391 — Why First Principles and First Values Should Matter So Insanely Much
Summary: This episode introduces a new book by David J. Temple, First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come through a short explanation of the ultimate First Principle and First Value of Reality: Eros. In order to respond to the meta-crisis, to the risk to humanity’s very existence, we need to participate in the evolution of love — an Outrageous Love Story which has been unfolding since the beginning time, from the moment the first quarks started a conversation to form protons and neutrons (or even before that). To participate in the evolution of love, we need to discern its plotlines, and this is what this book is about. Simply by reading it — and even more so, by sharing it with others — you participate in evolving the source code of culture and consciousness.
Evolving the source code of culture and consciousness
We are super excited to launch this book officially today, First Principles and First Values, by David J. Temple, Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come.
Now, why does this matter?
What are we doing?
We are not organization-building. We have no interest in that.
We are a think tank.
We are a band of Outrageous Lovers.
We are at this time between worlds, at this time between stories, in which we actually understand that it’s not a given that the future of humanity is assured. There is a genuine possibility of extinction. Toby Ord from Oxford covers that well in his book on existential risk. And there is also this very deep possibility, not of the death of humanity, but the death of our humanity: We stop being human beings, the way we understand the best of what humanness means.
What we’ve understood here in One Mountain Many Paths is: there is hope, and the hope is real. Barbara Marx Hubbard and I came together in this intuition. And my dear friend Ken Wilber, who I just spent a couple of beautiful days with out in Denver, and my beloved student and friend and partner, Zak Stein, and all of the people here. All of the many, many, many people here online who are holding this space. We have this understanding. This understanding is powerful. It’s deep. It’s not pollyannaish. And yet, it’s also not Cassandra.
It’s not, “Oh, it’s going to be good.”
And it’s not, “Oh my God, we’re doomed.”
It’s rather, “There is a way through. There is hope, and hope is real. Hope is a memory of the future.” The memory of the future is activated, it is enacted — the new possible future, the most beautiful, true and good world that we’ve always known is possible — is enacted and activated through an evolution of the very source code of human culture and consciousness.
Now, you might say, “Can’t be done. Pollyannaish. Whimsical. Fantastical. Not realistic. Not true.” Actually, it’s the single most realistic thing that can be done. It is most connected to the nature of the Real, to the way Reality functions.
This is what this book is about. We are going to literally launch this book today. We are going to do something together — ritually, mystically, economically, practically. We’re going to launch this book into the very source code of culture. We are going to raise it up. We are going to do something enormously real today. We are going to become Amazon warriors, and actually catapult this book into existence. Our dear friend and the publisher of this book, the publisher of World Philosophy and Religion Press, Aubrey Marcus — they published 2,000 hardcover books. Let’s get it going. Let’s get Kindle. Let’s get a hard copy. Let’s gobble up 2,000 books, and take the first move into culture. And then, as we read, we give it to someone else, we give it to someone else, we give it to someone else.
But why does this matter?
What is this book about?
We are facing this meta-crisis. We are facing these two forms of existential risk: the death of humanity, the death of our humanity. We don’t know the way through. We don’t want to take a Cassandra doomer route. We don’t want to take a Pollyanna-ish, head-in-the sand “it’s all going to go on business-as-usual” route. It won’t.
What do we do? How do we respond?
That’s what this book is about.
Reality is Eros
What is our response to the meta-crisis? It’s the realization of the following:
Reality is not merely a fact. Reality is a story.
That’s step one.
That’s huge! That’s a huge realization. Let me just apply it now directly to ourselves: My life is not merely a set of facts, my life is a story.
Every story has plotlines. Plotlines, invisibly and visibly, direct the action of the story.
The inherent plotline of the story is, if you will, the source code of the story. In order to understand the story, I need to discern the plotlines.
So, what’s the plotline?
Reality is not an ordinary story. Reality is a love story.
Another way of saying it is: Reality is relationships at its very core. Reality is relationships. That’s what Reality is.
So, Reality is a love story. But it’s not an ordinary love story.
Reality is not an ordinary love story, Reality is an Outrageous Love Story. Reality is an Evolutionary Love Story.
