| Ethics
Politics, and Plenitude
By Yasuhiko Genku Kimura
“All that is proper to the divine nature is also proper to
the just and godly man; therefore such a man performs
everything that God performs, and together with
God he has created heaven and earth, and he is
the begetter of the eternal Word, and without
such a man God could do nothing.” —Meister Eckhart
Evolutionary Ethics
In The Kosmic Foundation of Ethics1, I defined the key concepts
of Evolutionary Ethics as follows: That ethics
is the discipline of identifying, defining, and
practicing a code of universal principles that
makes individual human happiness possible,
while politics is the discipline of identifying,
defining, and practicing a code of universal principles
that makes collective human happiness possible:
That happiness is the fulfillment of what
it means to be human, of the nature and virtue
of human consciousness, consisting of knowing,
thinking, and love: That the necessary
condition of individual happiness is the attainment
of knowing, thinking, and love—through the
commitment to truth, the responsibility
of thinking, and the act of giving2, while the sufficient condition of individual
happiness is the attainment, in accordance with
a code of universal principles, of one’s
values through one’s virtuous actions—of
which the attainment of one’s singular passion
is the most essential. (I define passion as the
deepest desire of the soul or as the arousal of
the heart in the awakening of the soul, the locus
of ever evolving consciousness): That the purpose
of human life is self-realization, that the achievement
of happiness is tantamount to self-realization,
and that ethics as the science of the achievement
of happiness, should therefore be a science of
self-realization or self-transformation. Thus,
the attainment of knowing, thinking, and love
does not mean the end of the search for happiness,
but the beginning of a life endowed with happiness
which will increase as the knowing, thinking,
and love deepen and find new avenues of expression
in the creative thrust for self-optimization.
We human beings are kosmically endowed with the
existential possibility for happiness and the
evolutionary thrust for self-optimization—for
self-realization and self-transformation. However,
we tend to go astray in regard to this possibility
for happiness and thrust for optimization. This
“going astray” we experience as the
absence of happiness and estrangement from the
anthropocosmic wholeness of life expressing
itself as our total enworldedness as human
beings. In going astray, life, a dynamic, creative,
and evolutionary spiral process, eventually
devolves into a static, non-creative, non-evolutionary
circular structure. Life, the ascending
river flowing upwards from the ocean of possibilities
towards the higher mountains of realizations,
becomes a stagnant pond. The absence of happiness
is an indication that we are not in tune with
this evolutionary thrust of life; it is a symptom
of a devolutionary stagnation, lacking in the
effulgence of passion and joy—the resplendent
evidence of a life fully lived in sympathetic
resonance with the creative thrust for self-optimization.
To be ethical means to live in tune with this
creative thrust, and thereby to live a creative
life, which creativity extends to the building
of a community that is ethical and just.
Evolutionary Ethics is designed
to provide a philosophic context for living in
accordance with the creative thrust for evolutionary
self-optimization. Happiness, both felicity
(‘earthly’ happiness) and beatitude
(‘heavenly’ happiness), is the evidence
of a life that is lived in integrity with this
thrust. Happiness is the designation given to
the universal purpose of human life. A purpose
is a directional thrust. The creative thrust
for optimization that underlies human life gives
it a directionality that is evolutionary and self-transformative.
That is to say, the directional thrust or the
purpose of human life is self-optimization, self-transformation,
self-realization through self-transcendence.
Therefore, in Evolutionary Ethics, the standard
of good and evil, or of virtue and vice, is whether
the thinking and action of the individual is in
accordance or in discordance with
the creative thrust for self-optimization. For
this reason, the triune principles of knowing,
thinking, and love, and of the commitment to truth,
the responsibility of thinking, and the act of
giving, are chosen to be the contextual principles
of Evolutionary Ethics. For human consciousness
to be in tune with the thrust for self-optimization,
these universal principles must be actively present
in the spiritual and intellectual organization
of a human being.
The question of whether you may
or may not choose to adopt the code of Evolutionary
Ethics thus defined, in whole or in part, is something
that is left to your own deliberation. No concept
or principle of Evolutionary Ethics should be
accepted without deliberate thinking and knowing.
