wealth.

The second virtue in the singular, individual department of the person concerns not so much his concrete economic interest, but more the personal interest of his intelligence. We all know that our intelligence is an ideal. Intelligence means ability, knowledge, perspective, motive, purpose, abstraction, logic  etc. We cannot live without these matters, but relative to the previous value these matters are not that concrete at all. What intelligence are we talking about? Considering the sixfold perspective of intelligence we discussed in the previous Inspiration, this leads to an epistemological confusion of all types of logic that is difficult to regulate. We are more part of it than the complete of it, and thus judging it objectively is something hard to accomplish. But we wanted to get out of the chaos in order to speak of virtues. So what can we do?
Opposing the concrete, we at the individual end of the quantity axis, find the personal integrity of ourself in the ideal notion. This is concerned with legal (human) rights in the sense of freedom of belief, freedom of opinion and alike. As for our intelligence we know many perspectives, the integrity of which is normally settled through our religions. Religions are peculiar individual or club-wise, private, confidential habits of respecting the Person aiming at a constant state of connectedness. Many dislike religion for its seemingly unreasonable demands in restricting and regulating e.g. sexuality and the violence associated with our food intake. Celibacy and vegetarian food constitute difficult demands that need further explanation to deal with properly. Somewhere in history we ran into people of a high quality who could pose as leaders for the sake of an ideal of intelligence, a holy spirit so to speak, that points us the way of reason with the difficult religious demands. These leaders teach us still today all kinds of moral values and standards and constitute a beacon, an example, in a culture of respecting our final purpose, the Integrity of the person, the Supreme Person inside of us. Despite the emphasis on the Person in this department of idealized individuality, we cannot say that with this single virtue of  the regulation of religion, we cover the complete of our virtue the way we envision it filognostically. First of all, religion and 'the market' as our business objective are entirely opposite interests for an individual who may have great trouble and pain in combining the regulations of these two virtues that concern our personal and business interest. Religiously we should not go for the money, and in our concrete economic interest we may believe what we want, but the numbers count. Secondly there is a social side to religion that seems to be even more important then the individual connectedness in this.

The third virtue the person cannot do without to find a regulated good life, concerns his membership of his nation and culture of preference. This social aspect of his material self, constitutes an indispensable cornerstone of his existence. It concerns the very concrete importance of his identity. It is especially his ego that is at stake here. In a positive sense we need a strong sense of I to be mentally sane. The problem though with this type of health is the identification with a certain nation, culture, race or custom. Confused in our identity we run in all kinds of trouble and identified with a certain national or otherwise material identity we also run into a lot of trouble. It seems like we are always in trouble in this department. The most difficult matter to regulate is our identity. Our identity transcends reason, it is our lust and our life to wear certain clothes and speak a certain language and who would consider that evil and bad? To discriminate each other in this is legally forbidden in many cultures. Well, so be it, but we do that discriminating ourselves all the time, stressing that deviance from this or that concrete social norm, constitutes a threat to our identity and social cohesion. We are happy to be part of a group, a certain gene pool, and have a solid identity as such so it seems, but we are miserable in fighting against that very interest observed in adjacent cultures with a deviant pattern of behavior. It is like cats and dogs not understanding each other's signals. But it is almost inevitable to divide the world in the groups of 'us' and 'them' and thus run into estrangement.
This is the identity problem leading to class struggle, racial conflict, cultural clashes and caste inspired injustice. We for long have prayed, reformed and fought wars to get rid of this problem, but it lingers nevertheless. It is a basic value to regulate these matters. So in order to get a grip on this problem we characterize this problem of identification as one of transcending reason, as a threat in the first degree to our humanity, and therefore we simply address it with the notion of lust. The very lust we have with our social identities, the very lust that tends to be so unreasonable, is also the lust to do what we want we cherish with the ideal of freedom. And every child knows that adult life means frustration. You cannot always get - or do - what you want. Lust is unregulated love, but regulated the lust is mastered, and the love of our adult identity is achieved. The danger of unregulated acting for one's self-interest eventually running into collective egoism is civil war, which is in fact societal suicide. The benefit of the (legal) regulation of this emotional attachment of ego is world-wide peace and prosperity. So this purpose of ruling over lust is the mission we are on with this virtue concerning the regulation of lust. The achievement of peace under the legal anti-discrimination restriction of this interest we call free association, freedom in a social sense, to freely associate for and with whatever ego. It clearly constitutes a counterposition with the religious interest of individual privacy and freedom of belief.     The fourth main virtue of the common citizen concerns the social interest that is not so concrete in the sense of a collective emotional ego of attachment. The fourth virtue is a diametrically opposed to the one of individual business management. In political terms this virtue seems to concern collective labor agreements. We all need to work and make money, is it not? Wrong. We all have work but need to do it for the sake of serving the person we are and the Person we are part of. Money is just a means. Voluntarism is in this department just as valuable as contract labor. In this department of virtue unemployment does not exist. One rather speaks here of a state of liberation and a state of bondage. That duality. Are we liberated when we have work? Not exactly. When we mean contract labor we are not directly meaning liberation, because, are we serving our purpose of filognosy with our contract labor? Do we attain the essence of the person as mentioned in Inspiration 2? Do we achieve the personal level of truth, consciousness and happiness with the work we do? The essence of this virtue after all is to find liberation in serving the purpose. The ideal social spirit is to be found in the regulation of liberation, is it not? Traditionally religions have a strong claim also concerning this cornerstone of virtue, but because of the ego or superego concerned - easily leading to repression and denial of other-minded people - we cannot say that religion constitutes the final integrity in this department.
The final integrity should be a filognostic notion covering the complete, not a partial notion covering a single cornerstone only, however essential that virtue might be. Religion as an individual conviction of relating to the Supreme Person, is one of the cornerstones of our four-cornered, comprehensive integrity of virtue, while this department of virtue of social ideal interests simply demands the regulation of our social ideals. This is traditionally regulated in our club life. Our connectedness may just as well concern the chess club, the football club, the political party as the prayer club of this or tradition of respect for a certain moral leader. Club life is club life and it is ruled by a subcultural set of agreements guaranteeing a certain spirit. The spirit of sports, the spirit of divine revelation, or the spirit of social, political action etc. This virtue in fact concerns the regulation of our spirituality. What kind or purity of spirit is of a lesser concern than how to achieve the spiritual - or self-realized - person in all his perfection. It may indeed be a religious leader, but it can just as well be a perfect nerd in the computer club, it does not matter. This is the freedom of our club life. Its freedom of organization is legally settled and disputes about it may lead to national and international political struggle or more serious international trouble. Proper consideration of the way we find liberation in service - rather than being bound in business, in private or in ego -  is a life necessity.

