Cosmo-Erotic Humanism
I have been asked a lot lately about cosmo-erotic humanism, which I brought attention to in my paper from 2019, “Love in a Time Between Worlds.” In this blog post can be found the only public overview of the still ongoing work, which was prepared by myself and Marc Gafni for the February 2020 board meeting of the Center for Integral Wisdom. Forgive the hyperbole and promissory notes; early phases of projects like this become what Whitehead called “adventures in ideas.” This post will be cross-posted at CIW and elsewhere.
Cosmo-Erotic Humanism: Philosophy in a Time Between Worlds
This brief paper represents an overview of the project of cosmo-erotic humanism, which is a philosophical orientation conceived here as an emergent aspect of the historical moment. We view this moment as a kind of Da Vinci moment, when new syntheses and sciences become possible, when new worldviews can emerge. We are poised between potential dystopia and utopia, a position rooted in global intimacy disorder (who are we?) and a consequent global action paralysis or confusion (what should we do?), which itself is sourced in a foundational collapse of narrative frameworks including a shared universe story, and its derivative narratives of identity, community, sexuality, purpose and power (what is the nature of reality?).
When looking at the world situation it is our first reaction is to ask about what, who, and how? What has happened? Who has gotten our civilization into this? How can it be helped or changed for the better? These questions are essential, and we encourage people to ask them. However, there is a more important question that is asked less often, which is: when is it? Which is to say: when are we? Or more basically: what time is it?
It is time for a change. We live in a time between worlds; a time of almost unbearable intensity, potential, and change.
This brief paper represents an overview of the project of cosmo-erotic humanism, which is a philosophical orientation conceived here as an emergent aspect of the historical moment. We view this moment as a kind of Da Vinci moment, when new syntheses and sciences become possible, when new worldviews can emerge. We are poised between potential dystopia and utopia, a position rooted in global intimacy disorder (who are we?) and a consequent global action paralysis or confusion (what should we do?), which itself is sourced in a foundational collapse of narrative frameworks including a shared universe story, and its derivative narratives of identity, community, sexuality, purpose and power (what is the nature of reality?).
When looking at the world situation it is our first reaction is to ask about what, who, and how? What has happened? Who has gotten our civilization into this? How can it be helped or changed for the better? These questions are essential, and we encourage people to ask them. However, there is a more important question that is asked less often, which is: when is it? Which is to say: when are we? Or more basically: what time is it?
It is time for a change. We live in a time between worlds; a time of almost unbearable intensity, potential, and change.
The Greeks had a word (an archetype, really) for this kind of time, Kairos, which means in Homeric Greek, “a penetrable opening,” a chance opening in the flow of time, which allows for something truly new. It is a potent time of meaning and transformation. This is contrasted with Chronos, which is linear time, duration, and clock time. Understanding that we have stepped outside of “normal time” is important because the meaning of what transpires is reframed. On the inside of normal time, of Chronos, are the events of life, the rhythms of civilization, the seasons, and normal course of things. On the “inside” of Kairos are the portals to new worlds and the non-linear influxes of creativity, disruptions, and opportunity. The Greek conception of Kairos tells is us that within the vast linear fabric of Chronos there are “penetrable openings” at certain points. There are chinks in the regimented armor of time through which the truly new can emerge. Kairos refers to the time within time, the special times, pregnant times, times when the unimaginable is imagined, and the imposable becomes actual. One hour is not worth the same as any other.
The figure above places insights from the field of cultural evolution alongside a certain telling of economic history in the West. The point here is not the exact dates, nor the exact language, but rather the broad trends, and more importantly, the convergences between trends. During this incredibly eventful stretch of history there are two places where metahistorical trends in cultural evolution and economic cycles coincide: the years surrounding the turnings of the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries. In these epochs we find the ramifications of new technologies, wholesale new beginnings of economic hegemonies, and sweeping changes in the nature of culture and consciousness. During each of these transformational epochs there is an inordinate amount of thinking and innovation in the realms of basic institutional design and cultural; patterns of life and symbols providing meaning. In particular conceptions of knowledge and education, religion and government are all be in the process of being rethought.
