Conversations with David J. Temple

Understanding the Field of Value: Holons, Eros, and ErosValue (with Ken Wilber)

About the podcast: These are unscripted, early David J. Temple conversations where Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber and Dr. Zak Stein are unfolding the inner workings of CosmoErotic Humanism in real time. Formal statements and propositions will be published in forthcoming volumes by the World Philosophy and Religion Press. About this episode: This is the second in a series of dialogues between Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, and Zak Stein, reconvening after the release of First Principles and First Values.  In this dialogue, Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, and Dr. Zak Stein do a deep dive into metaphysics and the clarification of terms they're using to articulate what they call a new grammar of value. They discuss the distinctions between Eros in the Greek and Christian sense and their definition of ErosValue, the difference between value and the Field of Value, and how holons and their core drivers play into all of that. Join in as a fly on the wall as these three great philosophers discuss the nature of the Field of Value itself and explore the relationship between these terms in the context of Integral Theory as well as CosmoErotic Humanism. If you deploy any material from David J. Temple in this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, May 2026, Episode: “Understanding the Field of Value: Holons, Eros, and ErosValue” Get the book: First Principles and First Values [https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Values-Propositions-CosmoErotic-ebook/dp/B0CWYDGFZY] is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. The Center for World Philosophy and Religion is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get instant access to a 7-day self-study course [https://worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/p/new-self-study-course-cosmoerotic] with Dr. Marc Gafni valued in $297, for only $9/month. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction 0:48 — Context Setting 1:41 — First Definition of Value: Value Is the Quality of Irreducible Rightness that Exists in the Universe 8:59 — "Rightness” Works Across The Good, The True and The Beautiful 13:05 — Is the Field of Value a Real Place or a Real Thing? 15:52 — Understanding the Field of Value in terms of Self: Separate Self, True Self, Unique Self 21:36 — We Need to Distinguish Between the Field of ErosValue and the Narrow Sense of the Greek and Christian Notion of Eros 26:14 — About First Principles and First Values 27:01 — The Four Core Drives Of All Holons Are Included in Our Definitions of Eros and Intimacy 39:31 — We’re Using The Word “Value” in the Same Way Ken Uses Holons — Value Is Not Hard to Find, It’s Impossible to Avoid 51:18 — About Who We Must Become End — Mentioned Sources End — Mentioned People Episode Transcript: Context Setting Marc: David J. Temple’s next book is really anthro-ontology, which is how we know what we know. Anthro: human. Ontology: real. * How do we know what we know? * How do we know anything? * And how do we know that value is real? But it’s really two related questions: * How do we know what the value is real? * What is value? Which are obviously co-joined and related. What we did is, David J. Temple came over the other night, and he looked a little bit like you, Ken. He looked a little bit like Zak. He had some Jewish genes there someplace, but he came over and he wrote down about 50 formulations of what is value. And we actually had our friend Daniel over for three, four days, where we also did a deep dive into this topic: what is value? Only if value is real all the way down and all the way up the evolutionary chain do we have an omnicoherent Cosmos. Otherwise, we don’t have a coherent Cosmos. So when David talks about the Intimate Universe, he means intimacy all the way down and all the way up, right? Intimacy and coherence are almost the same word. It’s intimate coherence or coherent intimacy. With that in mind, I thought we would just jump in. I’ll throw out possible definitions of value. And it doesn’t get more delightful than this. We’re throwing out actual definitions of value, some of them will be, of course, overlapping. We haven’t done stage two here to get it down to five definitions. We’re still at the list of 50, where Zak rolls his eyes and says, “When’s that going to get down to 5 or 10?” But let’s play for now. Let’s play, okay? Here we go. First Definition of Value: Value Is the Quality of Irreducible Rightness that Exists in the Universe Marc: 1) Value is the quality of irreducible rightness that exists in the universe. Or I’ll say it a little differently. * Value is the quality of irreducible rightness for its own sake that exists in the universe. Before we comment on it, I’ll say it again. We’re going under the assumption that we’ll have to unpack, David has to unpack this, that all value, when we say value is real, we mean value is real and that it is eternal and evolving. Ken?: And each value has to be a part of some other value. Marc: And each value needs to be part of the Field of Value. Ken: And we already have a name for what that is. It’s called a holon. Marc: It’s called a holon. Okay. Ken: So value is a whole entity that is a part of a larger value. Essentially. That’s why value is part of a field. And if it’s a field of entities, then they each have to be interconnected. All holons are interconnected because they’re a whole that’s part of a larger whole, that itself is part of a larger whole. Atoms are parts of molecules, which are parts of cells, which are part of multicellular animals , which are part of an entire tree of life, and it just goes up. And each one of those has a value. Marc: Each one of those has a value and no value is independent of all the values. Ken: That’s right. Marc: And that’s what’s key. To have an omnicoherent Cosmos, we have to recognize that no value is ever dissociated from the larger Field of Value. If it would dissociate, it would become the source of evil. Meaning, it would become anti-value. And that’s beautiful, right? Ken: Right. Marc: The dissociation itself causes it to become anti-value. Ken: And that’s a great definition of anti-value. Marc: Right? It’s a value dissociated from the larger field of value. I decontextualize a value from the larger Field of Value, I transform it into an absolute, non-holon, and it becomes anti-value. Ken: And that’s to say, a value that isn’t part of another value ceases to be a holon. Because when any holon breaks off being a part of a larger whole, it ceases being a holon. Because it’s by definition not part of a larger whole. Marc: And in some sense, what it’s done is, it’s become cancerous. Ken: Right. Marc: It’s become a cancer. Then that value metastasizes by itself, it sub-optimizes the larger system, and then winds up both suiciding the larger system, and then itself. That’s the process. A good example would be a value like power. In some sense, power is a value. If we lose our relationship to power, we become powerless, which is often tragic. But power is a particular value which is most prone to dissociate from the larger field. Right? It’s funny, in Tolkien, when he writes Lord of the Rings, “My precious!” Precious means value. But it’s the value of power which is dissociated from the larger field, so that power becomes this ultimate eros dissociated from all other values. So it becomes the ultimate anti-value. Ken: The ultimate evil. Marc: The ultimate evil. Yay. Zachary, thoughts from the third floor? Zak: Yeah, insofar as we speak of a grammar of value and holonic theory applies to the idea of grammar, then you get this idea of: one way of thinking about what we’re saying is, value is not some illegible, weird ephemeral feeling, there’s a grammar to it. It has that logic of them being nested, they’re related. You get these things that appear as polarities that are actually these deep inter-inclusions in some way. So a lot of the holonic theory applied to thinking about the Field of Value is one way of getting into some of what we’re discussing. I think it’s an interesting cross-fertilization there. Back to your definition of whatever it was, Mark, at the beginning there, that the intrinsicness of the universe being appropriate… Marc: I’ll give it to you, just so you have it. Value is the quality of irreducible rightness for its own sake that exists in the universe. Zak: So rightness, goodness, appropriateness that there’s something at the base of the universe that is good, would be one way of thinking about the root of the whole value conversation. Without that as a premise, you can’t arguably, for example, boot from a universe that’s bad and create value, right? That’s an interesting place to start. “Rightness” Works Across The Good, The True and The Beautiful Ken: Let me ask what exactly you mean by—how does it compare to the good, the true, or the beautiful? Why not goodness? Marc: We could go for goodness, right? Ken: Because there are very real, there are very specific meanings to the good, the true, and the beautiful. Marc: Yes. Ken: The good is ethics, how I should treat you. I should treat you in a good fashion, in a correct fashion. The beautiful is aesthetics, and that means my aesthetic intelligence and capacity to spot beauty and so on. And the true generally is used in a very generic way, but when it’s used specifically, it applies to the objective truth of science. So that’s why the good, the true, and the beautiful are always a threesome. * Because the beautiful, which is in the eye of the beholder, is the upper left quadrant. * The good, which is how I should treat you, is the lower left quadrant. * And then objective truth applies to material existence, which are the right-hand quadrants. And of course, there’s a singular truth and a plural truth, so we have the right quadrant, we have atoms, molecules, single animal, and we have ecosystems, a biosphere… Marc: This quadrant idea, Ken, you should write this up, yeah. Ken: [Laughs] Yeah, I agree. Zak: I think that would take a big, thick book, though, to really get it right. Marc: It’d be a big book, yeah. Ken: But “right” isn’t normally pegged in that, in a specific way. It could mean: * the rightness of a mathematical truth, * the rightness of a good, a social cultural good, or * the rightness of beauty. Marc: That’s one of the advantages of the word—I’m not stuck on the word rightness. That’s just an initial foray… Zak: There’s a philosopher, Robert Brandon, who talks about normative meta-vocabularies, and there’s a class of terms that applies across good, true, beautiful. They’re weird terms, as you’re noting that. Norm, normative… Marc: And rightness works across. Zak: But you have to say that or else most people will put it in one, the one that they