I’m not trying to give you new technical information. We are in now this place where we want to be together in this realization. Why would you say I love you to your partner? Didn’t you say I love you yesterday? Don’t you have that information? No, it’s a new I love you. This is the I love you of Reality that we’re doing now. Let’s all be in this together.
Reality is not an ordinary love story, it’s an Outrageous Love Story. What do we mean by that?
Outrageous Love is not ordinary love, Outrageous Love is Eros. Eros is Reality. Reality is Eros.
Eros is not mere human sentiment. Eros is the heart of existence itself.
Reality is Eros; see if you can track this thread inside of you: Reality is Eros. Eros is not mere human sentiment, Eros is the heart of existence itself.
Everything I’m saying is backed by what I believe is the deepest read of the sciences.
If you read the sciences carefully, this is actually what they are saying. They are often unaware that they’re saying it because they’re speaking the language of classical and formal science (as they should), so it’s possible to not be even aware of the implications of what you’re saying. For example, if you really understand relativity, Einstein’s relativity, it discloses that Reality is a series of relationships and that the fundamental constituent structure of Reality — or Reality’s fundamental value — is Eros.
If you really read the depth of the sciences, this is what they’re saying.
By the way, NASA put out a book, trying to do just pure hard science. Someone sent me this book just a year and a half ago, after I’d been saying this for twenty years. The name of the book is Cosmological Theories of Value. Hard sciences, a minimalist book — no philosophy, no interiors, just looking at the hard facts of Reality by a hard science guy. I read it quite carefully. He comes to the exact same conclusion. He has never read anything I’ve ever written. He’s operating in a different world, but he is doing the hard sciences very, very carefully, and he comes to the same conclusion, although there is nowhere in the book where he says that sentence. That’s the implication.
I want you to understand that this is not a New-Age declaration, not a Human-Potential declaration. The deepest read of the sciences as we know them is that Reality is governed by a value, and that value is Eros, and Eros is the plotline of the story.
The plotline of evolution is the Evolution of Love
What is my relationship to that Eros?
Eros is the primary value of Cosmos. Or: Eros is the ultimate First Principle and First Value of cosmos. And Eros is the experience of radical aliveness — whether we are talking about the level of leptons, hadrons, quarks, or all the way up the evolutionary chain. Eros equals the experience of radical aliveness. It is love in action. Eros is the experience of radical aliveness, desiring ever deeper contact and ever greater wholeness.
And another word for wholeness is value! It’s ever more value. Wholeness and value are at their core the same. It’s deep. We call that ErosValue. Ever greater wholeness is ever greater value.
Reality is a Field of ErosValue.
Before there is any particular meaning, there is meaningfulness.
Another way to say that would be:
Before there are values, there is a Field of Value.
What does that mean for me?
A dear friend of mine said to me, “Man, write a book about five steps to pleasure and three steps to owning your life. But First Principles and First Values, why would I read that?”
It’s the single most important thing you could possibly read!
If you think I am too excited about this, well, there is a meta-crisis and I am one billion percent convinced — as was da Vinci — that it’s only this New Story of Value that can actually respond to the meta-crisis. Not a made up new story. Not a contrived new story.
Because —
- Reality is not merely a fact, Reality is a story.
- Reality is not an ordinary story, Reality is a love story.
- Reality is not an ordinary love story, Reality is an Outrageous Love Story, Reality is an Evolutionary Love Story.
- Evolutionary Love, Outrageous Love is Eros.
- Eros is not mere human sentiment, Eros is the heart of existence itself.
- Eros evolves. It’s a story.
The nature of a story is, it has a plotline. The plotline is not static. The plotline is, stay close, the plotline is Eros. And what does Eros do? Eros evolves. That’s what Eros does.
Eros is love in action. Evolution is Eros in action, responding to clarified need and clarified desire. That’s the plotline of evolution.
Or, said differently:
The plotline of evolution is the Evolution of Love.
Let’s say it another way:
- Reality is relationship.
- Reality is evolution.
- Reality is the evolution of relationships.
Same thing.
Now — Where do I live? Where am I?
I am in the Field of ErosValue.