We are presenting cosmo-erotic humanism as an intellectual movement, not as a theory, and it is understood as part of a broader trajectory of intellectual currents that are coming into focus and climax during the current historical juncture. Di Vinci and his cohorts in Florence during the Renaissance stood on the brink of a time between worlds, and their synoptic and innovative humanism would be shepherded through a period of tremendous turmoil and transformation through Europe, until the modern revolutions began in earnest during the 17th Century. The movement included those oriented to changing the dominant mood and metaphors underlying culture itself in particular directions, specifically towards a new story of the universe, self, and community that includes the actual best statements of what is known about nature, psyche, and power. So it is again today as we stand in a time between worlds, seeking a way forward. However, today the stakes are higher, the picture bigger, and the way through to a new world even more promising.
We have named the movement cosmo-erotic humanism as the term captures the core of the emergent universe story, which is a vision of an intimate universe, what we often call a Cosmo- Erotic Universe. Cosmo-erotic humanism is a normative project of reconstructive philosophy, which serves both as a meta-theoretical engine (articulating, organizing and norming theories and metatheories) but also as an intermediary between the special languages of theory (sciences) and the everyday languages of the lifeworld (religions; cultural worldviews). Therefore, the scope of cosmo-erotic humanism as a project involves creating and curating a collection of metatheories and articulating their implications by clarifying and disseminating a collection of ordinary language “memes.” The project is a call to action on the part of scholar-practitioners to converge and convene into metatheoretical coherence in time when the planetary crises are reaching their existential pitch. It is only in this way that we can together articulate and activate a global ethos and Eros for a global civilization, which we understand to be the urgent need of this eleventh hour.
Among those active within the Center for Integral Wisdom, the highest order metatheories organized by cosmo-erotic humanism include:
Now is the time to weave the various strand of knowledge together in order to navigate between worlds. As such the core work being done at the Center for Integral Wisdom is the writing and disseminating of what we are calling, The Great Library. [Here is a talk I gave about the project]. Books continue to be one of the drivers of culture, especially if “the book” is understood as a noetic reality, i.e., it is not books per se, but ideas that make history. Our work is that of builders in the domain of the heart and mind, working at the level of the foundation, laying the cornerstone for a new world.
There are several primary sets of interrelated volumes that constitute The Great Library. The first set revolves directly around a new vision of the universe and the human. This work involves the central idea of Homo Amor, the new human emergent as factor in cosmic evolution. This set includes following books [all titles tentative, current drafts in private circulation only]. Two early books soon to be out are The Universe: a Love Story and The Intimate Universe. These are relatively popular introductions to the general directions of cosmo-erotic humanism. These will be followed by one of the foundational books entitled, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism: Towards the New Human and the New Humanity, which will be followed by a second foundational book entitled simply, Homo Amor. This volume is a history book and will constitute a direct response to the kind of bleakly reductive materialist thought with nihilistic undertones that is found in works like Homo Sapiens and Homo Deus by popular historian, Yuval Harari. Finally, there is a short volume entitled Evolutionary Love, which summaries evolutionary metaphysics from Peirce through Lazlo. Each of these books elaborates one aspect of cosmo-erotic humanism by telling the story of evolution and history in a new way, based on novel metatheoretical framings and models.
Another core set of books focus on the anthropological, epistemological, and psychological aspects of cosmo-erotic humanism. These three foundational books are: Anthro-Ontology: Towards an Evolving Perennialism, Unique Self theory, and Unique Voice: On Human Development and Uniqueness. Here the core insights and foundations of human knowledge and psychology are rethought, in keeping with the new universe story elaborated in the first set.
The final foundational set revolves around Eros as an aspect of human life and culture. At its core is a twelve volume Phenomenology of Eros, a two-volume abridged version of the same, and a one volume popular expression of the same. These volumes forge a narrative of sex and sexuality, coherent with the psychology and epistemology and universe stories elaborated in the books above. The final two volumes of this series engage gender and what we are terming Unique Gender and the future of relationships. The first of this final two volumes is entitled, Beyond He and She; Towards the Emergence of Unique Gender and the second, The Future of Relationships, From Role Mate to Soul Mate to Whole Mate.
