A Slice of EveryThing

Part I – God, The SuperCreature: EveryThing is an organism

We are one organism. The universe. You. Me. Everyone we love. And everyone and everything else. 

I call this “EveryThing” or the “SuperCreature,” and it includes whatever there is of what one might imagine is the “beyond” or “divine” or “otherworldly.” Others have called it “God.”

We’re all a slice of EveryThing. A rock is a rock slice, a human is a human slice, a proton is a proton slice, and a supernova is a supernova slice. EveryThing is the totality of countless, perhaps infinite, slices. 

We’re all a slice of EveryThing... EveryThing is the totality of countless, perhaps infinite, slices.

Similarly, we’re all a “body-part” or an “organ” or a “cell” of the whole SuperCreature. Each individual cell collectively forms the SuperCreature. The SuperCreature breathes through all of us and we all breathe through the SuperCreature. Our existences are what existence is. 

Like any other organism, everything in the organism that I call EveryThing functions as a system — from thoughts to matter, to nation-states, to climates, and more — literally everything. This means “every individual thing” is an individual system and EveryThing is a single collective system — the SuperCreature. 

By “system,” I mean a slight twist on its dictionary definition, “a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network.” I replace “mechanism” with “organism” to dispel any Newtonian machine misunderstandings, and treat “or” like an “and,” smushing “network” into “organism.” So, as I see it, “system” means a set of things working together within a network as parts of an organism. 

EveryThing, then, is a single collective set of things working together within a network as parts of an organism which is made up of individual sets of things working together within networks as parts of smaller organisms. 

Put simply, EveryThing is a system of systems interacting with each other as a single organism. It is a self-creating, self-organizing system. In this system, the “Creator” is the answer to the first question of all philosophy: “Why somethingness rather than nothingness?” — the paradox that some physicists suggest may just spark existence itself. This superficial duality arising from the paradoxical interrelatedness of somethingness and nothingness is reflected in mathematics as well. 

Say the number one represents “something” and zero represents its opposite, “nothing.” 0 + 1 may equal 1, but the equation is made up of two quantities (not to mention three symbols). From these two quantities, we derive the concept of the number 2 — which then spawns the concept of the number 3, because now we have three quantities, 0, 1, and 2, which equal 3 — which is now four concepts and, thus, the number 4 is born. And so on into infinity. The difference between something and nothing entails the existence of EveryThing. 

Zero wraps itself around 1 and on into infinity. Then EveryThing unfolds. 

Zero wraps itself around 1 and on into infinity. Then EveryThing unfolds.

This infinite creation is reflected in the logic of fractals, a logic pervading EveryThing and everything – what I call the “Logic.” What many call the “Universe” is the physical manifestation of the Logic, like a Mandelbrot Set made of particles. And what we call “Life” is a peculiar manifestation of combined particles — one of potentially infinite combinations. 

An especially peculiar combination of particles forms “Conscious Life,” which to me includes plants, bacteria, Fungi, animals, and possibly even viruses — but I’m open to adding others. We humans are, of course, animals with brains constituted in such an extremely peculiar way that we become self-conscious. 

Self-consciousness is merely the one that emerged from zero looking back at where it came from. The universe recognizing itself. 

Each individual system, from self-conscious humans to atoms to solar systems, is made up of other individual systems, made up of other individual systems, and so on, until who knows — a Higgs Boson, nothingness, infinitesimality, God, etc. And, in the other direction, EveryThing is the universe and whatever lies beyond it, if anything — multiverses, infinity, God, etc. 

From the electrons and protons of an atom, to the respiratory system, to the human body, to the human citizen, to the local ecosystem, to the national and global political systems, to the Earth, to the solar system, to the universe, and beyond — EveryThing is a system of systems acting as an organism. 

And all these individual systems interact in feedback loops. In fact, feedback loops are systems themselves, so one could say EveryThing is a type of system called the “Ultimate Feedback Loop.” A feedback loop is a type of system with the distinct feature that its outputs are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system, in other words, feeds back into itself. The opposite sides of the circle are simultaneously “cause” and “effect” with respect to each other. The system causes and effects itself. 

In this view, cause and effect are really the same fluid passing along the Ultimate Feedback Loop, through which EveryThing moves and where all these systems within EveryThing interact. And, again, this applies to systems on any comprehensible level as we now know things, from the causes and effects protons and electrons exert on each other and other systems — to the causes and effects the respiratory system and the circulatory system exert on each other and other systems — to the causes and effects humans and political systems exert on each other and other systems — and so on. If it’s interacting, it’s feedback looping. 

In this view, cause and effect are really the same fluid passing along the Ultimate Feedback Loop, through which EveryThing moves and where all these systems within EveryThing interact.