The adoption of Evolutionary Ethics necessarily
entails that you integrate it to make it your
own or develop your own code of ethics through
your own thinking and knowing by assuming the
responsibility of thinking and making the commitment
to truth. In this sense, Evolutionary Ethics
is a system of metaethics,
functioning as the meta-set for various
sets of ethical principles that constitute various
systems of ethics that are based on rational and
deliberate thinking and knowing. According to
Evolutionary Ethics, to accept or to adopt a code
of ethics—any code of ethics including that
of Evolutionary Ethics—without deliberate
thinking and knowing, is ipso facto unethical.
To be ethical, first and foremost, means to think
and to know or to choose to think and to
know inside your commitment to truth and responsibility
of thinking.
Every healthy and functioning human being is
evolutionarily endowed with the potential for
thinking, knowing, and love. Except in some cases
of congenital or acquired brain defects, mental
retardation, or so-called mental illnesses, every
healthy and functioning human being is capable
of thinking, knowing, and loving—of taking
a responsibility for thinking, making a commitment
to truth, and performing an act of giving in accordance
with the law of balance. Every healthy and functioning
human being is capable of tuning-in to the evolutionary
thrust for optimization, of creating visions of
higher possibilities for himself and for his community,
and of fulfilling his visions through living a
creative, self-transformative life. This means
that every healthy and functioning human being
is inherently capable of living an ethical life,
and therefore experiencing abiding happiness.
The Principle of Justice
Judge
not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment
ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure
you mete, it shall be measured to you again.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy
brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam
that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say
to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of
thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own
eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam
out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see
clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s
eye.
—Matthew
VII
The ethical principle that bridges
ethics with politics, that is, the domain of individual
human happiness with that of collective human
happiness, is the principle of Justice.
Nowhere in the whole philosophic literature
of human history is the principle of justice more
clearly, succinctly, and simply stated than in
the
Sermon on the Mount, Matthew VII.
Although these immortal verses are in the Christian
Bible, having been uttered by Jesus Christ, the
universal knowledge expressed in them is not limited
to Christianity3.
Unfortunately, as it happens with esoteric
knowledge, the real meaning and significance behind
these verses have been lost in the popular exoteric
interpretations propagated throughout the ages.
Specifically, contrary to the common belief, these
verses do not teach the precept of non-judgment
(“Don’t you judge,”) which
would mean a forfeiture of the responsibility
of thinking and the commitment to truth. The
renowned scholar-teacher of Christianity Emmet
Fox in his The
Sermon on the Mount4 plainly elucidates:
The plain fact is that [what is stated in these
verses] is the Law of Life that, as we think,
and speak, and act towards others, so will others
think, speak, and act towards us. Whatever sort
of conduct we give out, that we are inevitably
bound to get back. Anything and everything that
we do to others will sooner or later be done to
us by someone, somewhere. The good that we do
to others we shall receive back in like measure;
and the evil that we do to others in like manner
we shall receive back too. This does not in the
least mean that the same people whom we treat
well or ill will be the actual ones to return
the action. That almost never happens; but what
does happen is that at some other time or place,
often far away and long afterwards, someone else
who knows nothing whatever of the previous action
will, nevertheless, repay it, grain for grain,
to us.
That which Emmet Fox calls the
Law of Life, I call the Principle of Justice:
As we think, and speak, and act towards others,
so will others think, speak, and act towards us.
The principle of justice is that which Walter
Russell calls the Law of Balance expressed in
the sphere of human thinking, speaking, and action.
The law of balance states: Every action is
simultaneously balanced by an equal and opposite
reaction, and sequentially repeated in reverse
polarity. (Walter Russell, A New Concept of the Universe5) The principle of justice means that there is a just
consequence to all of our thinking, speaking,
and action in accordance with the immutable law
of balance—that justice is always done in
the whole context of human life without exception,
as every action is always inexorably balanced
by its reaction simultaneously and sequentially.
From the law of balance it follows
that you will be the recipient of not only the
equal sequential reaction of another human
being to your thinking, speaking, and action but
also of the equal simultaneous self-reaction
to your thinking, speaking, and action. Therefore,
when you love other human beings, simultaneously
you self-bestow love unto yourself, while sequentially
others will surely return their love to you; whereas
when you hate other human beings, simultaneously
you self-bestow hate unto yourself, while sequentially
others will surely return their hate to you.
When you love another human being, you love humanity,
including yourself; whereas when you hate another
human being, you hate humanity, including yourself.
Thus, if and when you understand this principle
of justice, you will naturally start practicing
the precept of justice, which states: Think
about others as you would wish them to think about
you. Speak to others as you would wish them to
speak to you. Act towards others as you would
wish them to act towards you.
Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged:
and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured
to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote
that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest
not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how
wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out
the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam
is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast
out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt
thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy
brother’s eye.
Through this immortal statement,
Jesus elucidates the principle of justice to those
who are ignorant of it, and therefore whose judgment
(of others) is not in accordance with it.
Jesus does not categorically deny judging (others),
but denies only the kind of judgment made in the
ignorance of the principle of justice and
in the absence of self-responsibility of
thinking, self-commitment to truth, and self-awareness
coexistent with such self-responsibility and self-commitment.
Within a general ideospheric environment of such
ignorance and absence, if you judge another person,
not only will he judge you in return but also
his judgment will be based on the same metric
that you used to judge him in discordance with
the principle of justice. As he does not measure
up to your standard, so do you not measure up
to his. You behold a mote in his eye, forgetting
that you have a beam in yours, while thinking
that you have none. He likewise beholds a mote
in your eye, forgetting that he likewise has a
beam in his, while thinking that he has none.
The principle of justice implies that we cannot
fake the character of a human being and
his action as we cannot fake the nature of the
universe and its phenomenon, and that we must
judge the character of a human being and
his action in accordance with the principle of
justice as we judge the nature of the universe
and its phenomenon in accordance with the law
of balance and other laws of physics—with
the responsibility of thinking and commitment
to truth that are essential to and integrant of
our search for knowledge. Human consciousness
is volitional. Human action is volitional. At
every moment of our waking hours, we are faced
with the responsibility of making a choice. And
as a volitional being, we must judge people
and situations in order to make choices in life.
The question is not “to judge or not to judge?”
which is not even a valid question, but “on
what is our judgment based?” The principle
of justice states that our judgment of people
and situations must be based on the knowledge
of the immutable law of balance, and its subset,
the principle of justice itself—and wherefore
on the ethical principles of thinking and knowing,
of the responsibility of thinking and commitment
to truth—and of love that is the law of balance
being manifest in the act of giving and regiving.
No human being is infallible.
All of us from time to time err in our judgment.
However, that should not be the reason for forfeiting
our responsibility, as conscious beings, to think
and know or to judge and evaluate. By the very
fact of being conscious, not only are we qualified
but also we are required to judge and evaluate
the characters of other people and their actions
as well as, more importantly, the characters of
ourselves and our actions. Therefore, the precept
of non-judgment is fundamentally against the human
nature and unethical. A precept that we need
instead is the precept of justice aforementioned,
which is based on a sound judgment of ourselves
and others in accordance with the principle of
justice: Think about others as you would wish
them to think about you. Speak to others as you
would wish them to speak to you. Act towards
others as you would wish them to act towards you.
The question may arise: What about
malicious people? How are we to think about,
speak to, and act towards them? The answer: Exactly
how they should be thought about, spoken to, and
acted towards in accordance with the principle
of justice but with compassion. Malicious
thought should be judged as malicious;
malicious speech should be judged as malicious;
malicious action should be judged as malicious—but
with compassion. People who perpetrate
malicious thought, speech, or action are ipso
facto held responsible and treated
accordingly by the law of balance—by the
principle of justice. Our conscious judgment
of and volitional action towards them must adhere
to the principle of justice but with compassion.
An intrinsic suffering exists in a malicious thought,
speech, or action that is suffered by the perpetrator.
Compassion means to suffer together (com,
together + passion, to suffer) with
love. By judging the perpetrator in accordance
with the principle of justice, whereby holding
him accountable and treating him accordingly
but with compassion, we give the perpetrator
and humanity through the perpetrator a chance
to end a karmic repetition of the vicious,
nay malicious, circle that characterizes a world
that has gone astray. This giving of a chance
to end a karmic repetition is a part of what it
means to forgive.
Fundamentally speaking, we treat
other people exactly as we treat ourselves with
just consequences in conformity with the
principle of justice. An authentic understanding
of this principle will bring about a profound
transformation in our lives, and in the lives
of others with whom we have relationships. If
the people in a community truly understand this
principle even as they understand the basic operations
of arithmetic (and the principle of justice or
the law of balance is a kind of equation), they
will be able to build a just and ethical community
wherein happiness is the norm and wherein there
is no fundamental conflict between individual
and collective happiness.
The building of an ethical community begins with
each individual that constitutes the community.