The last foundational book is in the realm of culture and the human lifeworld entitled Towards a New Politics of Evolutionary Love: On the Emergence of Evolutionary Intimacy and Unique Self Symphonies, which explicates the full scope of the movement of ideas and touches on the foundational issues of our historical moment with concrete utopian projections and calls for a reconfiguring of science, religion, and politics.
Behind these books is a team of scholar-practitioners who have been working for over a decade on elaborating the core ideas through research, discourse, and drafting manuscripts. As the scope of the vision came into view it became clear that there would be no way to rush the production of material nor to abnegate on the responsibility to deliver on the total scope of the project, i.e., to produce what is necessary to launch cosmo-erotic humanism as a viable philosophy for a time between worlds, no matter how long it took. The goal has always been to create resources for a culture and a time that is not yet upon us, to provide what is needed to make meaning, love, and good, during a period when there are no longer accepted models for doing this. We have been humbled by the realization that this is a true need, and that we are obligated to fill it: a task of blessed obligation, rooted in the merger of Eros and Ethos.
All those who align with the shared trajectory of this project must focus together, with patience, insight, and dedication, on the hidden work that holds the worlds together. In our case, being in a time between worlds, we see a world that is passing and a world that is on the horizon, the world to come. We write and work for those who live during the days after we are gone, those in the world to come. Let us find again a way to continue to give the gifts that are ours to give to the future.
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The figure above places insights from the field of cultural evolution alongside a certain telling of economic history in the West. The point here is not the exact dates, nor the exact language, but rather the broad trends, and more importantly, the convergences between trends. During this incredibly eventful stretch of history there are two places where metahistorical trends in cultural evolution and economic cycles coincide: the years surrounding the turnings of the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries. In these epochs we find the ramifications of new technologies, wholesale new beginnings of economic hegemonies, and sweeping changes in the nature of culture and consciousness. During each of these transformational epochs there is an inordinate amount of thinking and innovation in the realms of basic institutional design and cultural; patterns of life and symbols providing meaning. In particular conceptions of knowledge and education, religion and government are all be in the process of being rethought.
We are presenting cosmo-erotic humanism as an intellectual movement, not as a theory, and it is understood as part of a broader trajectory of intellectual currents that are coming into focus and climax during the current historical juncture. Di Vinci and his cohorts in Florence during the Renaissance stood on the brink of a time between worlds, and their synoptic and innovative humanism would be shepherded through a period of tremendous turmoil and transformation through Europe, until the modern revolutions began in earnest during the 17th Century. The movement included those oriented to changing the dominant mood and metaphors underlying culture itself in particular directions, specifically towards a new story of the universe, self, and community that includes the actual best statements of what is known about nature, psyche, and power. So it is again today as we stand in a time between worlds, seeking a way forward. However, today the stakes are higher, the picture bigger, and the way through to a new world even more promising.
We have named the movement cosmo-erotic humanism as the term captures the core of the emergent universe story, which is a vision of an intimate universe, what we often call a Cosmo- Erotic Universe. Cosmo-erotic humanism is a normative project of reconstructive philosophy, which serves both as a meta-theoretical engine (articulating, organizing and norming theories and metatheories) but also as an intermediary between the special languages of theory (sciences) and the everyday languages of the lifeworld (religions; cultural worldviews). Therefore, the scope of cosmo-erotic humanism as a project involves creating and curating a collection of metatheories and articulating their implications by clarifying and disseminating a collection of ordinary language “memes.” The project is a call to action on the part of scholar-practitioners to converge and convene into metatheoretical coherence in time when the planetary crises are reaching their existential pitch. It is only in this way that we can together articulate and activate a global ethos and Eros for a global civilization, which we understand to be the urgent need of this eleventh hour.
Among those active within the Center for Integral Wisdom, the highest order metatheories organized by cosmo-erotic humanism include:
- integral theory (Ken Wilber);
- unique self theory (Marc Gafni);
- conscious evolution (Barbara Marx Hubbard [posthumous]);
- anthro-ontology (Gafni; Stein);
- the phenomenology of Eros (Gafni, Stein, Kristina Kincaid)
- metapsychology (Stein);
- the Homo Amor Hypothesis (Gafni, Stein, Hubbard, Ervin Laszlo, Howard Bloom)
- self-organizing system theory (Lazlo).