EveryThing is all of this, including the objective truth of matter and the subjective experience of Conscious Life. What I call Logic, you may call “spirit” – 1 necessarily emerging from 0 into infinity, the animating force propelling existence. Its essence is perhaps impossible for any human to comprehend fully, if at all. But we try our best.

In this view, science is returning us to mysticism. Here, “spirit” and “matter” are two sides of the same coin — spirit is the Logic (the Mind of Reality) and matter is the Universe (the Stuff of Reality). 

The Stuff of Reality dances through the Ultimate Feedback Loop to the beat of Logic. Spirit moves through matter. 

Part II – Society demands empathy, and empathy is the Logic of love

Is there a moral, psychological, or social consequence to all this? 

Does this finally give us a solid basis on which to love all things and treat all things as love inspires and commands? After all, if all things — if EveryThing — is connected, we are all one. All matter and space and time and spirit, or whatever it all actually is, is one organism, a system of systems, including the individual system “you” and the individual system “me.” 

But, clearly, not all systems appear to “work together.” Animals, including humans, kill and eat other animals. People often lie and cheat and kill other people for lust and greed, and sometimes just for sport. Cancer forms in babies and saints as frequently as it does in demagogues and murderers, due in large part merely to genetics. And stars explode, and black holes destroy information, and dog shit stinks. Doesn’t all of this prove the opposite? That these systems interact, yes, but they manipulate, disgust, fight, annoy, and destroy each other, and even themselves, more often than most people’s conception of love would imply? 

But, clearly, not all systems appear to “work together”... these systems interact, yes, but they manipulate, disgust, fight, annoy, and destroy each other, and even themselves...

Maybe. But to me the better question is, why does it have to be one or the other? In fact, let’s set this down here and now: We have a tendency to assume things are mutually exclusive when, more often than not, things are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps never, since as we’ve already seen, even the ultimate opposites — somethingness and nothingness — apparently include each other. 

The point is, “working together in a network” does not mean there will be no friction, no violence, or no misery, let alone no misunderstanding. It simply means everything each individual system does affects, in some way, each other individual system and the entire organism — the SuperCreature — as a whole. Maybe, instead of “working together in a network,” it’d even be better to say, “We are in this network together, working…” In this network, everything affects everything else, and we humans, unlike anything else we know, are not only conscious but self-conscious, which is a blessing and a curse. 

It’s a blessing because it leads us to see ourselves as a reflection of the SuperCreature itself, which is true — we are “made in the image of God.” After all, we appear to be able to uniquely understand the Logic. Or, at least presumably, most of us generally have the capacity to understand some slice of the Logic. 

But it’s also a curse to be self-conscious. Being aware of death — our own and everyone else’s — is a powerful source of anxiety, if not the exclusive source of anxiety. And our ability to “create” in the multiple peculiar ways humans do, including lying — to others and to ourselves — these self-conscious creations are the source of the greatest horrors and the deepest wisdom and beauty, of pistols, propaganda, and poetry. 

As self-conscious humans aware of our own deaths and the deaths of others — and with universal needs (food, shelter, security) and particular characteristics (physical, psychological, and philosophical) — together, working in this network in which we all affect each other, we need to find a way to get along because we only hurt ourselves if we don’t. 

…together, working in this network in which we all affect each other, we need to find a way to get along because we only hurt ourselves if we don’t. 

We don’t need a prophet to tell us that.  

Unlike angels and demigods, who can travel between the divine and temporal worlds, we mere mortals, as long as we’re alive, have nowhere else to go. And, unlike rocks and sheep and raindrops, self-conscious humans — by virtue of self-consciousness — think about our actions. These thoughts about our own and other people’s actions, amidst the familiar pressures of survival in this otherwise lone world, all lead to what we call ethics or morality. 

I believe that ethics, as a concept and practice, arises naturally from the combination of a certain degree and type of consciousness and a certain degree and type of society. All likely arise intertwined. 

It’s well-known that many animals, including and especially humans, are naturally social. As Peter Kropotkin beautifully demonstrates in Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, sociability might be Conscious Life’s “true nature,” driven by the Logic of evolution, which favors groups that cooperate, from bees to pelicans to beavers to (sometimes) humans. And studies have shown chimps and other primates demonstrate notions of fairness, or more precisely, demonstrate feelings resembling a reaction to unfairness. The further along the spectrum we go into this type of consciousness, the further we build society, and the further we develop a conscience. 

Ethics, then, is the Logic of human interaction and, thus, the Logic of society. Cancers and quasars and crocodiles need not be concerned. But humans do. Naturally. 

Ethics, then, is the Logic of human interaction and, thus, the Logic of society.

And it is clear, to me at least, that the survival of the human race — particularly in this still-nuclear and now-also-A.I. age — requires that we “work together” as if we are one single organism. That is, even if all this crap isn’t scientifically true (which I think it is), since we love myths as societal building blocks anyway, let it be our new myth. I believe this is the only ethical foundation with which we may survive nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence. And perhaps not merely survive, but thrive, at least eventually. 