like, “Oh, it’s correct.” When in fact we mean it’s both correct and appropriate and aesthetically correct or beautiful, right? So there are these kind of pragmatic, normative meta-vocabularies that allow us… And this is what many of the people who are pointing to something deeper than any specific one, to try to reintegrate, to get a reconstructive postmodernism, they’re saying, “Actually, no, there’s a deeper meta-vocabulary than the good, the true, the beautiful,” which Habermas calls reason, right? But we’re calling something like, discourse around value. Which we’re trying to include. We’re not placing value in the good. We’re actually saying, to properly understand science and even mathematics, you’re looking at something like rightness in the domain of science, which is a value status, the claim is a validity claim in science. So there’s some way that it is a good or bad claim. So we’re looking for that broader vocabulary. Marc: I mean, the word value is deeper than values. There’s a Field of Value that underlies all values. Right? So the good, the true, and the beautiful are each unique vectors of value expressive of an underlying Field of Value, which is the intrinsic or inherent rightness of the Cosmos in all of its dimensions. But another way to talk about it… Is the Field of Value a Real Place or a Real Thing? Ken: Wait, does that actually exist as a real place or a real thing? Or is that simply an abstraction of what they all have in common? Marc: It’s interesting, right? So it’s a quality… Zak: Interesting question. Marc: Two different directions. Let me introduce another term which will help us engage it. So there’s a term that we’re playing with which is the term ErosValue. As a term. But not as it appears already in the book that we all threw into the world, First Principles and First Values, which by the way, Ken, it’s very sweet. People are buying it up and reading it, which is nice. Ken: Great. Marc: By ErosValue, we’re referring to this underlying Field of Value in Cosmos, and we’re understanding Eros as a particular interior science equation. I’m going to go slow for a second. Eros equals the experience of radical aliveness, desiring ever-deeper contact and ever-greater wholeness. Huge word for you, wholeness. This experience of Eros is ethics. There’s no split between the erotic and the ethical. Eros and ethics are one, meaning Eros is both a value of Cosmos, but it’s ErosValue. What Cosmos does all the way down and all the way up is, Cosmos is an evolving expression of ErosValue, which then expresses itself as the good, as the true as the beautiful. But ErosValue is the very core. Let me give an example of how this might play. Let’s say we’re talking about the abortion debate, right? Pro-life, pro-choice. We all know that the abortion debate polarizes for the exact reason that you pointed out before, because the value ceases to be a holon. Right? When we take choice and it’s not part of the larger field, or we take life and it’s not part of the larger field, they become actually deconstructors of the field and they polarize. When you’re in the larger field you go from polarization to paradox. And as you and I have talked many times, paradox is where you begin to see the glimmers of truth. Understanding the Field of Value in terms of Self: Separate Self, True Self, Unique Self Marc: But let’s step back for a second and stay with your inquiry. Let’s think about this in terms of self. You have separate self, True Self, Unique Self, as we know. * Values which are non-holons are separate selves that think that they’re really true. Because they’re separate. They think they’re separate, and just like separate selves clash with each other, values clash with each other. 2) Then we move to True Self. In True Self, the way you like to describe it, always very beautifully is, the singular that has no plural, quoting Schrödinger. The total number of true selves in the world is one. Right? So True Self is not just the field of consciousness, though, it’s the Field of Value. But it’s the Field of Value before there’s any individuation. And it’s everything within the field. There’s no story here. There’s no individuation. Right? The total number of true selves is one. 3) We get to Unique Self. Unique Self is when reality’s having a Wilberian experience. Reality’s having a Zak experience, reality’s having a Marc experience. Now we’re unique selves. So that’s the discretion of True Self into an individuated uniqueness, at a higher individuation beyond separate self, beyond ego. So that is, in terms of value, that’s individuated values. Life, pro-life and pro-choice, those individuated values are unique expressions, like Unique Self, of the Field of Value. In the same way the good, the true, and the beautiful are individuated expressions of an underlying Field of ErosValue. I think that’s how David might think about it. Zak: Yeah, what’s interesting to me in this question is thinking about the reality of the big three. If you think in terms of human development, there’s a time before you get the differentiation between the I, the we, and the it. For a long time, it’s just probably Mom, just some diffuse, other subject. And then out of that, you distill an objective world. Then you start, after the mirror stage or something, getting a sense, other’s a me, and then you get the I, the we, and the it, right? And then that’s great, you get the egoic structure. Then eventually with the transpersonal rungs, that differentiation between I, we, and it dissolves. Right? And you get not to the thing that was before temporally, which was this diffuse field of eros and attachment, which you differentiate out the value spheres from, you go to the prior thing, which is that transpersonal Field of Value. And then sociologically, the emergence of the big three with modernity. Then you have this big question, is there a way to get some post-postmodern reconstruction where you don’t have science fragmented from ethics, fragmented from aesthetics? Because we realize they’re all about this deeper field, that actually on the back end, they connect with the deeper Field of Value. Right? That’s one way to think about it. So I like that notion that there’s like a prior thing, there’s a differentiation of the big three, and then there’s this movement to a vocabularies that transcend but include the big three, like the transpersonal experience, where you go again into a reality where there’s not a clear distinction between I, we, and it. You’re not psychotic. You’re not psychotic, but you’re in a state where the I, we, it… Marc: Nirvikalpa samādhi, is in some sense, a collapse for a moment of I, we, and it, until it returns in sahaja samādhi. Ken, these were our earliest conversations around Unique Self, they were about these distinctions and how they work. I think the notion of a field is helpful. The notion of a field is helpful because in field theory, both in contemporary thought and in the great traditions, it instantiates something. In the Hebrew wisdom tradition they talk about hakal tapuchin kadishin in Aramaic, which is the field of holy apples, which is very close to what we would call the Field of ErosValue. Right? Which is underneath the four forces. It’s underneath everything. It’s the field out of which everything emerges. That’s the Field of Value. In some sense, we’re trying to stay away from the word consciousness and get closer to the word value. But what we mean by value is consciousness, right? In other words, instead of talking about the non-dual consciousness, we’re talking about non-dual value, and you can actually read… I just had a short call, I hadn’t talked to him in a long time with Sëan-Hargens. And I said to Sean, instead of talking about non-dual consciousness, let’s talk about non-dual value. Let’s read the same set of texts, but replace the word consciousness with value, and it actually works quite well. We Need to Distinguish Between the Field of ErosValue and the Narrow Sense of the Greek and Christian Notion of Eros Ken: When you say that underneath all of these expressions is a field, let me just use the four quadrants as an example. When we talk about eros, we’re talking about the vertical natural drive of a holon to transcend and include a previous holon. That’s what eros is, and that’s why it underlies the drive to unity, ethics, sex and so on. But the field of all quadrants is not itself a quadrant. So we can talk about Eros, but not eros meaning the upper drive, because that’s just one of four separate realities. It’s not a field… Marc: I’m going to throw a point here, and it’s a decision we have to make, which is the split between Eros/eros… When we’re using the word Eros, we’re using it not in terms of the split between eros and agape, because I think that’s a Christian mistake. For a lot of reasons, which has gotten a lot of trouble. In Star Wars, the Jedi Knights are only related to agape. They’ve got no eros going on, which is why they don’t marry, etc… Zak: It’s hard to take someone from the Hebrew tradition saying the Christians made a mistake. and I’m like, “Yeah, we know you. The Christians made a mistake. We get it.” [Laughs] Marc: Correct. [Laughs] Thank you, Dr. Stein. Zak: That’s my commentary. World religion commentary. Marc: We’re using the word Eros or ErosValue. That’s why we’re not even using eros. We’re using ErosValue, and by ErosValue, we mean eros, agape, philia, the whole thing, right? We don’t mean eros only as an ascending include and transcend. We mean Eros as the entire field of being and becoming. That’s what we mean by ErosValue. So we’re using Eros in a much broader sense. Ken: Okay, but then we also need eros in a narrower sense. Marc: Yes. Ken: Because we do need these four major drives. Each holon has: * Eros, a drive toward, of the lower to embrace and love the higher; * Agape, which is a drive of the higher to embrace and love the lower; * And then we have agency, which is the drive of a holon to be a whole; * And then we have communion, which is the drive of a holon to be part of a larger whole. And those all, those are four directionalities, all of which are needed. So what we’ve been doing here is we’ve been switching back and forth ever since we began this conversation. We’ve been talking about value, meaning: 1) The good or the true or the beautiful. But then we’re also talking about value as: 2) The field of everything. So that gives us a separate entity. And we might as well face up to that. As you say, Marc, we’re going to have to make a decision about how we’re going to use value, and if it means the same as my word holon, for example. What all four quadrants have in common is they’re all various holons. And if that’s similar to value, then what all four quadrants have in common is a Field of Value. That’s a field, and it has to be named. It has to be pointed out and it has to be proven, in a