Blog5 Metanarrative

Theoconsequentialism is a new metanarrative.  It combines aspects of religion (the universe giving a real purpose because it's literally an ultimate person that we interact with) with the half formed meta-narrative of progress and futurology (the science fiction narrative of taller skyscrapers and faster cars leading up to galactic colonization and transcendence of humanity).  

People need metanarrative.  The problem is not that metanarrative is bad in general it's that they have been flawed so far.  They have been appropriated and distorted.  By clinging to conservatism, Jews have prevented their metanarrative from being appropriated, but in the process they have also clung to much error.  Nevertheless, they have been able to be instrumental in both the religious and futurist source material because of their ability to resist corruption and appropriation.  

I think this comes from the influence of Egypt.  Ancient Egypt practiced a cult of preservation.  Literally and figuratively.  This made them so conservative they didn't change fast enough to adapt.  But first it allowed them to advance.  When you start preserving things you can start to build.  Each generation doesn't have to rediscover the wheel.  It made progress possible, then slowed it.  

Ideas get perverted and distorted and appropriated if exposed to change, but if not exposed to change they grow stagnant.  It's important to abstract the essence and discard the extraneous details, then write that essence in stone and then allow variations of the extra details to be experimented with in wood.  

Are metanarratives, with their necessary acceptance of variable micronarrative, inimical to science?  Can the theory be modified without harm?  Theoconsequentialism says the universe is intelligent and it is using us to improve its efficiency.   There's a there there that can't be exchanged for something else.  It does have explanatory power that stops working if you vary the core.  

Is my organizational system enough to function as an immune system for my metanarrative?  I think clear headed understanding is enough to function as an immune system.  A lot of vulnerabilities in the past existed because of how astoundingly isolated and ignorant most people were. Information flow is better than it has been historically, and people aren't subject to exposure only to distorted variants as they were.  Augustine won't happen again because the internet.  My system for orders is just a sarcastic point about religion.  Stripped down to what it really is, authentically trying to do that with a clear head, would you even be interested?  My answer is maybe, because the scale thing is for real.  

Neanderthals were happy with nothing above family groups except the challenge of nature.  HSS form clans and tribes and nations and concieve of humanity as a metanation.  We can enlarge the circle.  That's our superpower.  We need those extra layers and they have been disrupted by modernization.  That was a necessary stage of progress, and the old layers in their original form are not what we need, but their demise left a hole.  Institutions designed to fill that hole and substitute for those missing layers have appeal.  This is the flaw of both capitalism and socialism.  Both ignore the need for scale continuity.  They strand the individual or family in a vast Society with no intermediary layers.  And getting rid of those metanarratives, that "vast society" doesn't make things better.  That needs to be there too and it can provide structure for the layers.  Just saying "you need nothing above ethnic identity" isn't good enough.  The internet promises to be able to provide those layers, but in a manner too chaotic to function well.   We need to consciously understand the problem.  
Mozi understood the problem in 400 BC, or at least addressed it, because for possibly the first time artificial scale hierarchy was being created to take the place of disrupted natural scale hierarchy.  The jews marching out of Egypt (or Babylon) was possibly another time when that happened.  

We need to replace the kinship hierarchy with complete affinity hierarchies.  Tribes of relatives are too unadaptable.  They can't address new issues and they can't change fast. They assign places without reference to character. Mega religions kind of do this.  Other institutions do too.  But it's haphazard and incomplete.  Is this good?  Is a totalizing metainstitution a good thing?  I propose that it could be if it had safeguards built in.  Because designed safeguards always work.  

My organization system uses compartmentalization as a safeguard.  If one part of the Titanic is breached the others will keep it afloat.  Or if it sinks, the same design of tree can take root again in another instantiation if one tree fails.  Possibly with lessens learned.  

It also uses steady gradation of power.  There's not a single sudden leap, it's a gentle slope.  Pressure is exerted over a large surface area.  Replaceable leaders evolve upward and downward at all levels, constantly responsible in both directions rather than a king being elected to sudden absolute authority over a nation.

Is it adaptable?  I think so, in all the important ways.  The working parts that you can't mod are inside a well marked box.  

Now an aside about economic metanarratives.  Pure Socialism and Capitalism are both flawed.  They have weaknesses.  Combining them for complete and balanced nutrition can be very productive or very destructive depending on the details.  The science of this is being worked out right now, but since the scales are huge the sample sizes are small.  It may take a while.  In the meantime, purist metanarratives are counterproductive.  We don't need to start over without the other guy.  That doesn't help us progress.  We know the challenge is how to do a hybrid.  

We also know that democracy is a great element to include, and that it can be fragile.  It must be safeguarded against destruction and takeover both.  Mozi's answer was to give a king formal power and then tell the king it is both smart and moral to poll the people.  That's as good as the apostolic succession of kings, which will break down periodically leading to megadeaths.  Catastrophic costs can be justified if they lead to real progress, but they are not an acceptable feature of a maintenance system.  I think my design is better.