That’s where I live, I live in the Field of ErosValue.
Who am I?
The Field of ErosValue lives in me.
The plotline of Reality’s story is the Evolution of Love, and the plotline of my story is the Evolution of Love.
Let’s get more precise. We said:
Where am I? I live in the Field of Value, the Field of ErosValue.
We said,
Who am I? The Field of ErosValue lives in me.
We got that almost right. Let’s add something to it. The Field of ErosValue lives uniquely in me. Uniquely in me. I am both a unique expression of love, and I am loved uniquely. So, the plotline of my story is to live and play out in the most clarified, stunning form of the Field of ErosValue.
ErosValueDesire or ErosDesireValue is a better way to say it, because clarified desire equals value.
My life’s plotline is to clarify my desire and clarify my need, which is unique. I am both part of the common field, and I am unique. What we all share in common is our uniqueness.
The field of clarified Eros DesireValue plays out uniquely in me. That is my love story.
Reality is love in action
Last step. Now we are going to do a crazy big action if you’re up for it.
I am going to do a little recapitulation, and I’m going to add something to the recap. Here we go.
- Reality is not merely a fact, Reality is a story.
- Reality is not an ordinary story, Reality is a love story.
- Reality is not an ordinary love story, Reality is Eros. Reality is an Outrageous Love Story. Reality is an Evolutionary Love Story.
By the way, all of Reality is a story. Reality is not atoms and stories —
All atoms are stories.
That’s a big sentence. What does that mean?
A story is a set of conversations — with myself, with Reality, with others. Reality is conversations. Reality is a conversational cosmos. It’s a conversational cosmos all the way up and all the way down the evolutionary chain.
Atoms, protons, and neutrons have a conversation.
They don’t say, “Hey, Jack, how’s it going?”, “Hey, Lily, how’s it going?” They don’t do that. They don’t do a Hindu thing: “Hey, Krishna. Hey, Radha. What’s going on?”, “Hey, Rama. Hey, Sita.” They don’t do that, but they exchange meaning structures. There is a Field of Value, a field of meaningfulness. And both the proton and the neutron operate within certain rules of that Field of Value, which has certain telos, certain desires, certain goals. It’s reaching towards something. It has an inherent reaching towards more complexity, more life, more aliveness, more wholeness, more functionality, more creativity, more depth. All of those are values that are shared by the proton and neutron, which allow the proton and neutron to come together.
I sat with a molecular biologist and biochemist. It’s one of the leading ones in the United States. I shared with him the way that I was reading science the last ten years. And he shared very, very excellent papers that he has written over the years where he was reading science, as a leading scientist, in the exact same way. The way I would say it is: this is not just mechanics.
Reality is not just mechanics. Reality is art. It’s music. It’s Eros.
Protons and neutrons are not a mechanical fit. They are together in a shared Field of Value, with mutualities of feeling, and mutualities of value, and mutualities of recognition, which create new mutualities of purpose. That’s the nature of Reality. It’s a story. Atoms are also stories. An atom is a story. It’s a proto-story, because a story means that there’s a Field of Desire. I desire something. There is a plotline, and it’s going somewhere.
The nature of the story evolves until I get to the human level. And then, at the human level, the story becomes conscious. I become aware that I am not merely a fact, I am a story. And that my story is not an ordinary story. My story, just like the story of Reality, is a love story — not fantastically, not weirdly, not a New-Age declaration, not a fundamentalist dogmatic claim. The ontology of Reality is its phenomenology. The ontology of Reality — its actual nature — is the way it phenomenologically operates. It’s what it does.
Reality is what Reality does.
Reality does love.
Reality is love in action.
That’s what Reality is.
You might say to me, “So why the heck is there evil?”
Well, the only reason we recognize it as evil is because it’s a failure of intimacy.
We can’t answer the question of evil; it’s a mystery. But the only reason there is a question — the only reason it bothers us, the only reason it rips our hearts open — is because it shouldn’t be that way, because Reality is a love story. Evil itself is a failure of intimacy.
If there is no Intimate Universe, then there is no evil. Evil is a failure of the Intimate Universe.