way, different than an eros value, or an aesthetic value, or a truth value, it has to be demonstrated and proven. So I just don’t want us to make that confusion of value versus Field of Value. We’re acknowledging both of them throughout this conversation, and so I suppose we should continue to acknowledge both of them. So what do we want to call the field of all value? The Field of All Value? Marc: Yeah, I think it’s the Field of Value, of all value. In other words, it is the holonic field, right? Zak, what are you thinking, love? Get the book: First Principles and First Values [https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Values-Propositions-CosmoErotic-ebook/dp/B0CWYDGFZY] is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. Join us in articulating a new, shared vision that can act as a bridge to enable global coherence and coordination. The Four Core Drives Of All Holons Are Included in Our Definitions of Eros and Intimacy Zak: Of course, we’re very deep in metaphysics right now, so it’s actually a kind of interesting question. When I think about what it is, those four drives are—and we could do this now, but we’ll probably do it later—are included in the equation for Eros, our definition of Eros. Marc: Yes. Zak: But when I think about those drives, I also think about the structure of all the holons, and I think about the process of selection, which is to say, why do some holonic structures survive in the universe and others don’t? That’s what we’re in a sense pointing to with value. Because we’re saying that the trajectory of this thing over time in terms of what the universe wants, the appetition of the Cosmos, in terms of where it’s moving, why certain things emerge and other things don’t, isn’t explained in the structural explanations. You require that other dimension of drive. Which is the fuel, as it were, moving through these necessary grids of holonic grammar, if you will. And the will to speak into that grammar, and then the decision to keep or not keep certain meaningful things within the grammar of the holons is that kind of Field of Value/Eros, which is the good/bad at the base of it. Okay, a holon emerges, it’s nested. Why does it survive? Does the universe want it or not? And some of that’s answered by the formalities of the holon structure, and then some of that has to do with these drives, which are included in the dynamics of ErosValue. Which then at a certain point get quite interesting with the emergence of the human, because of the reflectivity around value and self-conscious human choice, as opposed to just the universe choosing what passes through selection. So that’s that flip to conscious evolution as a value question. Ken: The only word that I can think of to relate to what you’re talking about, which is, does a holon survive?, is that it depends upon the balance of the four drives that all holons have. There’s eros, agape, agency, and communion. And you can automatically think of what a proper balance means, or you can certainly think of what happens when there’s an imbalance. Way too much eros and not enough agape, and the thing just explodes. Way too much agency and not enough communion, and it just becomes a blob individual whole that’s not a part of any other whole, and therefore is tending towards evil. Zak: Yeah. Ken: And same with communion and the same with agape. The only way I’ve been able to picture them is just as a balance, and the balance can vary from different situations to different situations. We can’t say “there must be 10% eros, 90% agape, 20% communion and 80% agency.” They’re going to vary from situation to situation, and they should. And that should be part of the thing that we’ll take into account when we’re thinking about values and individual values: what does balance mean among values? Because you rarely find an entity that has just one value. You don’t find something that’s just nothing but good, it has no beauty and no truth or anything like that. And you very rarely find anything that’s just beautiful, but has no truth, no goodness or anything like that. So we’ll be having to talk about balance in values. And we just want to make sure that we don’t confuse that balance of values with the field of values. Marc: Right. Yes. Let’s go back to basic terms. I think we never want to use the word eros without the word value, right? Ken: Okay. Marc: We’re trying to coin this new word, which is ErosValue, which takes eros out… In other words, autonomy and communion are what we often call allurement and autonomy, but the same basic idea. Those are First Principles and First Values of Cosmos all the way down. Right? By the way, Howard Bloom in his core physics equations that he wrote with a key scientist in Moscow, one of his core notions is that actually allurement and autonomy are all the way down. So those are core structures, right? Allurement and autonomy. And then the nature of ErosValue is, as Zak said, is the Eros equation. And so the nature of Eros equation, the nature of ErosValue is it both receives everything that came before, it includes that, and then emerges something new. So ErosValue does both of those. The word ErosValue, a Field of ErosValue—and the Field of ErosValue is the holonic field which both receives and transcends. It does both. So the word ErosValue or the Field of ErosValue, incorporates both eros and agape in the old way of talking about it, and autonomy and communion. Ken: That’s what we have to decide. Because if we’re talking about eros as just eros in contradistinction to agape, then it does have these two different aspects. One is transcending, moving beyond, embracing a greater whole. And then agape’s meaning is to embrace what went before. The love of the higher for the lower, God’s love for man, typically. Those are two different forces. We’re not saying that ErosValue includes eros sub 1 and agape… Marc: We could be saying that. Ken: But then we’re, we’ve got to think of something what we place as agape. Given the nature of holons, they have to have these four distinct forces: * An inclusive force, * an embracing force, * an autonomous force, and * an allurement or communal force. All four of those are necessary for every holon. Zak: Yeah. I think those are found in the Intimacy and Eros equations. I just think we haven’t formally related to those drives. We could do that. I think it would be very interesting, because I believe, it’s a field that animates, that’s similar to these drives. Because the question of: * Where do the drives come from? * At what point did they emerge and really start to direct things? Is similar to this question of, at what point did the universe want some structures to exist and not other structures to exist? For example, integrity was selected for super early, even at a geometrical, organizational level. So I think it might be worth clarifying the relationship between holonic theory and the value theory that we’re proposing for people who want to see those. I think it could be clarifying for both projects. Marc: They are overlapping, but they’re saying the same thing in a slightly different way. In First Principles and First Values, all of the elements, all of these four are covered. Of course, they have to be, because the universe can’t arise without it. So, in the Eros equation: * Eros equals radical aliveness desiring deeper contact and greater wholeness. You have that equation, then you have the intimacy equation, which is: * Intimacy equals shared identity in the context of relative otherness, times mutualities of recognition, mutualities of feeling, mutualities of value, and mutualities of purpose. So in those two equations, you have both the emergence and the embrace, if we could say it that way. There’s both the embrace of the higher and the embrace of the lower, right? But we’re coming in through a slightly different… Zak: And the autonomy and communion, because you have difference in the context of relative otherness, and you have both the inclusion and the exclusion. So I think they’re there, and each of the components of the equations dials up and dials down, which is about the rightness or the appropriateness of the balance of the forces, depending where the holon is placed. And that’s the kind of judgment of the evaluative field of the universe, which is driving and selecting, in the context of these structures that can’t move, that are generative, like a grammar, right? But they’re restrictive. Ken: We’re still moving around the distinction between Field of Value and a specific value. So when you say rightness means the balance of all of them, that’s fine, but then rightness cannot mean goodness, because goodness is one of the values. At least we’re using it as good, true, and beautiful. Zak: I was saying, you said before that a big question is with the four drives. It’s, what’s the balance of them? What’s selected for is the thing that has the right balance depending where the holon is. And so that’s what I was referring to balance there, when you’re thinking about eros… Ken: But then that is not what goodness means. Goodness, the way I use it, when I talk about the good, the true, and the beautiful, is the way that individuals treat each other in ethical ways. That’s the good. That’s the social goodness. That’s what you do to be a good person. You treat people correctly. That’s a specific value, that’s not the same as beauty, that’s not the same as… Marc: Good, true, and beautiful. Ken: systems, individual or plural systems… So we still have to just be careful because we haven’t sub-defined all of these forces yet, in a way that we don’t keep using several of them in two different ways. Marc: You’re right. You’re right, holy man. And again, this is an appropriate conversation for an initiating conversation to clarify terms, because basically we have two ways of saying the same thing, but if we don’t clarify it, it will get totally confusing. So, totally agree. If we think about it for a second, when we say Field of Value, let’s go back to True Self and Unique Self for a second, okay? True Self is the Field of Value, right? And that’s what you were talking about, Zak, in the early pre-development, before you get to I, we, and it, there’s this field. Right? And this Field of Value is the intrinsic quality of Cosmos, which is not reductive materialist, it’s not empty, it’s not neutral, it’s actually value itself. By the way, when Aquinas identifies his favorite verse in the Bible, and he chooses it from the Book of Psalms, when David says, “Taste and see that God is good,” he’s not using the term good there in the sense of one of those three vectors. He’s using the term good to mean the underlying Field of Value, right? It’s a taste. We’re Using The Word “Value” in the Same Way Ken Uses Holons — Value Is Not Hard to Find, It’s Impossible to Avoid Ken: Okay. If we’re going to do that, then we’re using value in the way I use