In fact, despite all the apparent “practical impossibilities” of a unified, thriving human race, to me the Logic of ethics is pretty simple. All of our wisest minds agree: Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you. 

This “cliche” fits perfectly within the EveryThing-is-an-organism view. On a smaller scale, it fits perfectly within what I call the “Human Identity” — that we should view ourselves as humans first and foremost. As I’ve written before: 

The problem is that it has become a cliché to declare our common humanity. Thinking that a cliché is just a cliché is dangerous. It can dim the light of important truths. Sometimes it’s necessary to re-debate the obvious. Sometimes a cliché is not just a cliché but a vitally important obvious truth, not just an obvious truth — and certainly not something to roll your eyes at. 

Yes, “we’re all just human after all” is a cliche, but it is one of these vitally important, obvious truths that we ignore at our peril. And isn’t it just obvious that we are all much more than the mere definition of our ethnic, national, racial, and religious labels? Humans made these labels, and if we care to peel them off, we’re all entirely human underneath. 

With or without labels, we humans are all born completely helpless. We desperately need others from the moment we’re born. Infants literally die without a tender touch. And human infants take far longer than most other animals to be able to survive on their own. From the day we’re born until the day we die, our survival partially, yet inescapably, depends on the kindness of others — from sleeping peacefully versus being killed in our sleep, to recovering from sickness or an injury versus being left to suffer and die alone, to learning and building things beyond our individual capacities versus wallowing in our own filth and ignorance. All this makes cultivating the quality of relationships — the parent-child bond, other family relationships, and friendships — the vitally important and obvious truth that so many intuitively recognize. 

From the day we’re born until the day we die, our survival partially, yet inescapably, depends on the kindness of others...

And, recently, science appears to be catching up to our mystical intuitions. Studies show that people with strong familial relationships and many good friends live longer, healthier, and happier lives. Love begets love. 

But no matter how hard we try to separate ourselves from it, so much lies beyond our parents, families, and friends, in the surrounding environment and society — the Ecosystem. And your Ecosystem affects you wherever you are for your entire life. In it, your food and shelter and security and that of your family and friends is to some degree affected by the same universal needs and particular characteristics of the other human systems nearest to you. All of this is, in turn, affected by the non-human systems floating all around us. And, thus, just as zero and one turn into two and then into three and infinity, you, your family, me, my family, we — our individual parts interact with and therefore depend, to some degree, on one another, like a system — a set of things working together within a network as parts of an organism. 

In short, the better we actually do work together, the better we all are. Add that to the vitally important, obvious truths we call cliches. 

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I look at my wife and daughters, I feel this immense and indescribable bliss. I want everyone to feel this way, because this feeling tells me it is the key to our survival and our thriving. If I can’t prove that, then let it be known that I have “faith” in it. And maybe you recognize just as well as I do that this feeling is “good” — our own subjective experiences, along with all the poets, painters, and preachers, tell us so. 

Morality is, thus, both subjective and objective. The objective fact that we share the capacity for these sublime subjective experiences, as well as the capacity for utterly painful and otherwise horrific subjective experiences, demands empathy for others. To thrive, society requires empathetic, cooperative citizens, whose individual safety, identities, and freedom are strengthened, not impeded, by the bonds their collective empathy builds, a social infrastructure of silky steel. In Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, Peter Kropotkin masterfully proves that social cooperation is not only achievable and desirable, but also already a critical part of our nature. Sociability demands cooperation. 

Thus, the Logic of empathy is also the Logic of love: to love thy neighbor as thyself, breaking the barrier between you and me, between creature and SuperCreature, thing and EveryThing — from I to we, the bridge between the finite self and the infinite beyond. 

Conversely: If I do not value the love that others have, I degrade the value of love itself, and so I degrade my own love for my family and friends. Life is cheap without love. 

Part III – For “Good” to defeat “Evil”: Make empathy cool again 

To me, all this reveals that the concept of Good, as opposed to Evil, is really just a metaphor for Empathy, as psychologists generally define the term. I am certainly not the first to suggest that Empathy, and particularly what psychologists call “other-oriented empathy,” is the basis for pro-social, cooperative behavior. No wonder reciprocity — a related concept, like Empathy stripped of poetry — has been called the bedrock of everything from friendship to a functioning politico-economic system. 

And the concept of Evil, as opposed to Good, is really just a metaphor for psychopathy, as psychologists generally define the term. I am, again, certainly not the first to suggest that Psychopathy, often defined precisely as a lack of empathy (as well as heightened compulsivity), lies at the root of anti-social behavior. No wonder we equate the “evilest” among us as “psychopaths” — from Hitler to serial killers and career criminals. 

