As usual, this is a deep article without compromise in criticizing all lines of thought. There is a common thread in your writing and, in this article, it was enunciated clearly:
“Our path seems clear, which is that we seek to replace the meaningless world with a meaningful one.”
Much of your other writing identifies the flaws in thinking otherwise and, of course, the “cosmic horror” that comes with this human condition of the “search for meaning” (as Frankl would put it).
Although all of what you say is reasonable to me, I feel you under-appreciate the role of dynamics and protocols in things. While ideas and philosophies are important, the protocols of how things develop or “the rules of the game” play a much bigger role than the intentions outlined by ideas, philosophies and religions. For example, when you described the role of the brain, you said:
“… Yet these divisions would be far worse if there were no veto power at all in the brain or if there were multiple brains within each person.”
We do not know how the brain really works. Theories of how the brain works (e.g. Minsky) suggest that the brain is more like societies working separately and communicating rather than a hierarchy. Is consciousness the decision-maker? Interestingly, consciousness is thought to be the functional part of the brain that takes responsibility but not the one that actually makes the decisions as shown by experiments, whereby it is possible to know the decision someone has made before they are aware that they have made it. Perhaps we do have ‘multiple brains’ that happen to be located in one place for easier and more efficient communication. Furthermore, would you then summarize the ‘society of mind’ that is the brain, as a decision-maker or is its role, like consciousness, more subtle and better described by its dynamic with the rest of the body?
As for philosophy, the dynamic between ‘protocols’ and intentions is highly understudied. Aristotle touched upon some of that when he identified which political practices led to which political outcomes such as when he identified that voting leads to oligarchies while lotteries lead to democracies. The search for meaning must be married with the search of protocols and that requires philosophers to collaborate with other specialists such as mathematicians, programmers (for simulations) and scientists.
Some other (minor) comments:
“… we might check whether free societies tend to revert to oligarchies despite their liberal principles. If so, we could reverse-engineer the hidden agendas …”
Even if oligarchies would be more efficient for implementing pre-determined projects that does not follow that having oligarchies means that that there are pre-determined projects (by the people). Those projects may have been post-determined by the oligarchies.
“The wealthy decide on the nation’s function for the rest of us because they excel at consolidating their power”
This reasoning is on par with “… give to Caesar what is Caesar …” which you alluded to elsewhere.
“By denying there’s a cosmic plan for everyone, the liberal implies that the meaning of life is to create as much human meaning as possible. This isn’t the maximizing of happiness or utility, contrary to neoliberalism; instead, it’s the maximizing of meaning, which is to say the maximizing of humanity at the expense of the wilderness.”
‘expense of the wilderness’ does not necessarily equate with ‘expense of nature or environment’ but refers to the ‘wilderness’ or its being not ‘controlled’ by humanity. Of course, humanity may destroy nature and the environment in its effort to exert control.
Finally, I really enjoy your writing. It is gloomy but so satisfying with occasional phrases, sentences or paragraphs that are works of art (for me) in how they convey meaning. Thank you.