the term holon. Marc: Yes. Yes. Ken: Because everything is made up of holons. And so if we’re going to say, everything is made up of value, then we can’t name one value “value”. Marc: Exactly, Ken. I think that’s the f*****g home run out of the park. That’s exactly right, in the sense of the rightness of the whole thing. [Laughs] In other words, value is the holonic field. Everything is… Ken: Everything is a holon, therefore everything is a value. Marc: Holons are not hard to find, holons are impossible to avoid. Ken: That’s right. Marc: In your phrase, right? Value is not hard to find, Value is that out of which everything arises. Ken: And that we can get from evolution because every evolutionary stream unfolds in holons. Marc: Yes. Ken: I mentioned atoms to molecules to cells to animals, the tree of life… Marc: Another way to think of it is, holy man… Yes on holons. That’s a full stop, hard yes. But let’s move over into more of your classic Buddhist training, right? The field of awareness. The notion of the field of awareness is, there’s an ever-always present awareness out of which everything emerges. Right? You could call that the field of consciousness. Another way to say that would be the Field of Value. In other words, the Field of Value is not a value. It’s the quality, but it’s not just the quality of awareness. Value is ErosValue, so it’s awareness and allurement together. Ken: Wait a minute. That’s the problem. We can’t do that. Because you’re equating it with allurement. The reason, if we talk about a field of awareness as what an infant two months old has, then we’re going to... Emergence is an important concept at this point. Because if we start naming some of the higher levels as concrete operational thinking, or formal operational thinking, or logic, or desire, any of those cannot be present in a one-month-old child. So we can’t get them to come out of what is present at a one-month-old child. Is the Field of Value present in a one-month-old child? Yes. Marc: Yes. Yeah. Ken: Can higher stuff come out of it? Only with emergence. Because emergence means something new comes out of what was previously. It’s now old, and it’s embraced by agape, and the eros is the emergent part of it. Marc: Yeah. Zak: That’s what we’re saying. Ken: And as long as the field of awareness has an ErosValue to it, which all holons do, then we can start getting emergent things up the whole spectrum. Zak: Yes. Marc: Yes. We’re aligned. It is worth saying that allurement is primary. In other words, allurement is not just a later emergence, but actually allurement is always present in the manifest world. Ken: It’s one of the four drives of all holons. Marc: Okay. So, if you go back to the four drives, the other way to say it is that the Field of ErosValue is constitutive of all those four drives. All those four drives emerge from that field. Ken: Okay. So, we then need something for the special drive that is just emergence or just eros. Because we can’t keep mixing them up like that. Marc: Emergence, by the way, is a really good word. Ken: Yeah. Marc: The drive to emergence is actually a very nice phrase. Ken: It’s a nice way of talking about eros. Marc: Yes. Or Whitehead’s distinction between being and becoming. Whitehead’s thing about the lure of becoming. That’s how Whitehead uses, all over Process and Reality and Adventures of Ideas, the allurement and lure is there all the time. Exactly. Ken: Because eros is there all the time. Marc: Yes, that’s right. It’s there all the time. We’ve agreed on a holonic field, which is a Field of Value, right? Ken: Which is just a field of holons. And what’s the lowest holon? Whatever the smallest holon that they find exists, and they’re going to keep discovering ones. Right now it appears to be a photon or a quark, and that’s fine. Quarks are wholes that are parts of larger wholes and so on. So that’s fine. And we can start speaking about emergence as one of the four. And since the Field of Value is a field of holons, that doesn’t mean just what underlies all values or underlies all holons, but it is itself a field of holons. So what’s the holon that’s present? Whatever the holon of a quark is. Give it whatever name you want. That’s how you find this field. The other way you find a field is you find an abstraction that covers all the elements of the field. And we’re switching back and forth between these two meanings. Marc: Yes. Ken: And that’s what we have to watch out for, because they’re very different things. Marc: When we describe a holon which is, a part whole. In other words, every part is part of a whole, right? When we say every part is part of a whole we’re actually saying in some sense two different things: * One is a structural thing. * And the other is a metaphysical thing, in some post-metaphysical way. Ken: Basically. Marc: We’re saying both of those at the same time. 1) A whole is structurally, the part is part of a larger whole, it emerges from a larger whole, and then it creates a new whole that then births another part whole. So, holons all the way up and all the way down, as you like to say. Ken: Right. Marc: And 2) wholeness is, if you will, the Field of Value. Right? The Field of Wholeness is the Field of Value. Ken: That’s because you’re using wholeness in an abstract way. Marc: You’re right… Ken: There’s not a single thing called wholeness that exists in a place or time. There is a single thing called a holon which exists in a place or time. But you can also use holon abstractly. When we say everything’s a holon, then we’re using that. We’re saying everything has a wholeness. And we run into the same thing. Wholeness can mean an abstract quality that is ever-present, or it can mean something that is whole, that has wholeness, and that is therefore a whole. But those are two different meanings. Marc: Understood, received. In some sense, when we say there’s a Field of Value, what we’re basically saying is we’re rejecting reductive materialism. Ken: Basically. Marc: Basically, right? And it’s in your opening piece in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, which is one of my favorite pieces, the kind of “oops” versus “something going on.” The something going on is the Field of Value. Right? The Field of Value is that, God’s implicate order, all the possibilities. Zak: What we’re also saying is, it’s structured. Right? That’s where the holonic theory with the 20 tenants offers, in a sense, another angle on these First Principles, First Values. You could say that the First Principles and First Values, our list, is implied in the 20 tenets. You could argue something like that, which is that they’re unnamed features that apply across all the tenets. It might be one way to think about them. That the entirety and the implications of holonic theory are attempted to be articulated from a different angle in this list of things, which are more obviously closer to things like values, right? And why are they valuable? Because they’re part of the structure of the universe. And what’s the structure of the universe? Holonic theory. Right? Those things are mapped together. So that’s another angle in. I think that’s a pretty clean angle. it includes the forces. It includes the inside, outside, collective, individual. It includes the tenets, the hierarchies and everything in the tenets. But nowhere in the tenets does it say some of the things that we list as principles. Marc: Another way to say it is the very basic idea that evolution comes after involution. That’s what we mean by the Field of Value. Right? Ken: It’s an involutionary given. Marc: It’s an involutionary given. Yeah. That’s really the way to say it. When we go to that question that Wittgenstein asks, Fichte, Schelling, everyone asks some version of that question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” The way that the interior sciences of kind of Luria, engage that question, is something like: infinity desires finitude. Ken: Right. Marc: Infinity places its attention on finitude, and the placing of attention is the act of ErosValue, which discloses the infinite and the finite. And if you’re disclosing the infinite and the finite, you’re disclosing value. Ken: Well, if it’s infinity valuing finitude, that’s the driver of involution. Involution gives you a type of emergence, but it’s a creativity emergence of, * Spirit decides to go out of itself, so it reduces to soul. * Soul goes out of itself and reduces to mind. * Mind goes out of itself and reduces to body. * Body goes out of itself and reduces to dead matter. And that’s an involutionary sequence which leaves all of those higher levels or higher values, body, mind, soul, inherent in or enfolded into the world structure. And therefore, evolution can start to occur because the return of spirit produces… Marc: Evolution emerges out of the involutionary given of the Field of Value. Ken: That’s right. Mentioned Sources: * Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality, The Free Press, 1929 * Whitehead, Alfred North, Adventures of Ideas, The Free Press, 1933 * Wilber, Ken, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Shambhala Publications, 1995 Mentioned People: * Daniel Schmachtenberger * Sean Esbjörn-Hargens * Howard Bloom (1943–) * Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274) * Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) * Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) * Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) * Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) * Isaac Luria (c. 1534–1572) Go Deeper: If you’re enjoying these deep dive conversations with Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber and Dr. Zak Stein, then we have an epic opportunity for you to come closer and dive even deeper on your learning journey. Join us at the Who We Must Become [https://whowemustbecome.circle.so/checkout/who-we-must-become-student] community, the band of Outrageous Lovers reclaiming meaning, value and purpose at the center of culture, in response to this great moment of metacrisis. With daily practice, weekly study sessions and a plethora of new courses, come learn together and meet the ones who are already comitted to this path towards personal and planetary transformation. Get full access to Center for World Philosophy and Religion at worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/subscribe [https://worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Understanding the Field of Value: Holons, Eros, and ErosValue (with Ken Wilber)

