Preliminary—Does Civilization have an Aim?

Does ‘Being’ have an aim? Do civilization and individuals have intrinsic aims?

We are born into circumstances we don’t control. We can affect our circumstances and outcomes, but only partially and roughly. And we are a multiplicity. Thus our aims are diffuse and tentative and this is reflected by behavior and history even when we act with confidence and single minded purpose.

And to suggest that we have intrinsic aims is to suggest that the world is teleological. In this day of the philosophy of mechanism and materialism most secular thinkers reject teleology. But what they are saying is that the main secular paradigms of explanation require no teleology. They cannot truthfully say that they have ruled it out.

To answer whether there are intrinsic aims, whether the world is mechanistic or teleologic or neither, indeed to understand the meaning of the terms Being, individual, civilization, and aim, requires an understanding of the world as a whole. But there is no such consensus and or demonstrated understanding.

Our narrative proposes to demonstrate such an understanding which in the nature of the case must—and will—be ultimate as understanding (it will also reveal the universe to be ultimate in senses to be explained).

When that is done, we will be able to answer the question of the nature and content of ‘The Aim of Being’ (understanding that the word ‘aim’ may be interpreted pluralistically).

However, we can state:

The Aim of The Way of Being

The aim of The Way of Being is shared discovery and realization of the immediate and universal real.

We will find a way in which the ultimate is accessible to limited beings—individuals and civilizations.

On The Way of Being

What is The Way of Being? It is two things—

1. An approach to realizing the aim stated above.

2. The Way of Being narrative that develops and describes the approach.

The Phases of The Way

Ideas

Here we develop a worldview or metaphysics and cosmology that find the universe to be the greatest possible universe in a quantitative and qualitative sense. We also find that the universe is morally plural though not essentially neutral. That the universe is the ‘greatest’ implies that it achieves all logically possible descriptive states including what may be called the physical and the ideal. It implies that the individual achieves identity with the universe or, perhaps, that the individual is identical to the universe and will see this identity.

A finding of the ideas is that the ideas are incomplete without action. While our intellectual culture should have some orientation to ‘use’, that is not what I am asserting here. The finding is that ideas alone are essentially incomplete and incomplete-able. It is only in action that ideas, individuals, and civilization find completion.

It is only in ideas and action that Being realizes itself.

In view of the aim, the Ideas present a brief atlas of Being, Universe, World, and Process.

Action

The treatment of action is in the following parts—

1. Elements and mechanics of action and agency.

2. The traditions, what we can learn from them, reason, experiment, incremental and singular action.

3. The Aim of Being.

4. Templates for Everyday and Universal Process.

5. Being on the path and the path so far.