Differentiation & Integration
To elaborate further upon my cosmogony, I will borrow two common terms – differentiation – which means the separation of one phenomenon into multiple discrete phenomena – and integration, which refers to individual discrete phenomena coming together to become or function as a whole.
As has been mentioned, everything was one at the beginning – a cosmic “nothingness” – that which preceded all form, function, and characteristics. I have described the “emanation” or the “creation” out of this nothingness as a crisis, but it is not that the emanation itself was a crisis, but the state of being that manifested from it – the static. I suspect that there was purpose behind the emanation, and that the static is merely a transitional period between the original nothingness and the end goal. I will refer to the original state as the “Origin” and the end state as the “Telos”. The current state of being is one of conflict and struggle because of the disparity between the two, although how much conflict exists varies between phenomena – objects, species, individuals.
The original state – nothingness – if we could ascribe any value to it just for the sake of conceptualization – let’s call it “oneness”. But oneness does not have only a single manifestation, i.e. nothingness. From oneness began differentiation, and out of that eventually came individuality. If you accept the idea of a common ancestor of all species, then the physical manifestation of differentiation becomes quite clear. Differentiation also occurs memetically, however, not just in the many different and often conflicting ideas of humans, but in the many different kinds of behaviors exhibited by beings, be they a consequence of natural selection or some other evolutionary mechanism. One such consequence of evolution is “intelligence” – something that we humans pride ourselves on, something we herald as what truly differentiates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
The various kinds of lifeforms throughout the world, and their different levels of “intelligence”, correspond to their level of differentiation from the Origin, and to a greater sense of individualism – the more they are defined by the “self vs. other” dynamic. Plants I suspect have no individuality, as they are one with nature, in spite of having many disparate species. The differentiation within the plant kingdom is minor compared to the differentiation between self-identifying (i.e. sentient) beings and everything else.
Lesser animals are much the same as plants in their oneness with nature, although they act with apparent individuality, but on survival instinct and stimulus response, which means that they are still mostly determined by their natures, but with a little bit of nurture. A lesser animal is just going to act in a way that preserves itself. It won’t “feel” things like depression, joy, or sadness. It won’t feel anything at all outside of the 1 or 0 of “conducive to survival” or “threat to survival”.
“Higher” animals – let’s say domesticated ones like cats and dogs – are defined more by the influence of the environment than lesser animals, and still a LOT by nature. But a cat or a dog can feel and internalize things like abuse – that is, emotionally – and it can shape their behavior outside the context of natural selection.
And then humans, as evidenced by ongoing debates amongst biologists, sociologists, psychologists, and everyone in between, are seemingly equally defined by nature and nurture – which places them at the greatest “distance” from the Origin. The greater that disparity between the individual and the original oneness, the greater the conflict within its being.
Figure 1: Cycles of Differentiation & Integration
The ????? on the diagram are beings (phenomena) that may exist that we just do not know about. Extraterrestrial life, gods, spirits, all of the above? Who knows, but I suspect that there must be something “higher” than humans. Humans have a vague understanding of the original oneness and for that reason struggle with their individuality. The increase in individuals also represents an increase in complexity and order, whereas the original or natural state was one of simplicity and entropy.
The closer a being is to the Origin, the less conflict – internal or external – it experiences. But there is another side to the whole picture – the goal, or “Telos” – that all existence may be striving towards. The closer a being gets to that end, also the less conflict it experiences. Amongst humans there are individuals who are closer than others, like yogis, buddhas, christs, and true altruists. And all of us have at least brief experiences of getting closer to the Telos – times when we feel at one with our surroundings, or with each other – love being one medium, compassion being another, or even those “flow states” when we become so immersed in something that the “self” disappears.
I separate love from altruism – although the religious understanding of love may be the same concept – because the more common understanding of love is too rooted in human biological and cultural processes – like a parent loving its young – which is essentially biological, in spite of all of the cultural complexity through which it manifests. Or a person loving a friend or consort – which is often not merely for the sake of loving, but a response to what that other person brings to their life. Altruism is one-sided good will, put out into the universe, for the sake of good will alone. Love and compassion, however, are important steps on the path towards altruism, making them necessary components of human behavior. It is through love and compassion that we experience integration to reconcile differentiation.
I think that altruism is the very essence of that end state, meaning that it is the Telos, not just a medium, but the end itself. Or at least a worldly manifestation of it. So it is not that the end goal is a return to nothingness, but to a state that has that same essential characteristic – that I’ve named oneness – that was ascribed to nothingness. Two different manifestations of the same essential reality. Existence, therefore, is moving away from absolute simplicity by way of differentiation and integration, and towards increasing complexity. But the end goal – the Telos – is a state of both complexity and absolute simplicity at once – indeed oneness – which closes the circle of existence. Individual lives, individual thoughts, ideas – all finite phenomena – are merely line segments along the much longer continuum of existence, which runs from the Origin to the Telos.