How do we participate in the Evolution of Love?
Let’s go to the last step.
What are the plotlines of the story, my friends?
The core plotline of the story is Eros.
The core plotline of the story, the primary plotline is ErosValue — Reality — desires more and more wholeness. Reality desires more and more value. I came to that conclusion fifteen-twenty years ago, through my own process of introspection, meditation, realization, but of course combined with constant engagement with texts of all sorts, from all sorts of wisdom disciplines and traditions. None of them said this, but it was implied, although invisible. I am not a Whiteheadian, and I don’t read Whitehead, but it turns out that Whitehead came to that same conclusion. When I spoke to the primary Whitehead scholar in the world, he said, “Wow! You and Whitehead came to the same conclusion,” which made me ecstatic.
David J. Temple is all of us.
David J. Temple is this Unique Self Symphony.
David J. Temple is our studying together for all these years, or if you’ve just joined this week, join David J. Temple.
We are publishing these books, not as Marc Gafni, or as Zak Stein, or as Ken Wilber, but as David J. Temple, as an expression of this in the world. My prayer is that when I die (I hope that’s later rather than sooner) David J. Temple is passed on. This is not an egoic project of some dude or dudette. This is all of us together. We are David J. Temple. And when we pass, we pass this New Story into the world.
This New Story is subversive. It has the capacity to be revolutionary. A revolution is subversive. We subvert the materialist values of Reality. We subvert the superficial story of Reality, which is win/lose metrics.
We subvert the success story of Reality, and we take the red pill.
My friend, Lana Wachowski, who made The Matrix, that’s what she was talking about. You take the red pill. Lana didn’t have all of this Dharma, but Lana understood the idea that we’ve got to wake up from the false reality. Albert Einstein called the separate self an optical delusion of consciousness.
What story am I in? I am in a love story. And when I am in a love story, my heart is ripped open with joy, and sometimes my heart is ripped open with agony, and my heart is ripped open with ecstasy, and I am madly in love.
I am madly in love with myself.
I am madly in love with you.
I am madly in love with the band of Outrageous Lovers, but I can also feel the whole.
I feel the evolutionary impulse pulsing in me.
And if I want to be in that story, I’ve got to begin to understand the plotlines of that story.
The first and primary plotline, the First Principle and First Value is Eros. But then there are seventeen others that emerged from Eros, and that’s what this book is about.
All of this was just to introduce this book.
So I want to ask if everyone’s up for this. If you’ve bought the book, buy another one and give it to someone.
If you got the Audible, get a hard copy of the book!
Get five hard copies. Give it to someone else. This post is public so feel free to share it.
How do I change the plotline?
How do I participate in changing the plotline?
How do I participate in the Evolution of Love?
We are David J. Temple. I am going to ask everyone, let’s do this. Let’s go order a book. Be crazy. Be outrageous. This is the time to be outrageous. “I’m spending $20,000 on my upcoming vacation, but I already ordered one book, not ordering another one.” No, be outrageous. Be crazy. Order five. Order ten. Give them away. Get an Audible. Get a Kindle. But most importantly, get a hard copy. Have the hard copy in your hand. Then, write a review! The amount of reviews creates energy. These are practical revolutionary steps. When people organized in unions, it was about practicality. We actually have to do this; otherwise, we are just talking.
Evolutionary Love Code:
We live in a time between stories. We live in a time between worlds. We live in a time where we hold the power of ancient gods. We have the power to create worlds of unimaginable goodness, truth, and beauty. And we have the power to end worlds, to end humanity, or to end our humanity. We have no story equal to our power. This is what we call in CosmoErotic Humanism, “The second shock of existence.”
We are here to tell a New Story of Value rooted in First Principles and First Values. This New Story is a story in which the cosmic story and the personal story are one. This is a new story of our power, a New Universe Story, a new story of our identity, a new story of desire, and a new story of communion. It is only the articulation of a new story of value that has the capacity to respond to the meta-crisis. But it’s even more. The telling of a new story is the inherent, natural movement of cosmos itself. The evolution of story is the evolution of culture and consciousness, which is the Evolution of Love, which is the evolution of God, the manifest God.
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