Affirming Existence
Choosing Universes
Every time there is a choice to be made, it’s as if we stand before a fork in the path through time that the universe will take. If we make one choice, one future universe will come into being. If we make a different choice, it will be a different future universe that we inhabit — a different universe that everyone inhabits. We choose for all humanity and all of nature. We determine the fate of existence.
It can be hard to know what to do with this power, since the situations we normally make choices in are so complex. So it can help to consider little model universes.
Imagine a universe composed of three red balls of no particular size. If we had the ability to change one of the red balls into a blue cube, should we do so?
Strategic Affirmation
We can use the principle of affirmation to guide us in our choosing.
Aristotle said that “being is better than not-being,”1 and at the heart of Nietzsche’s ‘revaluation of all values’ was an absolute affirmation of reality, “an affirmation without reservation even of suffering, even of guilt, even of all that is strange and questionable in existence”.2
It makes sense to affirm existence, for all that’s good, right and valuable can only occur within it.
We can go beyond Nietzsche and affirm reality strategically through choosing the universe with the most existence within it. In this case, we would go ahead and change the red ball into a blue cube, for then the universe would contain both balls and cubes. Both red and blue. It would have quantitatively more existence within it.
More Complex Worlds
Now imagine a more complex model universe. In it, there is a village of musicians and a forest. The villagers have just gained the ability to chop down trees and plant crops. Should they do so?
Chopping down the forest would in itself be destructive. It would reduce the quantity of existence. But the planting of crops would enable the villagers to begin a new way of life, perhaps one that would enable them to spend more time writing songs. New forms of existence would come into being.
And what if the model universe was more complex still and the forest that the villagers were considering chopping down housed a rare species of owl? Or if planting crops would enable the villagers to take less fish from an over-fished sea?
In complex worlds, there are no easy answers. The villagers wouldn’t know what the truly affirmative choice was unless they researched the owls’ habitat needs and the population dynamics of the fish.
There would almost certainly be existence-rich possibilities waiting to be found if the villagers explored the possibilities ahead of them creatively and systematically. Perhaps they could work on their songwriting abilities. A good song is a richer and more complete form of existence than a song that’s derivative or instantly forgettable. And the villagers could look for new ways to feed themselves. Their challenges would be practical. How could they follow their passions while preserving their fish stocks and the biodiversity of their forests?
Some Principles
There are a few principles that the villagers — or anyone else — could use to guide them towards choices that genuinely affirmed the world strategically.
- A diversity ethic. The villagers could value the biodiversity of their world and assess it through species counts and ecosystem surveys. They could also place a high value on the cultural diversity within their community. They could ensure that people feel comfortable exploring identities that differ from community norms.
- A health ethic. It is only when people are healthy, physically and mentally, that they are able to act creatively and spin order into existence. As Abraham Maslow wrote, “The concept of creativeness and the concept of the healthy, self-actualising, fully human person seem to be coming closer together, and may perhaps turn out to be the same thing.”3 Carl Rogers described the end point of therapy as “the type of person from whom creative products and creative living emerge.”4 A flourishing person is a creative person.
- Opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is a concept that economists use when judging whether a project should go ahead. It considers the revenue that would be earned if the resources that would be invested in a project were used in other ways. We can use a similar line of thinking, but take quantity of being rather than cash as our yardstick, remembering that, by making one choice and pushing the universe down one fork in its path through time, we are preventing it from going down other paths where the possibilities might be even richer.
- “Now ‘being’ […] is better than ‘not-being’” [Aristotle, Generation and Corruption, II.10] Also, “being is better than not-being, and living than not living.” [Aristotle, Generation and Corruption, Generation of Animals, II.1]
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979, p. 80.
- Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches Of Human Nature, London: Arkana, 1993, p. 55.
- Carl Rogers, A Therapist's View Of The Good Life, in On Becoming A Person: a therapist’s view of psychotherapy, London: Constable, 2002, pp. 184-193.