About the podcast: These are unscripted, early David J. Temple conversations where Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber and Dr. Zak Stein are unfolding the inner workings of CosmoErotic Humanism in real time. Formal statements and propositions will be published in forthcoming volumes by the World Philosophy and Religion Press. About this episode: This is the second in a series of dialogues between Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, and Zak Stein, reconvening after the release of First Principles and First Values.  In this dialogue, Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, and Dr. Zak Stein do a deep dive into metaphysics and the clarification of terms they're using to articulate what they call a new grammar of value. They discuss the distinctions between Eros in the Greek and Christian sense and their definition of ErosValue, the difference between value and the Field of Value, and how holons and their core drivers play into all of that. Join in as a fly on the wall as these three great philosophers discuss the nature of the Field of Value itself and explore the relationship between these terms in the context of Integral Theory as well as CosmoErotic Humanism. If you deploy any material from David J. Temple in this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, May 2026, Episode: “Understanding the Field of Value: Holons, Eros, and ErosValue” Get the book: First Principles and First Values [https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Values-Propositions-CosmoErotic-ebook/dp/B0CWYDGFZY] is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. Get the book: "First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come" - https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Values-Propositions-CosmoErotic-ebook/dp/B0CWYDGFZY [https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Values-Propositions-CosmoErotic-ebook/dp/B0CWYDGFZY] Subscribe to the Center for World Philosophy and Religion newsletter - https://worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/ [https://worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/] Get full access to Center for World Philosophy and Religion at worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/subscribe [https://worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Selection, Desire and the Becoming of the Universe

About the podcast: These are unscripted, early David J. Temple conversations where Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber and Dr. Zak Stein are unfolding the inner workings of CosmoErotic Humanism in real time. Formal statements and propositions will be published in forthcoming volumes by the World Philosophy and Religion Press. About this episode:  In this dialogue, Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein explore the profound interplay between selection, desire, value, and the evolutionary process of the universe. They discuss: why does the universe select certain structures instead of others, across all levels of matter, life, and mind? They engage with the deep cosmic question: what does the universe value? — and argue that in order to respond to our escalating challenge of humans overriding natural selection with their own choices, we have to be able to clearly see and distinguish between value and its counterfeit forms.  If you deploy any material from David J. Temple in this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, May 2026, Episode: “Selection, Desire and the Becoming of the Universe” Get the book: First Principles and First Values [https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Values-Propositions-CosmoErotic-ebook/dp/B0CWYDGFZY] is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. The Center for World Philosophy and Religion is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get instant access to a 7-day deep dive into CosmoErotic Humanism course [https://worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/p/new-self-study-course-cosmoerotic], valued in $297, for only $9/month. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction 0:41 — Context Setting 1:02 — Framing the Conversation: There Is a Selection Process across the Levels of Matter, Life, and Mind 3:20 — There Must Have Been a Point in Which Humanity Started to Override the Organic Selection Processes of the Biosphere 6:44 — Distinguishing Between Value and its Counterfeit Forms Is Not So Simple 13:13 — We Have to Be Able to Say that Selection Is Off Course 15:38 — About First Principles and First Values 16:25 — To Liberate Yourself from Pseudo-Eros and Counterfeit Values, You Need a Better Script of Desire That’s Part of the Field of Value 26:36 — You Don’t Want to Make the Fantasy into Reality, but to Bring the Fantasy in Touch with What Is Real 33:27 — It’s Through Imagination that We Can Be Covenanted with All of the Present, All of the Past, and All of the Future 39:08 — Invitation to Who We Must Become End — Mentioned Sources End — Mentioned People Episode Transcript: Context Setting Zak: So, joking aside, David was in touch. He hangs out in a bunch of places. He was over at CRI with me and Schmachtenberger and others, thinking about this topic of what sometimes is called generator functions. We’ve talked about this with regards to X-Risk with David quite a bit. Marc: Right. That sweetheart, Chris, who was at the house here for a couple of weeks, was he there? Zak: Precisely. Yeah, he’s a sweetheart. Framing the Conversation: There Is a Selection Process across the Levels of Matter, Life, and Mind Zak: One of the things that emerged was this notion of selection. It’s a very deep topic. Meaning, we know selection from natural selection. That’s where there’s a genetic mutation, and then it either lives or it doesn’t live. And that’s interesting, because that’s kind of the whole biosphere deciding if this thing stays or goes. But what’s interesting is before you get biological selection, there are structures in the universe that simply don’t exist, and other structures that are super, super common. There’s a selection process at the level of the physiosphere, meaning, physics. So, there’s this deep question about multi-level selection across basically matter, life, and mind. It’s a deep issue. And another way to frame it, to bring it into our bailiwick in terms of value theory, is: One of the deeper questions is: why is there something rather than nothing? Which is, why was there first, the universe, selected for at all? Meaning, the universe was chosen. And then, if you set the universe adrift temporally, it means at any moment you can ask the question, why is the universe in this state and not in some other state? This is the big question of cosmic selection, which is, what does the universe value? Why does the universe have some things hanging around? Other things are basically impossible, and other sets of things come for a time and then disappear and be selected out. Deep questions. It begins with thermodynamics and then self-organization at the level of physics. So, that’s the biggest frame. And then, there are these layers of the selection process. And again, we know natural selection because it’s popular and it totally exists. 1) Natural selection is very common. But there’s also all of these other ones, which you know a lot about. 2) Group selection, what’s called co-selection. The lion becomes more powerful, but then the gazelle becomes faster. And so, you get symmetry of co-selection, balancing ecosystems. You also get niche creation, which results in phenotypic accommodation. This was the Baldwin effect, where the organism creates for itself an environment that protects it until there’s a genetic mutation that allows it to adapt better. That’s a quasi-Lamarckian mechanism. There Must Have Been a Point in Which Humanity Started to Override the Organic Selection Processes of the Biosphere Zak: 3) Then this abrupt thing occurs, and this is where the whole conversation started, which was: How is it that the things that are selected for in the biosphere lead to more life, and then at a certain point, the things that start to get selected for in the biosphere start to destroy life? Marc: The meta-crisis. Zak: The meta-crisis. And at a micro level, something like suicide. How is it that an organism emerges, which has the capacity to destroy itself when that just didn’t exist in nature? There’s not suicide in nature. Humans are unique in the category of suicide. And so, this question of species suicide—which is what the meta-crisis is—and ecocide, we take the whole biosphere with us. What that means is there must have been some switch in selection where humanity at some point started to override the organic selection processes of the biosphere. So: * Technological group augmentation becomes the predominant mode of selection. * That turns into self-domestication, which means we start to self-alter our own genetic codes, the genetic codes of animals, crops and other things—and start to radically alter through our own choice, not the holistic selection of nature, but our own choice augmented by technology. * Then, eventually we’re at this moment of cyborgic self-augmentation, which even more fundamentally augments what’s possible to select into or out of existence. So, there’s this stack. And what’s interesting about that is that at all of those layers, First Principles and First Values suffuse the mechanisms by which selection work. And so, this is the classic thing we’ve said for long, just slightly reframed. In the first minutes after the Big Bang, there are these processes of intimacy and Eros which draw together certain structures. Those structures survive to this day and constitute us. Every moment of the universe, they’re continually selected for, and they instantiate these principles. Now, the things that get selected out, like a civilization that self-terminates, for example, must somehow have deviated from those things which are selected for which confer survival. And of course, we don’t mean that in the simple Darwinian sense. We mean in this really richly ontologically stratified way. So, that biggest question of selection is this question of what the universe values, and the human steps in at this juncture and starts to override, through its own freedom and creativity, that universal structure. That’s the thing. And it’s so related to First Principles and First Values, but that specific launchpad to reflect this was useful… Marc: Yeah. In some sense, it’s the same conversation, but with a unique formulation, which is always good. There’s always a particular formulation that reopens it again in a very fructifying and rich way. I love the presentation, thank you. I haven’t thought this through, so this is not like a prefabricated home. We’ll build it together. Let me just put a few pieces together. First, just a meta comment. Distinguishing Between Value and its Counterfeit Forms Is Not So Simple Marc: What we found over the years is that there’s these series of issues that we frame in terms of existential risk as particular problems. Like, existential risk is a particular problem, of a particular nature, which, of course, never existed before. And as a result of a unique set of variables, both in the interiors and the exteriors that