The locus of self-generative thinking and knowing,
and thus the locus of creativity and understanding,
lies not with the collective but with the individual.
Therefore, not only are we the creators of our
own lives but also the creators of the communities
in which we partake, including professional and
“virtual” communities. The building
of an ethical community in turn contributes to
the creation of an ethical ideospheric environment
that is conducive to the individual’s ethical
development, especially that of children. Hence
Edwin Markham’s immortal maxim: “In
vain we build the city if we do not first build
the man.”
Politics is the discipline of
identifying and defining and practicing a code
of universal principles that makes collective
human happiness possible. Now, what is collective
human happiness? Strictly speaking, there is
no such thing as collective happiness. Happiness
is an individual experience, and happiness is
an individual responsibility. Though we can contribute
to the happiness of others through the manifold
expressions of our love, we can never make
them happy human beings without them being
responsible for their own happiness. We can bring
moments of happiness to others, but it is only
they who can make themselves happy human beings.
Therefore, collective human happiness is
collective individual human happiness,
the responsibility for which happiness lies with
each and every individual human being that constitutes
the collective or the community at large.
What we can do
to contribute to the collective human happiness
in our communities is the practice of our own
codes of ethics in and for the realization of
our own happiness, and of the precept of justice
in which we think about others as we would
wish them to think about us, we speak to others
as we would wish them to speak to us, and act
towards others as we would wish them to act towards
us. What we must not do is to interfere
with the individual’s pursuit of happiness
so long as it does not interfere with other people’s
pursuit of happiness. What we can do belongs
to the realm of ethics, while what we must
not do belongs to the realm of jurisprudence.
The more advanced we become in the realm of ethics,
the less we need to dwell in the realm of jurisprudence.
Conversely, the less advanced we become in the
realm of ethics, the more we need to dwell in
the realm of jurisprudence. That is to say, the
more we do what we can do, the less we do what
we must not do without the jurisprudential means.
Thus, the preponderance of ethics is inversely
proportionate to the preponderance of jurisprudence.
Politics is therefore the discipline
designed for the creation of social order conducive
to collective human happiness that combines the
disciplines of ethics and jurisprudence. We can
show the distinction between ethics and jurisprudence
by identifying the difference between the concepts
of vice and crime. Vices are acts whereby one
harms oneself or one’s own property, while
crimes are acts whereby one harms the person or
the property of another. Vices are simply the
errors which one makes in one’s search for
happiness, implying neither any malice towards
others nor any interference with their persons
or properties. Therefore, in vices, the very
essence of crime—the intent and design to
injure the person or property of another—is
missing. The basic maxim of the jurisprudential
law states that there can be no crime without
a criminal intent, that is, without the intent
to injure or invade the person or property of
another. No one ever practices a vice with any
such intent. The individual practices his vices
solely for the sake of achieving happiness, albeit
misguided, but never from any malicious intent
towards other people. Thus, vice is an ethical
concept; it is a matter that concerns the individual,
while crime is a jurisprudential concept; it is
a matter that concerns the collective. Wherefore,
it is only crimes, and not vices, that are punishable
by the jurisprudential law, the code of universalistic
principles designed to collectively protect the
achievement of human happiness. On the other
hand, vices are their own “punishment”
as it were, punished by the inexorable law of
balance, and the resultant experience of unhappiness.
What are the requisite conditions that need be
present in order for the individual constituting
a community to pursue his or her happiness? The
first condition is the collective acknowledgment
that each individual has the individual rights to pursue his or her
happiness in any way he or she chooses. The second
condition is the collective acknowledgment
that each individual has the civil
responsibility to protect the individual
rights of others. The third condition is the
collective protection of the civil liberty required for each individual
to pursue his or her happiness based on his or
her own code of ethics, the formulation and the
practice of which requires the individual freedom to think and to know.
The fourth condition is the collective establishment
of a system
of justice that is designed to protect
the citizens from the criminal offense and to
punish the act thereof, equipped with a system
of police and a code
of jurisprudence. The fifth is the collective
establishment of a system
of defense that is designed to protect
the state from the criminal offence initiated
by other states.
In an “ideal” world wherein the citizens
all acknowledge their individual rights and practice
their civil responsibility, and whereby the civil
liberty is protected and the individual freedom
is maintained, the society will have very little
need for the code of jurisprudence or the systems
of justice, police, or defense, except for some
universalistic contractual agreements voluntarily
established for civil and business transactions.
