The Transience of the Transcendent: Part Three

[Read Part One]  [Read Part Two]

Further substantiation of my contention that the transcendent is completely transient is found in a recent article on PsyPost entitled “Decoding Morality Across Cultures.”  This discussed Moral Foundations Theory and the findings of a mega-study on morality across cultures and throughout history.  Several key findings indicate how malleable and impermanent supposedly transcendent moral codes actually are.  It is a devastating blow to all moral absolutism.

Concepts like morality that were once thought universal and transcendent are actually quite culturally contingent. The study revealed significant differences in moral values across cultures, genders, religions, and politics. This reinforces the idea that even our ethics and values systems are products of particular cultural contexts, not eternal truths.

The study underscored the need for the original Moral Foundations Theory and questionnaire to be updated, demonstrating that old frameworks for understanding morality had limitations and required revision based on new perspectives. This mirrors how our scientific and philosophical models change over time.

A noteworthy finding was that people's moral foundations predict attitudes like social dominance and disgust sensitivity revealing that these foundations are shaped by present environments/attitudes, rather than being timeless.   Differences in moral values between contemporary liberals and conservatives illustrates the shifts happening even now versus in the recent past based on changing politics and demographics. Moral attitudes are not static.

This research provides empirical evidence that even the foundations of morality and ethics are subject to change across eras and cultures, underscoring the transience of the transcendent. Based upon this important work, we have the empirical data needed to justify contentions made earlier in this essay.  The foundations of morality, long thought to be eternal truths, prove transient under the gaze of culture and history. 

The original Moral Foundations Theory proposed five universal bases for ethics. But expanding beyond Western populations uncovered greater diversity in moral judgments worldwide. People's endorsements of foundations like loyalty or purity varied based on culture, gender, religion and politics. This demonstrates the contingencies shaping morality, though once deemed universal.

Updating the theory's questionnaire revealed limitations in its cross-cultural capacity. Frameworks for understanding ethics require ongoing revision to transcend the bounds of their initial cultural contexts. The study also showed one's moral foundations predict present-day attitudes about hierarchy and group norms. This reinforces that contemporary environments shape moral values, rather than timeless truths. Researchers further acknowledged the need to continually push beyond biased western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) samples to capture humanity's mosaic of morals.

Even within today’s world, differences between liberal and conservative moral intuitions highlight continual evolution. As politics and demographics shift, so do the foundations underlying moral reasoning. The transient nature of morality's supposed transcendence parallels transformations in realms from science to society. Those once eternal truths are but pillars of sand, their firmness illusory. For even virtue proves variable across the flowing sands of time and culture. The only constant is change itself.  Any given transcendence is not perpetual but impermanent.

The manifold moralities across humanity's cultures and eras underscore morality's impermanence, not universality. Were moral truths eternal and transcendent, one would expect to find these beliefs and convictions firmly embedded in human hearts and societies everywhere. Their universality would ring clear as a beacon across time. Yet we observe no such consistency. Instead the human moral compass spins fluidly with the cultural currents that surround it.

In society after society, shifting contextual factors forge moral systems of striking diversity. Politics, economics, and social structures shape mores as metal shapes a mold. Moral foundations's meaning and authority stem from serving present needs, not channeling transcendent wisdom. Only this utility breeds consent and adherence to moral codes. When conditions change, so must the moral mold itself transform lest it lose communal purpose and purchase.

Not only across cultures but within them moral dictates exhibit telltale transience. Moral foundations once solid shift like sand as cultures evolve across decades and centuries. What was once condemnation becomes tolerance, duty becomes dogma - the moralities of the past grow evermore alien to modern hearts. Between youth and elder generations, the distance in ethics yawns wide at times. Nor do universal morals assert themselves even today - substantive disputes on foundational issues persist both across and within societies. Amidst the moral diversity, clear evidence of transcendence stays conspicuously absent.

Skeptics claim certain moral absolutes allow navigating these murky waters. But probe the supposed absolutes and their flaws surface swiftly. Traced to origins, many such precepts arose from contextual needs now forgotten - purity codes to fight disease, hierarchies to maintain order. Those needs transformed and so did the attendant morals. Meaning itself depends on application in contextual practice, too far removed only yielding hollow abstraction.

In the end, the cross-cultural multiplicity of morality conveys a clear message - moral systems are not grounded in universality but constructed from contingency. They are bound by place, time, and culture, not any transcendence. The diversity of practiced ethics provides living proof that even morality's foundations erode and reform across the flowing sands of time. For true transcendence lies only in evolution itself, as transient diversity sings morality's endless song.

A recent article entitled “Why There Is More Than One Reality: Introducing the Pluriverse” acquainted me with a new concept and further substantiates the fragmentation and transience of the transcendent.  The "pluriverse" is a useful, relatively fresh perspective (developed over the past 30 years or so primarily by Indian and Latin American thinkers) that further disputes the universality of moral truths and knowledge systems once thought to be transcendent. 