conflate at a particular moment in time in a way that they never have before. At the same time, we became aware. I remember that phone call, that, oh, right, right. Okay. Existential risk. That has something to do with a sheath of material extant in sources, transculturally, cross-culturally, which talk about this end of days, this collapse. And then they also talk about this new possibility, whether they call it: * messianic, whatever the name they give to it, * this arhat who’s become a bodhisattva, or * this new way beyond Kali Yuga, * we go into this new era, however you tell the story. Some version of this new human, new humanity, some version of Homo amor. So, in some sense, this is not entirely dissimilar. Let me just say why. We’ve talked about over the years, but particularly over the last year, we’ve had a whole bunch of new conversations about value and anti-value. And that was a porch conversation on a Saturday afternoon. Now, what value and anti-value say is, citing a verse from the Solomon lineage—this corresponding to this, did the Divine manifest, ze le’umat ze asa ha’Elohim. Meaning, there are actually always two potential trajectories. There are always two vectors at play. And it’s very fascinating because one of the things that we basically said is that at the moment of the Big Bang, and our dear friend Howard Bloom has done a lot of physics on this, you already have autonomy and communion in the first nanoseconds after the Big Bang. We’ve talked about, what is it that causes a particular neutron to need a proton? There’s this need-desire which creates two up quarks and a down quark proton, two down quarks and an up quark neutron, etc. And there’s this movement, this desire for value. We talked about in a recent conversation, there’s a line between: * mathematical value, * musical value, * molecular value, * moral value, and * mystical value. We pointed out, they all share certain core characteristics in common in the very fabric of Cosmos. Having said that, there’s also another vector. I want to just point to it in three ways. For example, every particular First Value and First Principle has a counterfeit form. 1) Let’s say you have a principle of Uniqueness. Uniqueness is your principle. So, your counterfeit form is separateness. It’s very not so simple to disambiguate between them. As we know in the early dharma of CosmoErotic Humanism that we’ve both written about, the distinction between Uniqueness and separateness was actually very core. Uniqueness is the First Value and First Principle, but then, the structural nature of Reality is that it demands the clarification so that we don’t get stuck in the eddy or the undertow of separateness. We transform to uniqueness. 2) Let’s take something like Transformation. You and I have talked about, transformation is very different than growth. Right? Developmental transformation, that’s a genuine transformation, which is measured by a number of variables. That’s different than growing. And so, there’s this value, First Principle, First Value of Transformation. But of course there is the broken version of it, or the untransformed version of it, if you will—or it can even have an anti-value version. 3) For example, there’s a particular quality of Reality, which is a quality of power, which acts for its own sake. It has the self-evident goodness of that experience, which is the power of, that moves through Reality. It’s the elegance of relationship and power for, when the father protects his daughter and has power. It’s both the power over and the power for, but then if you dissociate that power, you decontextualize it from a larger Field of Value, it becomes an anti-value. If we would take a look at pages 168, 169 and 170 of the First Principles and First Values book, we go through all these 18 First Principles and First Values. And what we had committed to do and God willing will do, in the next iteration of this book is precisely what’s the anti-value version of each one of them. There’s two forms. There’s an anti-value version, and then there’s a broken or counterfeit form, which is not an anti-value version, it’s a counterfeit form. One last example. 4) Let’s say, pleasure, which is the interior experience of Eros. The interior feeling of Eros is pleasure. It feels pleasurable. One of the counterfeit forms of pleasure, for example, would be novelty. Novelty is not anti-pleasure. It’s just a counterfeit form. If we actually consider both the counterfeit form and the anti-form, then that allows us to approach this and actually begin to understand what happened. And then, it also points us towards, critically—that’s why I got so excited this morning, I got so excited because of this last sentence—because what that then does is validates for us, which is really important, how we need to approach the meta-crisis. In other words, if it veered off based on either: a) anti-value, or b) a counterfeit form of value; Or a disqualification of the universe—Mumford, who’s on actually your book here to the left, it’s this disqualification, the machine—then reanimating the machine or re-grounding the Field of Value or telling a New Story of Value is the evolutionary structural move that re-uploads the appropriate selection process. So, boom, that’s just a larger sense. It’s exciting on so many levels. We Have to Be Able to Say that Selection Is Off Course Zak: If you’re a techno-optimist transhumanist, an effective accelerationist, you think we’re right on course. The whole thing was meant to have us excarnate into silicon and destroy all of biology — that’s the thing going well. What we have to be able to say is that no, the thing’s off course. And in order to say that, you have to be able to say some things can be selected for in the universe. Marc: That there’s a course. There has to be a course. Zak: That there’s a course, and that things can be off course—that’s very complicated. How can it be that things can be selected to exist in the universe that “shouldn’t be there?” That’s this question of pseudo-selection mechanisms, or sitra achra— Marc: Or selection mechanisms that select for pseudo-eros. Zak: If Uniqueness is the actual thing, separateness is close enough that you could run a lot of s**t for a while on separateness. And what that means is that there’s something just adjacent to many of the existing generative dynamics that would be congruent with—and not self-terminating with—the long-existing selection processes that brought the universe to this point of intricacy and beauty. That’s very intriguing, because otherwise you’re stuck with the view that evolution does this and thermodynamics does that, and therefore humans had to do this—there was no way not to. We have to get out of that story and into this place where the ability to point to the actual existing grammar of value in the Cosmos gives the opportunity to weave civilizational progress into that, rather than just making it up like some Tower of Babel thing. Marc: Without that you literally don’t have a chance. You can’t boot the conversation. There’s literally no way to boot the conversation. It can’t be done. Zak: And that’s what the effective accelerationists are saying: you don’t have a chance. Thermodynamics wins. The cyborgs have already won. Why are you so attached to this whole humanity, trees, and nature? Marc: What they’re assuming is that the inertia force of the lowest common denominator, non-effort, will win. Get the book: First Principles and First Values [https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Values-Propositions-CosmoErotic-ebook/dp/B0CWYDGFZY] is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. Join us in articulating a new, shared vision that can act as a bridge to enable global coherence and coordination. To Liberate Yourself from Pseudo-Eros and Counterfeit Values, You Need a Better Script of Desire That’s Part of the Field of Value Marc: And this is very important. I’m going to give an example. I was writing today in the personal myth meta-psychology domain, thinking through scripts of desire. There are basically eight iterations of scripts of desire, and I’m finally at the end—getting to fantasy. The literature on fantasies is in complete confusion, so I went inside and tried to outline four kinds: * Archetypal fantasy, * Unique fantasy, which itself divides into two: * Fantasy as pathology — emergent from pain and wound * Fantasy as prophecy — the call of potency and wonder When you look at fantasy as pathology, you have an early wound, an early pain. Dr. Kincaid (Kristina) has spoken publicly about her experience of early abuse. So, in the story that she’s told publicly, which is also in the Phenomenology, she did what we call, she eroticized the wound. She developed this fantasy called Lord of the Manor. Meaning, you can only get aroused sexually if you have some vision of Lord of the Manor—your mother kind of works for the Lord of the Manor and he takes you when you’re young and you can’t say anything because he’s the protector, etc. So, that becomes the fantasy for arousal. You eroticize the wound. And here’s what’s so interesting. You can’t overcome that or liberate yourself from that hijacking of your script of desire unless you have something more potent, more powerful, and more authentic. When Kristina came to work within the context of CosmoErotic Humanism, three things changed everything: * Reality is desire. * Desire is a value of Cosmos. It’s an actual value of Cosmos. * I am desire. Desire lives in me, and I’m a unique configuration of desire. In the same way that only your unique script of desire can overcome the hijacked script of desire of the pornographic universe—if you think that your desire is the whole story, your desire is the separate-self desire in a valueless universe, it means basically, desire is, from a Freudian perspective, this broken thing in your system, in your equilibirum. You’re a steam engine. You’ve got a broken engine, and not much you can do with a broken engine. How much can you fix a broken engine? So you’re this little rivulet of desire and you’ve got these undertows and these eddies and these things that drown you. But if you realize, no, no, your little rivulet of desire is part of a larger current—there’s a river that goes forth from Eden, the overpowering verse of the Zohar. There’s a larger river of desire, and that desire is sacred, moving towards value, moving through you uniquely. That’s enough power to liberate yourself from the old thing. Now, why is this relevant? Because if you don’t have the pull, the strange attractor, of a Field of Value; if you don’t have a value called transformation, or a value called clarification of desire; what you’re going to do is the Skinner move, or the MIT Media Lab Pentlandian move: speak to the lowest common denominator. You can’t really work that stuff out, you create some pseudo-Eros to cover over your