Like Good and Evil, the Logic of psychopathy is the opposite of the Logic of empathy. In the Logic of psychopathy, the individual self is separate and above all else – the 1 has lost sight of 0 and the infinite. Worse, anything other than the self is merely a means to whatever end the self sees fit. Rather than a unique part of the infinite, the 1 sees itself as (or seeks to be) the infinite itself.

Like Good and Evil, the Logic of psychopathy is the opposite of the Logic of empathy.

I believe the vast majority of human beings, at this moment and any other in time, land a good distance away from the “pure psychopath” end of the spectrum and, if let alone, would subscribe to the Logic of love.

Unfortunately, the Logic of Psychopathy does exist, and we are all forced to account for this fact of life. Even worse, to some degree, we are all vulnerable to psychopathy. Many of us intuitively recognize all of this. And this recognition is the root of division — the place where, by degrees, trust, and thus harmony, breaks down. Without trust, a network of individuals and families and friends splits into arbitrary and often hostile factions, or islands of one, where the struggle of competition replaces the Logic of empathy, of love, of society, of cooperation for survival and thriving. This is perhaps why, in game theory, and particularly in the prisoner’s dilemma, it is neither the “pure empath” nor the “pure psychopath” who does best. Rather, the strategy known as tit-for-tat generally wins in the long run, although perhaps it’s not so simple. 

The Logic of tit-for-tat is to always extend a hand in cooperation first. But, once deceived, you return the favor in the next rounds until trust is restored — in which case, you forgive easily and then cooperate until you are deceived again, and so on. In other words, you start with do unto others but, when done wrong, you are not shy to turn to an eye for an eye. And, all the while, you are willing to forgive. We might call this jaded empathy: empathy tempered by experience dealing with psychopathy. Others have called it wisdom. 

In short, to paraphrase Peter Kropotkin, competition is the law of the jungle; cooperation is the law of society. But not everyone in society follows the law — psychopathy at least partially accounts for that. And society will move in the direction to which its most popular cultural forces pull it. Richard Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene, coined the term “meme,” comparing these cultural forces as drivers of society to DNA in genes as drivers of biology. 

Psychopathic memes have always been in fierce competition with empathetic memes. For time immemorial, we’ve called this the battle between Good and Evil. 

Psychopathic memes have always been in fierce competition with empathetic memes.

But one of the biggest problems with society as a whole — one of the biggest problems in human personality writ large — is that, to paraphrase Bertrand Russell and others, the ignorant are certain and the intelligent are full of doubts. And I’d add that the situation is even worse: what makes one popular in society, what makes one cool, a leader, an “influencer” — i.e., someone people admire and want to emulate — is the confidence of certainty, or at least the appearance of confidence. For too long, psychopathy has had a monopoly on cool.

This unfortunate individual and societal trait drives us into the clutches of abusers, demagogues, cult leaders, and dictators — this is the allure of psychopathy. Some have called it the “temptation of sin.” 

Our attraction to confidence — regardless of its merits, regardless of “the truth” — and the certainty of ignorance drives so much of human misery, at least most of human misery within our control. 

The antidote to all this is Empathy — to love thy neighbor as thyself. But to love thy neighbor as thyself, one must first love oneself. And for a self-loving self, as a human thinking about the world and deciding what to believe, the descendant of empathy is humility, or what I’d like to call “sincerity.” Sincerity, as I use it, is basically a form of “mitigated scientific realism;” to be Sincere is to be like a scientist with a mystic’s sense of humor. If you’re Sincere, you accept your fallibility but venture forth nonetheless in earnest to find ever-better approximations of truth. And you measure the strength of your beliefs by the logic and evidence in support of it, with the burden of proof always against belief, and against certainty most of all. And you always re-examine your beliefs, even if they’ve become cliches — like the interconnectedness of EveryThing.

If you’re Sincere, you accept your fallibility but venture forth nonetheless in earnest to find ever-better approximations of truth.

Now I know these ideas are not very original — that’s actually one of my points, that most of this really is basic, from basic math to basic theology, history, and science. But my other point is to stress that we would do well to work harder as individuals to make it Cool — that is, make it culturally advantageous — to be more Sincere with ourselves and Empathetic in relation to others, to counter Psychopathic Memes with a culture of Empathy, by spreading Empathetic Memes. And every action we take is another opportunity to spread one type of meme or another. 

As a husband, father, son, brother, and friend — as another 1 among infinity — I feel like I have the privilege and duty to work toward a better world. In everything I do, from raising my daughters to excelling in my career, I intend to spread Empathetic Memes and expose Psychopathic Memes — to Make Empathy (and Sincerity) Cool. And I will do this because I strongly suspect this might be a necessary step to improving the human condition inside the SuperCreature — from merely surviving to ultimately thriving within our little slices of EveryThing.