So let us be clear. As stated at the onset of this Inspiration, virtues and especially the comprehensive four as mentioned above, constitute an indispensable part of our human personal connectedness. They constitute more or less a paradox, for we find freedom with them through restrictions. By these restrictions we connect with the Perfect Person, the Ideal Oneness we need as a purpose. But to speak in absolute terms of good and bad people, again, that we still cannot by the concept of virtue alone. Those virtues all depend on their own, are connected in our own, personal comprehension. Do they properly cohere, are we properly balanced and connected with them, by them and for them? Do we find truth, consciousness and happiness of the Person with them? Does everything add up with them? Are we becoming real persons by them being connected to the One Person in the Beyond? The ideal persons offered by our prayer and meditation clubs may well do for a while, but history teaches us differently. Time and again new 'Ideal Persons' or reforms in respect of the old ones are needed to set things right, for their schools of thought become outdated, full of shame in lacking progress. Still the Person is needed while the fixations fail to connect us sustainably. New Perfect Persons are needed to lead us away from vice and to inspire us for righteousness, to liberate us from our state of bondage. Time and again we get caught in cultural fixations the synergy of which runs out after a couple of millennia or sooner. No cultural fixation holds, because time, Time, seems to be the master ruling us all.
Thus having difficulties choosing for this or that person in private or for the public spirit of it, we, resorting therefore to the impersonal side, are left with the mystery of time. We speak of time as being causal like a person, the Person, but we cannot prove the fact (while He apparently can prove himself). But do our time cultures - if not our religions or other clubs of regular meeting and personal confirmation - offer the connectedness we need to maintain our cultures of respect and peace? We see all kinds of relative time phenomena moving as ordained by nature, but what is the causal agent of Time? How does He operate? What is that dimension connecting us as equal brothers and sisters? What is that force? What is the impersonal integrity of nature, knowing that we also - at the other end of this duality - thereby might understand the Person and ourselves better? The Universal Person might be the answer, but no physics professor on earth has as yet 2016 succeeded in addressing that cause experimentally or even mathematically. The comprehension of natural science is not achieved yet. We have quantum mechanics, but the knowledge of the mechanical part we may forget thus far. We may observe the operation of time in the universe freely like the invisible hand of the Universal Person that rules us all in the form of Time. But the cause of this universal action we cannot address in such a manner that He would, let us say, provide energy for us directly. We must be satisfied with burning a fire or respecting the light of the sun. He is the uninvolved witness graceful with all to be commanded by no one and to be respected without conditions.
For the Time being we have to work for Him simply in gratitude for all that He created for us. So in conclusion we may remember that there is a Person causal to all our integrity, intelligence and virtue, but to address Him as such and agree about the philosophy and method of connecting collectively, globally, to that peace-keeper - even impersonally - we might never accomplish. Usually our explanations follow reality and do not command reality. Reality takes no orders. We have to accept this frustration of eternally being bound to a liberated state of belief in - and service of - ideals, even being engaged as scientific and impersonal as can be. The notion of liberation in service is but a small light leading us through the darkness of our ignorance, and maybe, some day, we will see the full of the original source of His light revealed. Yes, our filognosy with all its interest in philosophy, empirical evidence, analytic mastery, transcendental stability, ritualized respect and political cunning is an idealist belief system. To begin with.

Source for this Inspiration:
S.B. Canto 1, Chapter 5






The Person

De Persoon

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