The proper functioning of the latter (jurisprudence)
requires the proper presence of the former (ethics),
and therefore no amount of work done on the latter
without a proper attention paid to the former
will ever engender a functional society. Ethics
is more fundamental than jurisprudence for the
proper functioning of politics. As already stated,
the preponderance of ethics is inversely proportionate
to the preponderance of jurisprudence. Therefore,
the preponderance of ethics over jurisprudence
is a clear indicator of a properly functioning
community. In a community wherein there is no
strong ethical basis, working on its jurisprudence
leads only to a “vicious circle” without
any real solutions. The fundamental solution
to political or social problems lies with ethics,
including the problems of economics. For, an
“ideal” world is not realizable without
the creation of a sound economic foundation.
That is to say, ethics is at the basis of both
sound politics and economics. Ethics is essential
for the health (politics) and wealth (economic)
of a community.
Ethics and Plenitude
Wealth is the total range of the Kosmos—the entirety of
the spiritual, mental, and physical dimensions
of the universe accessible to humanity—which
one has through one’s effort earned
the right to claim to be one’s own, wherefore,
which one can authentically give to others
who have authentically earned the right to have
it. The wealth in the spiritual dimensions—the
spiritosphere—is the individual’s spiritual
awareness, knowledge, and love; the wealth in
the mental dimensions—the noosphere—is
the individual’s intellectual knowledge plus
intelligence or ability to think; the wealth in
the physical dimensions—the physiosphere—is
the individual’s material property.
The acquisition of material wealth is a function
and a result of a creative channeling of intellectual
wealth in accordance with a set of principles
belonging to a dimension of spiritual wealth,
termed ethical principles or values, such as the
principles of integrity and productivity. Wealth in all three spheres—the spiritosphere,
the noosphere, and the physiosphere—is potentially
infinite and actually limitless for everyone.
That is to say, not only spiritual and intellectual
wealth (the metaphysical wealth) but also
material wealth (the physical wealth) is
potentially infinite and actually limitless for
everyone. As, in quantum physics, the quantum
vacuum is in reality the quantum plenum-plenitude
in terms of energy that is available from the
smallest physical unit of the universe, plenitude
is in the very design of the physical phenomenal
universe as well as the metaphysical noumenal
universe. As there is no scarcity in the generation
of ideas, there is no scarcity in the generation
of energy—life supporting and sustaining
energy. Material wealth, in this sense, is the
plenitude of physical energy made manifest
by means of the plenitude of metaphysical knowledge
or ideas that protects, nurtures, supports,
sustains, and accommodates all growing needs of
life.
For instance, the visionary mathematician-inventor Buckminster Fuller
has cogently argued throughout his life with his
numerous books such as Synergetics6
that plenitude is an inherent property
of the design of (the) Universe, and that the
paradigm of scarcity that has hitherto
dominated the thinking and the practice of humanity
is totally unworkable and moribund. Today, the
notion such as the “scarce resources”
can only mean the scarcity of creativity and the
poverty of imagination. It is not only Buckminster
Fuller but also many other visionary knowers-thinkers
such as John Keely7, Nikola Tesla8, or Walter Russell in the
past and Eric Drexler9
in the present who have shown the path towards
the materialization of plenitude on the planet.
Therefore, we must recontextualize or transcontextualize
our thinking from the paradigm of scarcity to
the paradigm of plenitude. The commitment
to truth and the responsibility of thinking, two
of the cardinal moral virtues of Evolutionary
Ethics, make it clear that such recontextualization
or transcontextualization is in order in light
of the scientific evidence that we have today.
At the very least, plenitude is an exciting possibility
from which we can develop our individual
lives, while the paradigm of plenitude is a potent
assumption upon which we can build our
world.
Throughout human history, it has
long been believed that material wealth is antithetical
to spiritual wealth, and that spirituality is
incompatible with materiality. This deeply-held
belief overlooks the fact that the creation of
material wealth, as a category of creation, strictly
follows the kosmic laws of creation and balance,
that the creation of wealth is the result of an
efficacious use of the human intelligence in accordance
with a set of universal ethical (philosophical-spiritual)
principles such as integrity and productivity,
and that there is a categorical difference between
earned wealth (wealth acquired through
honest value-productive effort) and unearned
wealth (wealth acquired through dishonest
means such as the use of force, coercion, or fraud
and without any value production). The material
wealth, as well as the intellectual wealth, as
defined and discussed in this article is earned
wealth—the only real wealth worthy of discussion.
