Beyond the United Self

In essence, Project RN (T) itself is a complete address on the conceptual fundamentals required to bring the ‘living best’ to our lives, but it is still incomplete in terms of allowing us to be ourselves fully. Personal definition of the knowledge beyond the ‘united self’ on the meaning of life and the higher reason of ethics have to be in place to complete the human epistemological knowledge on the theory of life, and as this project highlights, an ontological counterpart has to be undertaken to fully affirm the epistemological knowledge acquired by the individual.


In this post we will overview the potential problems beyond the united self- we find out that see that the living best does not merely end with the united self, but actually continues on to the united community. We also see that one of the major obstacles that hinder our path of truth and objectivity in Project RN (T) would be the nature of goodness itself. We also expand (as in introductory introspective) the notion of truth and goodness as sibling concepts being one in nature.

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In our previous project we have focused greatly on the theories to bring about ‘the living best’, and had dwelled in detail on the fundamentals that would allow us to live the best way of life. Much of the findings in Project RN (T) were based on the assumption of existence of the objective truth, and throughout the project we have been using the major arguments of truth to justify our objective makeup. The project had three main topics: Truth, The Moderation Doctrine, and Identity- and ended on the premise that love defines the individual and sets the fundamentals of higher ethics and meaning of our lives. This was also partially owing to the reason (given then) that as far as the human epistemological knowledge was concerned, topics beyond the threshold of the ‘unified self’ are currently deemed to be still subjective in nature- ethics, as we know it to be, is very relative.

And so we ended the living best, in light of truth, there.

But even we have an ‘united self’ that is capable of both logical reasoning and intuitive experiencing, of both the material and the ideal, to built up a moderated personal identity that is not compromised to one’s social identity on the grounds of love, we know that such an integrated personality does not necessarily entail a full life of goodness and meaning. Indeed, the ‘living best’ may allow us to live a lifestyle of objective ease and meaning, however it remains no more than a technique for a good life on face value. To our objective way of living must be added the objective purpose of living; that was highlighted especially in the concepts of ‘Materialism’ and ‘Idealism’, and many times throughout project RN (T) we were reminded that personal conviction for the definition of ‘a meaningful life’ must be personally added on top of the theories presented before the essence of this project may be fully realized. In other words, ‘the living best’ that we speak of can never be truly be the living best unless there is a certain meaning to it.

Now, a certain conflict arises- on one hand we postulate that there was an objective truth to all things, and if we were to follow this train of thought down the concepts discussed in Project RN (T), we would eventually preclude that there is indeed an objective truth for our subjective morality and ethics to converge to. Perhaps some of us would have an intuitive answer to this issue- that such subjectivity would eventually converge on the premise of Goodness- But on the other hand, our conventional world has adopted a view that Goodness itself is subjective- since there is no hard and fast rule to compel humans to acknowledge a certain set of Goods just as our objective innate social tendencies had compelled the need of interpersonal unity and love.

Indeed, the idea of goodness itself has been a very elusive concept. Virtually every layman has a certain intuition on what goodness is, based on what is good for them and the things they hold meaning to (I’ll dwell into the dynamics of conventional goodness later). However, that objective ontology becomes no more than a subjective debate when placed on the grounds of reason and persuasion. Many a times we watch an advertisement knowing that it is unscrupulous and un-ethical, but when we attempt to go deeper to analyze why and how it is ‘wrong’ we find out that there is nothing very wrong with it at the first place.

It is in this respect some of us will begin to question the nature of Goodness itself. Goodness apparently does not follow the critique method for investigating truths, since it appears to be objective and subjective at the same time to even the same individual. Goodness cannot be conveniently classified as idealistic or realistic, and epistemic or ontological, although the dimension of the individual and the community may capture some essence of Goodness- If ‘the living best’ that we speak of involves a certain objective best (the superlative of good), how can this postulate be realized if the idea of ‘best’ is still very much bogged in murky waters by our theories of truth?

The problem of the nature of Goodness does not end there. From the Introduction to the Moderation Doctrine, we have observed once that ‘the concept of truth and goodness are actually interlinked’, although the very different nature of these two domains has led to great confusion on whether such a link is ‘objective or an arbitrary invention of the human cognition’ (i.e. goodness is not a truth).

Curiously, the link between Truth and Goodness, as we transit from project RN (T) to project RN (T2) is a link quite analogous to a similar problem in the world of physical sciences. While we are able to explain the individual components to compose the unified self, we find that it is relatively impossible to use that same model to compose a justifiable unified community out of a collection of unified personalities; even though we somehow know throughout that both unions are similar in nature. This problem bears no difference in our failure to reconcile the theory of gravity (a mass collection of atoms) with our theories of the electro-weak forces (within the atoms). We cannot do justice in applying equations from one domain to another, although we intuitively know that these forces are one in nature, since they both obey the inverse square law.

It is very interesting to note that it is on these very areas of conflict the question of the existence of a God had arisen throughout the history of mankind. Should Truth and Goodness be one in essence (not in nature), it is imperative (since we are creations and subsets of Truth and Goodness) that we were objectively created, along with our world and the rest of the universe- by a single objective God that encompasses both qualities of Truth and Goodness. Should it be so, then naturally the meaning of life would then be a lifelong strife to such ideals. From there, the concept of improvement progress and evolution would arise, to creation- as part of the journey to the ultimate Truth and the Good. This interpretation has been embodied by Christianity, which advocates the existence of a True objective God, in which we were created to journey on this earth to the ultimate reconciliation with Him and our neighbors (The Church) in love. From which we get the three aphorisms: God is Truth, God is Good, and on both occasions, God is Love.

Such a monotheistic view is one very possible way of postulating the meaning of life; on top of the living best- and scientific studies that such (religiously devout) people actually do live better lives (at least in their own subjective sense) than people without a personal interpretation of meaning.

So we return back to the fundamental questions- what is goodness? How does it relate back to truth? And how do they interplay to build up the true ‘living best’ of both theory and meaning? In the process, what does love got to do with truth and goodness, since it (coincidentally) lies between that dimension of the individual and the community- between the stand-off of truth and goodness? After all, if there is no purpose to life, then existence would be no more than for the sake of existence, and we all know that existence itself does not require anything beyond the united self. So why the natural strive to the community: why does nature strive to a better when a state of being already exists? These are what we usually perceive as the deep questions of life asked by only profound theologians, but today we finally join them in search to these questions. To find that they are actually fundamental questions, simple and empirical, merely put-off at the back of our minds while we address much more complex questions of calculus, MO theory, and literary interpretations.

And so the quest on for the living best continues.

In the following post we will start our search from the premise of love. We shall begin our attempt to unite love and goodness via induction into one satisfactory explanation (for the time being) through the faculty of ethics and morality. Hopefully by the end of this faculty, we can see a convergence between these two concepts, and from there deduce more possible ways to the living best in light of both love and goodness.