I think we should peel away some of the built up memes. Push the reset button, to get a better picture of how society functions. Or not.
For one thing, good and bad are not some cosmic dual between the forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. So morality, like evolution, has to evolve upwards, as opposed to some ideal to be attained. Just as a spiritual absolute, the source of consciousness, would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell.
Though in order to function, any society does need a fairly stable structure of permitted behavior and since generations are constantly coming and going, this father figure lawgiver is a useful narrative device to pass on those behaviors. Unfortunately confusing the absolute with the ideal can have serious side effects, such as the assumption one’s cultural preferences are universally applicable/absolute.
A useful description of reality is the dichotomy between energy and the forms it manifests. Consider the basic attributes of galaxies are energy radiating out, as mass coalesces in, in what might be described as a cosmic convection cycle.
As biological organisms, we have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, along with a central nervous system to sort through the form/information precipitating out. Motor and steering.
As societies, there are the essential emotional and physical desires and impulses driving it on, associated with youth, but also liberalism. While there are the cultural and civil forms to direct and define this energy, equally associated with age and conservatism.
The problem being as that as societies do settle into patterns, the energy keeps bubbling up through the cracks and weak points, but the system views them as weaknesses and flaws to be patched over, leaving the energy find other methods of expression and creating overall pressure on the system, but it is a dynamic process.
It goes much deeper than this though, as process and pattern effectively go opposite directions of time.
As intentional, mobile organisms, we experience reality as flashes of perception and then build civilizations out of the collective knowledge generated by narrating our journeys. This indoctrinates the perception of time as the point of the present, flowing past to future. Yet it is change that turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Potential, actual, residual.
So there is this dynamic state of energy and the forms it manifests. The energy constantly changing form, goes prior to succeeding form, as the forms coalesce and dissolve. Past to future, vs. future to past.
Think of two billiard balls striking. Which creates an event that rapidly recedes into the past, while the balls continue to other events. Our minds and thoughts are those events, receding.While our brains and consciousness are the process, going onto the next and the next.
Think of a factory, where the product goes start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product. As with life, where the individual goes birth to death, while the species goes onto the next generation, shedding the old.
All in big feedback loops, as the patterns affect the direction of the process. Motor and steering.
So we do need those complications and tensions, to give form to our reality. Where would political parties be, without the other to give them something to push against?
As those mobile organisms, we have developed ideals based cultures, where we think there is some ideal state at the end of the rainbow, but nature is about those feedback loops and the tension and friction of opposing forces.
One side radiating to infinity, while the other coalesces to the absolute, but in reality it’s a big feedback loop in the middle.
I think humanity is more towards the end of the beginning, than the beginning of the end, but there are some constrictions ahead.
It’s all educational.