Earned material wealth is not only not
antithetical to or incompatible with spiritual
wealth but also dependent thereupon for its successful
creation. This long-held belief in the antithesis
or incompatibility of spiritual and material wealth
is a symptom of the obsolescent and mistaken belief
in the dichotomy of mind and body or spirit and
matter. When we become aware of the non-duality
of matter and spirit, and of the plenitude (potential
infinitude and actual limitlessness) of the metaphysical
universe, we will come to realize the plenitude
of the physical universe as well.
The creation of wealth, be it material, intellectual, or spiritual,
requires that you consistently practice a certain
set of ethical (philosophical-spiritual) principles
in life, in particular the principles of integrity
and productivity:
In the present system of economy, wealth is representable
by and exchangeable with money. Money
is a symbol and universal substitute of value,
a means of exchange, and a means of
savings or investment in economic transactions
or calculable social exchange. Therefore, the
creation of wealth can be equated with the generation
of money. Money is generated through the engagement
in calculable social exchange. Technically, the
basic category of human action in calculable social
exchange is called offer. An offer is
a communicative action, in which one states: “I will deliver
X to you, if you deliver Y to me.” Or more
precisely, “I promise to deliver X
to you. Therefore, I request that you
deliver Y to me.” What is offered in this
communicative action is a condition of satisfaction.
It is thus not a product or service but a condition
of satisfaction which the product or service makes
possible that is what is offered in calculable
social exchange. This condition of satisfaction
is what is called value, of which money
is a symbol and universal substitute.
When an offer is accepted, mutual
promises are exchanged: Person A promises
to offer the condition of satisfaction X to person
B; person B promises to offer the condition of
satisfaction Y to person A. Promise is the
communicative action that brings forth a future
as an express commitment. To elicit a promise
from another person requires that you make a request
of that person. A request is the communicative
action that brings forth an express commitment
in another person. Thus, a request is implicit
in a promise. Calculable social exchange is an
expression of the law of balance, underlying the
universe of non-volitional motion, in the
sphere of teleological and volitional
human action, normatively expressed as the
principle of equal giving and regiving.
That which is given or regiven in calculable social
exchange is a condition of satisfaction given
or regiven through an offer in the form of a promise.
Integrity is the power to keep your promise and
to maintain balance between the giving and regiving
of conditions of satisfaction. Integrity builds
your reputation as someone whose word and fairness
others can trust. This integrity-based reputation
is what builds your financial power. Financial
power is not the amount of money you have, although
it is a result of it, but the capacity to elicit
promises from others to provide you with your
own conditions of satisfaction in social exchange.
Your financial power, your capacity to elicit
promises from others, is thus identical with your
capacity to make requests of others. Your capacity
to make requests of others is directly proportionate
to your capacity to fulfill your own promises
and to maintain fairness in social exchange, meaning
integrity. Therefore, a wealthy person is someone
who has established an evidence of integrity,
and thus trustworthiness, in calculable social
exchange. A wealthy person is someone who has
consistently delivered on his own promises, while
maintaining fairness, in calculable social exchange.
A wealthy person is someone whom, because of his
integrity, others assess as competent and qualified
in entering into calculable social exchanges of
great magnitudes in many different domains.
Moreover, this integrity entails
productivity. Productivity is creativity
exercised in the context of social exchange.
Productivity is integrity in respect to the creative
thrust for optimization, which arises from the
recognition that productive work is the process
whereby one can give the fullest expression to
the desire for creativity and sharing. For the
productive individual, his productive work is
a form of prayer to manifest that which he envisions
in his thought and is a fulfillment of his creative
inner thrust for self-optimization—for self-realization.
Through productive work, you create conditions
of satisfaction to offer to others and exchange
them with the conditions of satisfaction that
you desire in life, the whole process of which
is the evolutionary spiral of wealth generation.
In the manner of Francis Bacon who said, “Knowledge
is power,” we can say, “Integrity is
power.” Integrity is the power to move the
world to conform to your word given in the form
of a promise, a commitment, or an intention.
Integrity is what creativity is, of which productivity
is a special case. Integrity is the power to
manifest your thought in reality in accordance
with the law of creation, in which thought
engenders motion, and then motion coalesces into
entities that appear to compose our physical reality.
