Journey in being


	Normal worlds
	Alternate title: Normal sentient worlds
	Subtitle: Human world / human endeavor
	Introduction
	While the topic of this chapter concerns the contingent or Normal worlds of sentient beings, the vehicle for discussion is Human world / human endeavor
	Understanding is enhanced by awareness of similarity and difference. Therefore from the point of view of understanding, human being is seen as animal being but without suppression of distinctions
	We can only gain in the sense of adventure when we feel kinship with all / animal being but are not limited by the feeling
	Human world: individual and society
	This section contains what is useful to the Journey. For a more complete treatment see the essays—Home
	A fundamental distinction is that of free versus bound icon. ‘Icon’ is used generically to refer to ‘image’ but not only to visual image; instead, icon may refer to image in any feeling or, roughly, sensory modality. An icon that is bound to the Object is a bound icon. One that is recalled and therefore free is a free icon. The symbol is a case of free icon
	Human being
	Concepts—feeling, afference, efference, bound feeling, memory, body feeling, kinesthetic feeling, inner—body—affective feeling and modality, outer feeling-sensing and modality, free feeling, compartmentalization, interaction, layering, higher feeling, emotion-cognition, consciousness, self-reference, volition, language, expression, communication, culture
	Concepts—freedom, choice, action, charisma
	Affective feeling is an aspect of body-kinesthetic feeling
	Social world
	Concepts—society, institution, lineage group, culture, cultural group, knowledge, creation, education
	group process, economic, moral-legal, politic
	Civilization
	The Identity and continuity of—all—societies and cultures
	Concepts—civilization, society, identity, continuity, connection, history, animal, extra-cosmological
	The state of civilization
	Modes—impurity, i.e. overlap and ‘interaction’ of institutions
	Assessment—the world today—opportunities and problems (and the nature and problem of opportunity and problem and such thinking)
	Solutions—
	Faith
	Faith is taken up, above and in what follows—in religious and animal modes
	Common and experimental endeavor
	Concepts—common, norm, adaptedness, stability, adaptability, experimental, adapting, decay, competition, changing circumstance, construction, creation
	An issue—tension between adaptedness and adapting
	A system of modes of being and knowing
	Introduction
	Concepts—nature, society, psyche, universal
	The modes
	Concepts—natural, action-idea, intuition-symbol, category
	Categories—Object and Humor
	Object—given object, natural, social, psychological
	Humor—potential object, existential
	Some human modes, common and experimental…and their limits
	Concepts—animal, primal holism, myth, legend, Religion, religion, meaning function, non-meaning function, Science, science, technology, secular humanism, literature, sacred text, drama, ritual, music, art, architecture, sacred form and space, sacred ritual, thought, philosophy, metaphysics, scripture, unnamed ideational form
	The animal
	The animal ‘is’ its contingent or Normal possibilities and limits
	Primal holism—early religion-myth, and science
	Insofar as these are flowing, limits are tacit
	Religion / religion
	The obvious limits of religion concern the archaic cosmologies
	However, the functions include the meaning and the non-meaning. Meaning includes the non-literal as in ‘rising from the dead’ pointing to our limited understanding of death. The non-meaning include social bonding which may be enhanced by literal meaning
	The impurity of institution is a partial mark against criticism of ‘non-religious’ function of religion. All institutions are subject to abuse. The overlap of institutions has the probable result that religion is ‘here to stay’
	The criticisms are criticisms of—some—actual religions but not of Religion—future, unnamed ideational form—which, here, is negotiation of all being by all modes available to individual and group
	Secular humanism
	There are two kinds of limits. The first is general—secular humanism comes nowhere near satisfying all Religious function including the spiritual (which in isolation is rather odd and limited.) Since secular humanism draws from science, a second kind of limit derives from the limits of science
	Science / science
	Current science has limits
	Physics and physical cosmology defines their own limits—at the boundaries of the very small, the simple—and the complex, the distant, and the remote in time. The Universal metaphysics shows that these limits are indeed infinitely limiting; it also shows the limitations of biology in relation to other necessary life forms and their science. Modern psychology is clearly limited with regard to the necessary transformations of Identity
	Essential limits of science
	Recognizing that our understanding of the nature of science and its processes may change, it follows that any essential limits of science may well be essential limits of human being. There are, however, no necessary limits of human being—even though there are Normal limits
	The future of the ideational form
	A past form is religion. The present form may be called secular humanism which is some amalgam of science, especially, scientific method and approach, an emphasis on modern economic values that is balanced by an emphasis on human values; elements of religion; and perhaps some elements of ‘spirituality’
	Although the future form may be labeled ‘Religion’ or ‘Ideal form,’ it is not clear or known what the extension of these ideas will be. It is not clear to what extent the ideas will be pure and to what extent in interaction with action and transformation
	Subtitle: The role of reason, politics and economics in the acceptance of ideational form
	•This form which has no necessary limits may be called ‘Religion,’ ‘Science,’ ‘secular humanism,’ … or may be unnamed
	It is commonly thought that the primary source of the ‘demise’ of religion is the ascent of science and reason. Of course, science and reason are not absolute and as we now know in the early years of the twenty first century, religion is not at all dead. Yet there is a fundamental change in attitudes toward religion and in the place of religion in day-to-day life. In Western Europe, the place of religion is at its lowest ebb. On the other hand, there is a new fundamentalism in many places in the world and in a significant portion of these it is a militant fundamentalism. However, even the ascent of the new fundamentalism, religion is not so much woven into daily life as it is an instrument—a refuge, a political instrument…
	The reason for the demise of religion as interwoven into daily life is not directly the ascent of reason. It lies, instead in economics and politics. In the new economics and politics, i.e. roughly since the middle ages, the freedom of information and reason has become instrumental. Older economies and politics were bound by tradition and authority. In the newer, the instruments of economics and politics are significantly free and distributed; of course such change is never absolute but even the politically and economically powerful gain by the new arrangements. The new arrangements make traditional belief far less relevant to daily life and this is perhaps the immediate cause of the demise of tradition that include religion. Of course, the new arrangements require reason and information to be immanent in society and are significantly dependent on reason for the transformation. However, it is not the case, as is commonly thought, that the demise of traditional belief is primarily the result of the explicit assault of reason on tradition