emptiness and then, reality will go where reality goes. You can’t change the natural vector of the lazy versions, the untransformed, pseudo-forms, counterfeit forms of value—the effective accelerationists are right about that—unless you have a Field of Value. In a Field of Value, effort, transformation, virtue, and nobility are strange attractors towards something. Unless those are intrinsic, inherent features of Cosmos., then you’re always going to be stuck in the old scripts, which are very easy to write. Then those old scripts keep getting iterated again and again. You can only change the script if you have a better script, a better plotline, a better strange attractor. Howard Bloom is a great example of that… Zak: Tie it into selection and… Marc: Yeah. You’re always going to select. Let’s say, evolution wants Uniqueness, but it’s easier to do separateness—and as you said, separateness will make it for a while. Evolution holds Desire as a value of Cosmos, and desire is a desire for Value. But there’s a counterfeit version where desire becomes a desire for pseudo-erotic fulfillment, which is pseudo-value. The desire will come up. You’ll fulfill it pseudo-erotically, and you’ll become a modern consumer, activating your desire all the time at a lowest common denominator expression. If you don’t activate your desire at all, you feel like an idiot, you want to commit suicide. That’s why people go shopping, to feel better. If you have no capacity to actually activate your desire, whether that’s for consumption, for food, for sexuality, for entertainment, if you can’t activate your desire, you’re fucked. But you have this very lowest common denominator way of activating desire. What would cause you not to do that? What would change the selection criteria? What would change the story? You’d have to insert a value. And what would that value be? The clarification of desire. Aragon, in Lord of the Rings, has to clarify his desire and his destiny. He is called by this inherent value of Cosmos. Arwen says to him: go. She sleeps with him once in a dream and says: I’m not available to you unless you go and be your destiny. Go. Go with Frodo, and I’ll meet you on the other side if I do. But I’m calling you— sexual selection—I’m the woman who’s calling you to the Field of Value to go transform, and be a hero. That is a form of sexual selection, which is tied into a Field of Value, which demands that the masculine rise and meet it. That is just one example. Otherwise, you’ve got this thing called desire… I mean, you just go f**k Arwen. What’s the problem? You’ve got desire operating at the lowest common denominator field. It’s only when Transformation is itself a desire, only when you have a larger Field of Value which demands that those values be realized in their clarified form, that selection shifts. It’s not enough for Zak to be an incredibly successful separate self academic and rise to the top of the academy. No, his life might take him on a particular path where he wants to give his unique gifts in a very particular way towards addressing the meta-crisis—and he might not do as well as a tenured professor at Yale. Even though he could decide: okay, I’m now at a particular moment where I can go be a tenured professor at Yale. I’m going to do that. F**k this stuff, Schmachtenberger, Gafni, you guys are all crazy anyways. I’ve got all the credentials. I’m going to get a f*****g great job with a great tenure, with a great department and have a nice next 40, 50 years. Don’t tell me you’re doing that. Please. Zak: That would be a fantasy. Those things don’t exist. [Laughs] Marc: You get my point though. Zak: I hear you saying that all of the things about selection at the level of the physical, biological, and ecological cash out in human phenomenology in terms of clarification of desire—because that’s where we do our selecting. What do you want to be there in the future? Right now we’re selecting in terms of an insane fantasy of, say, infinite growth and perfect control of nature. Marc: And separate-self dominance… Zak: Exactly. And so, swapping out that script of desire for a realistic fantasy about what should be in the future requires introducing a grammar of value that can articulate that future. Marc: And remember we said that value arouses us. Value is a strange attractor. Value arouses political will and moral will. That’s one of the things Temple said in the First Principles and First Values book—when he went through the seven links between existential risk and the collapse of the Field of Value. I think number seven was: Value arouses will. Without Value arousing will, we have the effective accelerationist fantasies correct. You Don’t Want to Make the Fantasy into Reality, but to Bring the Fantasy in Touch with What Is Real Zak: Something like that. And it is actually quite complicated, because fantasy is involved in the distinct and unique ability for humans to take things so off course that we put all of life at risk. How could we do that without something like this imaginal capability, and specifically the ability for that imaginal capability to be distorted? Marc: Yes. Zak: For there to be fantasy. For there to be fantasy wrought from trauma, fantasy wrought from illusion, and delusion… And then the task of CosmoErotic Humanism is to tell that story, to replace fantasy with— Marc: Or to clarify the fantasy. Zak: Clarify the fantasy. Right. So, the exploration of fantasy. Marc: That’s right. We live a fantasy-aroused existence. That’s who we are. Human beings live a fantasy-aroused existence. We don’t have an option not to have fantasies; we have an option to clarify our fantasies. The verse in the lineage is, by the hands of my prophets, I’m imagined. You know, everything around Ibn Arabi is about this power to imagine and the clarification of that power. There is no possibility of non-imagining. You and I have talked about Harry Potter before. The gift Harry Potter gives to children is: after an entire generation of reductive materialists told them it’s just your imagination, Harry Potter comes back and re-ontologizes imagination. It says, of course there’s a Hogwarts School. Of course you can go through at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and find your way in the Hogwarts School. Of course Dumbledore is real—and so is Voldemort. You have to take those things seriously. This is the re-ontologizing of imagination. We think we can kill imagination and still survive. But we’ve said in CosmoErotic Humanism, we’re not just Homo sapiens, we’re Homo imaginus. The need to reimagine a fantasy is essential. The reductive materialists thought you could remove value and keep the fantasy good. The best example of that is someone who I’m sure we’re both madly in love with, though we haven’t discussed him extensively, it’s someone like Rilke. Rilke is structurally an atheist, a rejecter of all previous systems. But he’s living this obviously gorgeous fantasy-aroused existence, because it’s a given to him that you can throw out the old fields of value and reject their faulty empiricisms, and yet still remain in an appropriate fantasy. He just didn’t get cut-flower ethics. Herberg’s idea from late ‘50s sociology: you cut a rose, one generation it’s okay, two, pretty good—second day, third day, the rose is a little wilted, fourth day, the rose is dead. You think you can cut off from the ground of the Field of Value and survive. That’s what Rilke does. Rilke cuts off from the ground of the Field of Value, and yet, the rose is completely a rose. You’re convinced that it’s going to go on. And this is an educational point—your domain—it won’t. Over several generations, you lose the arousal quality of desire that lives in the Field of Value, and then that desire will have to be filled pseudo-erotically. And now you’re in a meta-crisis. Zak: And what’s interesting too, psychoanalytically, as you were getting into the case study example with KK, there’s this movement of: you don’t want to concretize fantasy. You don’t want to make the fantasy into a concrete reality, but you want to bring the fantasy in touch with what is real. Marc: That’s a very nice way to say it. Zak: And so, the exploration of fantasy is also thinking about what is in it that is real, even though it remains a fantasy. Like, the First Principles and First Values, when they’re perceived anthro-ontologically, what faculty perceives them? I would say it’s probably the faculty of imagination. Marc: Yeah. Zak: And there’s a difference between the imaginary and the imaginal as products of imagination. The imaginal is when, for example, if you are frowning and I take your perspective—I’m imagining your perspective, and you’re upset—and I can do that well. It’s called empathy. Then my imagination conforms to reality and allows me to actually perceive what’s going on within you. It’s a little bit Kantian. Marc: That’s beautiful. I love what you just said. I love the idea that the moral faculty is the faculty of imagination, because what it does is… Blessings to my old colleague Michael Lerner, who just passed, editor of Tikkun Magazine. I once wrote an article for him, On the Erotic and the Ethical, and the relationship of prophets and pagans. Because the prophet is, by the hands of the prophet, I’m imagined. The prophet was saying that ethos and Eros are one, which is exactly what you were pointing to: that the quality of imagination and the moral quality are not separate. And let me reflect back what you said, because I think it’s super great. The reason I’m good to you is because I imagine you—and the more I can imagine your feeling… In a certain sense, God has the ultimate imagination, which both generates Reality and allows the Divine to feel every person. Imo anokhi b’tzarah, says Isaiah, I’m with you in your suffering. So I have this infinite, Divine, intimate identification, where my Divine imagination imagines every human being. This is so beautiful. So Adam, who is Homo imago dei—the imago, the image, is imagination. The image of God is the capacity to imagine, and Divinity is somehow the capacity of the Infinite to bracket itself and imagine our pain, our joy—to imagine us into existence. Okay. We can at least report back to David that we started the conversation. It’s Through Imagination that We Can Be Covenanted with All of the Present, All of the Past, and All of the Future Zak: Yeah, totally. Marc: It was great. Zak: It was beautiful. A couple of things on this—the presence of others when they’re not there. It relates to object permanence in child development, and it’s actually quite profound because it’s not present in other animals. You’ll notice, birds will mate for life but they will spend long times apart from one another. How does that work? Mammals don’t do that. It’s because they’re not really able to imagine the other bird when they’re not there. The reason you love your dog is because