{"id":909,"date":"2021-08-02T20:13:37","date_gmt":"2021-08-03T03:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/02\/are-we-self-transcendent-by-nature\/"},"modified":"2021-08-02T20:13:37","modified_gmt":"2021-08-03T03:13:37","slug":"are-we-self-transcendent-by-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/02\/are-we-self-transcendent-by-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"Are we self-transcendent by nature?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When John Vervaeke shared the ideas that humans are naturally self-transcendent in many ways in episode 31<\/a> of his Awakening from the Meaning Crisis series, it gave me goosebumps. I don\u2019t know that I can do the idea justice, but I wanted to write at least a bit about it while it\u2019s fresh in my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This blog post, to be perfectly clear, contains none of my own ideas\u2014they\u2019re all Vervaeke\u2019s. Some of it is directly quoted from his lecture, the rest is, to the the best of my ability, either paraphrased or restated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says that \u201cwhen a system, [a human for example], is self-organizing, there\u2019s no deep distinction between its function and its development. It develops by functioning. By functioning it develops.\u201d So development is both a result of functioning as well as an input to functioning. In a way, it feels to me like it\u2019s our brief but bright stand against the second law of thermodynamics. As long as we\u2019re alive, by definition we\u2019re constantly self-organizing and transcending. Is that not anti-entropic too? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we\u2019ve evolved, we\u2019ve moved from single cells to becoming a zygotes. Later, some cells began to differentiate\u2014they specialized into organs. They self-organ<\/strong>ized. This biological complexification gives us emergent abilities. As these abilities emerge, we transcend ourselves as a system. As Vervaeke says, he couldn\u2019t vote when he was a zygote. It\u2019s interesting on a purely biological level, but the implications for our social and spiritual development are even more exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The processes that determine how this development takes place are key to his research. He\u2019s developing a theory of \u201crelevance realization.\u201d I\u2019ll have to write about that in another blog post, but in a nutshell, for something to be relevant in this context is for the thing to be fit for our survival and growth. He theorizes that there is no possible scientific definition for something that\u2019s relevant since relevance is entirely context dependent. He says that what we can determine scientifically is a theory for how we realize something is relevant to fitness. Again, I can\u2019t do justice to it yet, but it\u2019s basically through a sort of functional feedback loop\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The obvious next question is where does this self-transcendence end? As far as I know, there\u2019s no reason to believe that it does end\u2014we should be capable of essentially endless self-transcendence. It\u2019s exciting to think about! What forms can we take through intentional self-complexification? What will happen through evolutionary processes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When John Vervaeke shared the ideas that humans are naturally self-transcendent in many ways in episode 31 of his Awakening from the Meaning Crisis series, it gave me goosebumps. I don\u2019t know that I can do the idea justice, but I wanted to write at least a bit about it while it\u2019s fresh in my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[60],"class_list":["post-909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etc","tag-philosophy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppj2P-eF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}