A Secular Framework for Examining One’s Consciousness
This is intended to be a fairly barebones framework that may be used for reference for later works. Definitions are provided for major terms from Merriam-Webster. Elaboration and examples are provided to paint the picture, although more colorful ones are to come.
The main question today is:
Who do you live for?
Many would hope to answer this question with themselves, and often believe they are living for themselves, although it is clear as day that they do not even realize they are a slave of their own circumstance. Justification is as the shadows are on the wall of the cave to someone who was born in darkness, and integrity the world outside of it. Will you be a slave to familiar ignorance or accept the light of day?
Justification: an acceptable reason for doing something, something that justifies an act or way of behaving.
The definition itself is so absurdly disgusting and impersonal that I find it abhorrent many decide to proudly proclaim their actions are justified. Someone very dear to me and I were just laughing at those who live so reasonably. I got problems with them - what a silly thing to be!
Reason has been exalted in contemporary times as the highest faculty of the human experience since the Enlightenment or Renaissance - the “rebirth” of antiquitous philosophy (and unfortunately, therefore, systems of value). Reason, when made servant to desire rather than truth, easily becomes rationalization. Some of the characteristics of reason are that it is recursive, individual, and external. What do I mean by this?
Well, insofar as reason can always ask the question of “why?,” it will always be like the smart-alec toddler pulling on mommy’s shorts. Only so much justification can be given before mommy tells the toddler, “because that’s the way it is!”
You see, reason is recursive insofar as it begs for another reason. It is circular in nature and viral in practice. Reason begets reason begets reason. We are infected with rationalization the same way a kid with bad eyes doesn’t recognize he needs glasses. One can always justify something. One can make up a reason! I want to buy a nice house -> I don’t make so much money -> there is money to be made at the casino -> I will withdraw my paycheck and compete at the poker table -> I lost my paycheck at the poker table -> I will withdraw this week’s paycheck to make my money back -> so on and so forth. This may seem like an extreme example, but truly, the gambler is acting reasonably.
Reason is individual insofar as it springs forth from one’s own mind. Reason can be understood by one and not by another, given everything’s the same. Let’s continue with the gambler. He may look down at his hand and see Ace Queen of spades - a strong hand. Another high-roller playing in the same hand also has Ace Queen of hearts - an equally strong hand. The flop comes out 4 7 10 rainbow - no advantage to either player, but one decides he will be the aggressor and the other folds. Equal hands, one man a winner because he chose to be and another a loser because he deemed himself one, all things equal. Reason is individual insofar as it is made by and only makes sense to the person who is making the decision.
Finally, justification is often external: a person may allow circumstances, expectations, rewards, or fears outside himself to determine what he regards as reasonable.
Finally, reason is external. Reason is attributed to something outside of the self, may it be circumstance, expectation, reward, fear, etc. Reason adopts actions to ends. How often do you hear of the friend who stuck it out with their girlfriend not because they love them, but because they wanted to keep up appearances? Think of all those who went to college not because it is what they wanted to do, but because it is what was told was best for their future. Who decided what is “best?” Shouldn’t that person be the one who determines the life they want to lead? Perhaps most common are the people who revolve their lives around money, and therefore will take a better paying job that means they won’t have time for their kids, won’t use their vacation days because they need to perform at work, or fold Ace Queen of hearts because they’re afraid of losing money they walked in the casino ready to gamble with.
Justification, then, is what? Sacrificing oneself for constantly nagging, trivial outsiders? Far greater a life is there to be lived as someone not with justification, but with integrity; for justification asks whether I can furnish a reason for what I do, integrity asks the harder question: whether what I do accords with what is true and with who I profess to be.
Integrity: firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values, the quality or state of being complete or undivided.
A man who lives by what he believes possesses integrity. Insofar as he is sound in himself, what he believes will also be what he does. He will not outsource his mind to work compulsorily by reason, but will stay true, so when it wanders, he may arrive at truth. Similarly, when his heart comes alive, he is free to love, and wherever his legs carry him throughout this world, he may act justly, impartial to condition.
Integrity comes from the Latin “integer,” meaning “whole.” This originates from literally meaning "untouched," from in- "not" + root of tangere "to touch" (from PIE root *tag- "to touch, handle"). Untouched and unfettered, a man may move about freely and wholistically. Sound in the body, heart, and mind, he is undivided, and therefore may live out his adventure without internal conflict – his faculties are not opposing one another.
This will be a complicated section to write briefly about, especially in a secular piece. In an attempt to remain both brief and secular, I will discuss the unity of man as integrity rather than man’s moral adherences (although they are bound by necessity as two sides of the same coin of integrity).
The unifying quality of man is the individuality of man. The individual nature of man is separate from that of the rest of life in that man is free. Man possesses unlimitation to a far greater degree than the instinctual immediacy demanded of the rest of the living. Think of a chipmunk. At every car horn or drop of a nut or snowfall, that chipmunk is programmed by its overwhelming bodily instinct to move according to its gut. And for its own good, no thought, I would imagine, is in its mind to do otherwise, nor in its heart is there a pulse that stays calm as a hawk flies overhead.
Freedom, although not to be considered a value in itself, is to be valued as what permits all other things. Freedom, although abstract, is one concept that exists by virtue of all reality. In various forms, freedom is actualized in nature as well as mankind. Freedom exists in the comet to shoot across the night sky, an attribute I most wish to possess. Freedom exists in the leaves to orient themselves towards the sun and glide with the wind off the branch. Freedom exists for deer to lay in shaded meadows and prance through tall grass.
In greater capacities than all of these is human freedom - the defining characteristic of the human condition, which, simultaneously is what defines us all as individuals, united by nothing but the possibility to be anything.
We shall start with the gut. This is our instinctual faculty. There is perhaps a baseline of similarity here amongst all people, mainly that a baby yearns to nurse on and be comforted by its mother. Beyond that immediate desire to preserve oneself, human nature is entirely nurtured. Man is unique in this in that the two goals of all living organisms; self-preservation and reproduction, are further made optional via the development of the heart and the mind.
The heart of man is sculpted next. The impartial state of the heart is to love, and only by learned bias is one man in opposition to another. Freedom of heart is to live without these restrictions. As the body is and very much does, so does the heart, and therefore the quality of heart is not a state of being as much as a state of action, and if not used is not present in man. The truly free heart does not need an external object to love, but rather freely produces out of its own natural volition.
Finally, the mind of a man is cultivated. The mind begins as something which is able to process and observe that which exists, thus acknowledging the truth value of all else. It is in this acknowledgment that the mind possesses unbiased truth. It is through the misgrown games of the mind that truth becomes obscured; as man searches for truth he lusts for lies, and the sake of understanding forces congruence where there truthfully exists contradiction. The free mind does not lust, but rather accepts reality and rightly places man as a subject among all else, rather than falsely identifying the man as oil floating atop the ocean of existential water.
Here we see, secularly, that man’s free self acts without the pollution of externality. For in man’s natural state, his body, heart, and mind are able to act in accordance with their purpose. In unison, these individual faculties constitute the whole person in which just action, love, and truth are able to be actualized. When these faculties are not dominated by external pressures or internal distortions, a man may live with integrity. Integrity, therefore, is not merely man’s ability to remain true to himself, but his ability to remain whole while remaining true to reality. His body acts, his heart loves, and his mind apprehends truth without any one faculty being enslaved to circumstance, appetite, fear, or falsehood. In this state, man does not merely possess reasons for the life he lives; he possesses himself.