Let there be light; and there is light: Let there
be happiness; and there is happiness: Let there
be plenitude; and there is plenitude. This is
integrity. This is creativity. Financial power
is but a manifestation of that power which is
integrity, which is creativity, underlying the
creative process of the Kosmos, expressing itself
as human integrity and productivity. Through
productive work, we can gain or regain our total
enworldedness as human beings, which expresses
the whole anthropocosmic context of human existence
from which many of us have estranged ourselves,
resulting in the condition of unhappiness.
To increase our financial power
means to increase our capacity to create conditions
of satisfaction for others and to elicit promises
from others to provide us with our conditions
of satisfaction in calculable social exchange.
To increase our capacity to create conditions
of satisfaction for others means to increasingly
tune-in to the creative thrust for evolutionary
optimization within and without. To increase
our capacity to elicit promises from others means
to increase our capacity to make requests of others,
which means to increase our capacity to fulfill
our own promises, wherefore to increase the degree
of your integrity in calculable social exchange.
When we can collectively attain a high degree
of financial power through the practice of integrity
in economic production and social exchange, we
will be able to create a world of abundance in
the universe of plenitude. In such a world, there
will no longer be such an oxymoron as unearned
wealth, which is in actual fact a “wealth
drainage” that has plagued and subverted
the world throughout history.
In an “ideal” world
wherein the principles of integrity and productivity,
along with other ethical principles, are practiced,
there will be an abundance of creativity and sharing—of
production and exchange of conditions of satisfaction
amongst people on the planet that exists inside
a universe of plenitude and is inhabited by a
race whose intelligence knows no limitations in
its capacity for knowledge and creativity. Thus,
ethics, the science of human happiness, is an
essential key to the creation of an “ideal”
world wherein there is no scarcity either in the
mind of people or in the reality of the planet.
Economy is only a subset of ecology. Ethics is
a necessary path for the creation of the ecology
of plenitude in both the ideosphere and the physiosphere.
Plenitude is not sufficiency, the condition of
just enough, but the condition of more than enough.
The potential plenitude of the universe without
has been proven by science. When we human beings
realize the potential plenitude of the universe
within, we will have a universe of plenitude
within and without. An “ideal”
world of happiness and plenitude is well within
our reach, if we start practicing the set of evolutionary
ethical principles that forms the foundation for
the achievement of individual and collective happiness
on earth.
We all know that we do not live
in an ideal world, far from it. However, the
art of living consists in living in
a less-than-ideal world without being of
it by living from an ideal world. Living
in a less-than-ideal world without being
of it means that you do not abide by the
prevailing but moribund paradigm of living but
by the new model of living that you create for
yourself that may in the future become a new paradigm
of living for humanity. Living from an
ideal world means that you start living your life
in accordance with a possible paradigm of the
ideal world that you envisage. The source of
power is in thinking. It is your thinking that
moves and transforms your life. It is our thinking
that moves and transforms our world. The art
of living is indeed the art of thinking. What
you think will determine your future. What we
think will determine our collective future. Therefore,
a new world will only come if we think a new thought.
Notes:
1 The Comic Light,
Vol. 1 No.1, 1999. Also included in The Twilight
Manifesto and Think Kosmically Act Globally,
The University of Science & Philosophy Press,
2000.
2 Human consciousness being
volitional, thinking, knowing, and love do not
occur on their own accord but only through volition,
intention, and choice. Genuine thinking, knowing,
and love are in fact rare at this stage of general
human development. Those who have not been aware
of how little they think, know, or love are unlikely
to have known genuine thinking, knowing, or love
worthy of their designation.
3 In the Hindu or Buddhist
context, the Principle of Justice is akin to the
Law of Karma.
4 Dr. Emmet Fox, The
Sermon of the Mount, p. 117, Harper &
Brothers Publishers, 1938. Republished by Harper
San Francisco.
5 Walter Russell, A New
Concept of the Universe, p. 39, The University
of Science & Philosophy, 1989
6 R. Buckminster Fuller,
Synergetics (1975) & Synergetics
2 (1979), Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc.
7 Theo Paijmans, Free
Energy Pioneer: John Worrell Keely, IllumiNet
Press, 1998
8 John J. O’Neill,
Prodigal genius, The Life of Nikola Tesla,
Angriff Press
9 K. Eric Drexler, Engines
of Creation, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986 |