Now is the time to weave the various strand of knowledge together in order to navigate between worlds. As such the core work being done at the Center for Integral Wisdom is the writing and disseminating of what we are calling, The Great Library. [Here is a talk I gave about the project]. Books continue to be one of the drivers of culture, especially if “the book” is understood as a noetic reality, i.e., it is not books per se, but ideas that make history. Our work is that of builders in the domain of the heart and mind, working at the level of the foundation, laying the cornerstone for a new world.
There are several primary sets of interrelated volumes that constitute The Great Library. The first set revolves directly around a new vision of the universe and the human. This work involves the central idea of Homo Amor, the new human emergent as factor in cosmic evolution. This set includes following books [all titles tentative, current drafts in private circulation only]. Two early books soon to be out are The Universe: a Love Story and The Intimate Universe. These are relatively popular introductions to the general directions of cosmo-erotic humanism. These will be followed by one of the foundational books entitled, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism: Towards the New Human and the New Humanity, which will be followed by a second foundational book entitled simply, Homo Amor. This volume is a history book and will constitute a direct response to the kind of bleakly reductive materialist thought with nihilistic undertones that is found in works like Homo Sapiens and Homo Deus by popular historian, Yuval Harari. Finally, there is a short volume entitled Evolutionary Love, which summaries evolutionary metaphysics from Peirce through Lazlo. Each of these books elaborates one aspect of cosmo-erotic humanism by telling the story of evolution and history in a new way, based on novel metatheoretical framings and models.
Another core set of books focus on the anthropological, epistemological, and psychological aspects of cosmo-erotic humanism. These three foundational books are: Anthro-Ontology: Towards an Evolving Perennialism, Unique Self theory, and Unique Voice: On Human Development and Uniqueness. Here the core insights and foundations of human knowledge and psychology are rethought, in keeping with the new universe story elaborated in the first set.
The final foundational set revolves around Eros as an aspect of human life and culture. At its core is a twelve volume Phenomenology of Eros, a two-volume abridged version of the same, and a one volume popular expression of the same. These volumes forge a narrative of sex and sexuality, coherent with the psychology and epistemology and universe stories elaborated in the books above. The final two volumes of this series engage gender and what we are terming Unique Gender and the future of relationships. The first of this final two volumes is entitled, Beyond He and She; Towards the Emergence of Unique Gender and the second, The Future of Relationships, From Role Mate to Soul Mate to Whole Mate.
The last foundational book is in the realm of culture and the human lifeworld entitled Towards a New Politics of Evolutionary Love: On the Emergence of Evolutionary Intimacy and Unique Self Symphonies, which explicates the full scope of the movement of ideas and touches on the foundational issues of our historical moment with concrete utopian projections and calls for a reconfiguring of science, religion, and politics.
Behind these books is a team of scholar-practitioners who have been working for over a decade on elaborating the core ideas through research, discourse, and drafting manuscripts. As the scope of the vision came into view it became clear that there would be no way to rush the production of material nor to abnegate on the responsibility to deliver on the total scope of the project, i.e., to produce what is necessary to launch cosmo-erotic humanism as a viable philosophy for a time between worlds, no matter how long it took. The goal has always been to create resources for a culture and a time that is not yet upon us, to provide what is needed to make meaning, love, and good, during a period when there are no longer accepted models for doing this. We have been humbled by the realization that this is a true need, and that we are obligated to fill it: a task of blessed obligation, rooted in the merger of Eros and Ethos.
All those who align with the shared trajectory of this project must focus together, with patience, insight, and dedication, on the hidden work that holds the worlds together. In our case, being in a time between worlds, we see a world that is passing and a world that is on the horizon, the world to come. We write and work for those who live during the days after we are gone, those in the world to come. Let us find again a way to continue to give the gifts that are ours to give to the future.
Bookmark the permalink.