you know your dog is imagining you when you’re not there. Marc: Do we know if there are Winnicott’s transitional objects in the animal world? Zak: Dogs, definitely. If you’re not there, they will anxiously pick up a stuffed animal— Marc: Right, transitional object. Zak: One of the things they’re doing is imagining you. They’re not thinking in sentences or imagining long, complex things, but they have images of you. And when you come back, because it’s not a complex image, they don’t know how long you’ve been gone, so they freak out as if you’ve been away for a year every single time. That’s why you love dogs—they’re thinking of you when you’re gone. That’s why we love other people. When I say I miss you, what I mean is: I’ve been thinking of you, even though you’re not here. It’s one of the main reasons people prefer—and will always prefer—psychotherapy with a human over a bot. One of the things therapists report as most effective is letting the person know that you thought about them even when you weren’t on the clock. Marc: It’s very beautiful. Zak: It’s impossible for a machine to imagine you when you’re not there, because they don’t have imaginations. Marc: This touches another principle of CosmoErotic Humanism, not in the political-economic vector, but in the return-to-Eros vector. We have this principle: the sexual models the erotic. We say all the time—there are 12 billion years of Eros before sex—which is quite important to realize. One of the places where you see the sexual modeling the erotic is in the relationship between fantasy and imagination. What does fantasy mean? What fantasy means—and this is precisely what’s been destroyed by the internet—you once referred me to that scene that the guy who wrote Sadly, Porn, Edward Teacher, refers to about Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982: There’s this scene where Judge sees Phoebe getting out like the red goddess with her red bikini from the pool, and we go into his imagination. He’s looking out the window, he closes the window and he withdraws into the realm of his imagination to do what people do in the realm of the imagination. So fantasy means: I can hold your image when you’re not here. The sexual models the erotic. I’ve got to hold your image not only in regard to your incarnate sensuality in the sexual sense, but in regard to your need—your need is my allurement. You’re hungry, so I’m hungry. You don’t have capacity to grow and be educated, so I don’t have capacity to grow and be educated. That’s our notion of your need is my allurement. I can imagine your need, and really, the abject cruelty of the aristocracies was precisely their ability to close down their imagination. Zak: Yeah. The failure of the imagination through the closing of the heart. Marc: Right. The failure of the imagination. And that’s what was so great about Marx, whatever we think of Marx, he was like: hey, I’m going to sit for 12 f*****g years in the library in London and I’m going to imagine the workers. Zak: Precisely. He imagined into the Reality of the situation and then imagined the possible future. That’s what the prophet in many ways does, and I’d classify among modern prophets, Darwin and others did that. Natural selection is not visible. Natural selection exists in the imagination. It’s about imagining—what’s the thing back there? That’s why the First Principles and First Values are perceived with the imaginal faculty. The First Principles and First Values are perceived with the imaginal faculty in the same way I empathize with you to understand what’s going on within you. As I take in the universe and empathize with it, the interior sciences disclose these ontogenetic beings in the imaginal—beings that are existing and generative of more Reality and directionality to Reality. Marc: That’s also precisely what we’ve called in other texts, the memory of the future. Zak: Right. Marc: When someone is right in front of us, we help them. If someone is spatially not-synchronous with us, it takes a greater leap to imagine them. But if someone is temporally non-synchronous with us—they’re in the future—it takes an enormous act of love, of Eros, to access that imagination and be covenanted not just with the present in front of us, but with all of the present. And I can imagine the past—and I’m covenanted with the past—and I can imagine the future. And so, that’s a fantasy-aroused existence. Zak: Totally. Marc: Beautiful. Zak: Wow. Marc: Good, David. Good. Zak: Love. Mentioned Sources: * Temple, J. David, First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come, World Philosophy and Religion Press, 2024 * Kincaid, K. & Gafni, M. (forthcoming). The Abridged Phenomenology of Eros. World Philosophy & Religion Press. * Kincaid, K. & Gafni, M. (forthcoming). The Complete Phenomenology of Eros. World Philosophy & Religion Press. * Teach, Edward, Sadly, Porn, Edward Teach, 2021 * James, E.L., Fifty Shades of Grey, The Writer’s Coffee Shop, 2011 * Tolkien, J. R. R., The Lord of the Rings, George Allen & Unwin, 1954–1955 * Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter series, Bloomsbury Publishing, 1997–2007 Mentioned People: * Daniel Schmachtenberger * Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) * Charles Darwin (1809–1882) * Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) * Howard Bloom (1943–today) * Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) * Kristina Kincaid * B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) * Alex Pentland (1951–today) * Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) * Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) * Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) * Michael Lerner (1943–2022) * Karl Marx (1818–1883) * Donald Woods Winnicott (1896–1971) Go Deeper: If you’re enjoying these deep dive conversations with Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein, then we have an epic opportunity for you to come closer and dive even deeper on your learning journey. Join us at the Who We Must Become [https://whowemustbecome.circle.so/checkout/who-we-must-become-student] community, the band of Outrageous Lovers reclaiming meaning, value and purpose at the center of culture, in response to this great moment of metacrisis. With daily practice, weekly study sessions and a plethora of new courses, come learn together and meet the ones who are already comitted to this path towards personal and planetary transformation. Get full access to Center for World Philosophy and Religion at worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/subscribe [https://worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Selection, Desire and the Becoming of the Universe

About the podcast: These are unscripted, early David J. Temple conversations where Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein are unfolding the inner workings of CosmoErotic Humanism in real time. Formal statements and propositions will be published in forthcoming volumes by the World Philosophy and Religion Press. About this episode:  In this dialogue, Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein explore the profound interplay between selection, desire, value, and the evolutionary process of the universe. They discuss: why does the universe select certain structures instead of others, across all levels of matter, life, and mind? They engage with the deep cosmic question: what does the universe value? — and argue that in order to respond to our escalating challenge of humans overriding natural selection with their own choices, we have to be able to clearly see and distinguish between value and its counterfeit forms.  If you deploy any material from David J. Temple in this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, May 2026, Episode: “Selection, Desire and the Becoming of the Universe” Get the book: First Principles and First Values [https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Values-Propositions-CosmoErotic-ebook/dp/B0CWYDGFZY] is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. Get the book: "First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come" - https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Values-Propositions-CosmoErotic-ebook/dp/B0CWYDGFZY [https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Values-Propositions-CosmoErotic-ebook/dp/B0CWYDGFZY] Subscribe to the Center for World Philosophy and Religion newsletter - https://worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/ [https://worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/] Get full access to Center for World Philosophy and Religion at worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/subscribe [https://worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Value and Wholeness: A New Story of Value Is a New Story of Wholeness (with Ken Wilber)

About the podcast: These are unscripted, early David J. Temple conversations where Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber and Dr. Zak Stein are unfolding the inner workings of CosmoErotic Humanism in real time. Formal statements and propositions will be published in forthcoming volumes by the World Philosophy and Religion Press. About this episode: This is the first in a series of dialogues between Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, and Zak Stein, reconvening after the release of First Principles and First Values.  In this conversation, they discuss anthro-ontology, exploring the three great questions of CosmoErotic Humanism, and the relationship between value and wholeness. Are they the same thing? How are they different? The dialogue also goes on to clarify the only actual cure to the meaning crisis: the clarification of value. This is a foundational conversation for anyone seeking to deeply understand and recognize value in their own lives. If you deploy any material from this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, April 2026, Episode: “Value and Wholeness: A New Story of Value Is a New Story of Wholeness” Get the book: First Principles and First Values [https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Values-Propositions-CosmoErotic-ebook/dp/B0CWYDGFZY] is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. Get the book: "First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come" - https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Values-Propositions-CosmoErotic-ebook/dp/B0CWYDGFZY [https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Values-Propositions-CosmoErotic-ebook/dp/B0CWYDGFZY] Subscribe to the Center for World Philosophy and Religion newsletter - https://worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/ [https://worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/] Get full access to Center for World Philosophy and Religion at worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/subscribe [https://worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]