According to the article: “The basic idea of there being more than one world is clear: because of their ontological beliefs, different followers of the aforementioned religions will have a different sense of being in the world. The pluriverse stands as a testament to exactly these fundamental differences. Not merely the differences that are visible, quantifiable, and superficial, but rather the ones that are fundamental to the belief that such visibility and quantifiability are needed to inquire into our reality in the first place. The pluriverse represents a multifaceted nature of reality, which is unlike the hegemonic Western view that continues to shape the world according to universal principles.”

So the pluriverse recognizes that different cultures and belief systems have fundamentally different metaphysical underpinnings shaping their entire worldview and sense of being. Christianity and Islam, for instance, differ profoundly in their conceptions of human nature and purpose based on divergent premises about God and creation.  Frequent examples of this diversity (and transience) in reality concepts are cited throughout this essay.

This diversity of cultural ontologies and cosmologies challenges the presumed transcendence of morals, policies, and paradigms imposed universally across humanity. The pluriverse aligns with the notion that varied cultural metaphysics construct distinct systems of meaning and value that evolve across eras. No singular transcendent truth applies eternally outside of its particular metaphysical foundations.

Even some contemporary Western intellectual traditions claim transcendence for their knowledge frameworks, like scientific positivism. Yet the pluriverse contests their universality as but another situated perspective, no more privileged than the spiritual worldviews of indigenous tribes. Recognizing this diversity of cosmologies and ontologies indicates the transient nature of transcendence. For human cultures inevitably shape mores and meanings contingent upon their metaphysical premises, not in conformity to transcendent absolutes.

So while imaginative stories of transcendent realms long provided psychological comfort, the pluriverse perspective reveals even our most fundamental belief systems tied to impermanent cultural milieus. We must embrace this plurality, not feign universality. For transient diversity composes the real cosmos, not any fixed transcendent order.  The pluriverse provides both conceptual grounding and diverse evidentiary light to expose the transient threads running through all human constructs once cloaked as eternal truths.

My claim is that fundamental human experiences, such as love, joy, and suffering, are considered transcendent because they are universally shared among all human beings within our individual lifespans, regardless of cultural or historical context. However, as we have seen, the way these experiences are perceived and expressed vary greatly across different cultures and time periods, just as things would appear in a pluriverse. Additionally, while these experiences are considered transcendent in a sense, they are still subject to the impermanence and transience that is inherent in all phenomena.

From ancient myths to modern metaphysics, tales of the transcendent suffuse human cultures. These stories proclaim realms beyond the tangible, perfection beyond decay, and meaning beyond mere material existence. They speak to humanity's elemental longing for order and purpose amidst a chaotic world. Yet while imagination conjures transcendence to satisfy our yearnings, reality resides in transience alone.

The fiction of transcendence takes many forms - an afterlife of eternal reward, divine prophecies that predict and direct earthly affairs, higher planes of being untainted by base mortality. But peering behind these noble imaginings, we find stories crafted to allay fears and instill meaning. The promise of justice in heaven comforts sufferers of earthly inequity. Prophecies impose order on messy histories. Souls and heavens place us center stage in the cosmos. Transcendence is imagination’s elixir for the human craving for significance.

And so transcendent myths persist despite their fabulous unreality. For they speak in metaphor to the human condition, not to any empirical truth. Their warrant is psychological necessity, not fact. We blithely brush past mystical contradictions to preserve these stories’ resonance. For to relinquish the transcendent would be to confront reality's impermanence and our contingency within it.

Yet that confrontation is where truth resides. Despite imagination’s protestations, the universe gives no assurance of meaning or significance beyond what we self-create. No empiric evidence suggests realms that transcend the physical world revealed by science. Order emerges haphazardly through evolution, not any teleology. No eternal watchmaker gazes down from above.

Does this leave existence fundamentally absurd, as some existentialists concluded? Perhaps, without the comforting fantasies of transcendence. But obsessing over life’s lack of perpetual meaning obscures how imagination itself offers solace. For imagination too holds evolutionary purpose - not to uncover transcendent truths but to motivate survival, discovery and growth. Its fictions compel our advance as a species.

As revealed in the psychological work of Jung and Neumann mentioned in Part One, human beings create frameworks to comprehend realms beyond the senses. These frameworks emerge directly from the human imagination.  Our capacity for abstraction allows us to reach toward the infinite. The transcendent thus springs from imaginative projection beyond tangible limits.  

Yet impermanence remains the sole enduring force governing existence. While human imagination conceives the transcendent, impermanence represents the actual, transient, fleeting nature of all phenomena. Everything undergoes continuous transformation – no exceptions. Impermanence stays constant amidst ceaseless change.

Thus imagination and impermanence reveal an intriguing tension. Imagination tries transcending finite boundaries toward the eternal. But impermanence reminds us all things, including our most precious concepts, pass away. We desire enduring stories and meanings. But existence dissolves all certainty.

Historically, this was seen in religions establishing moral codes deemed universal. But expanding research uncovered diversity in moral reasoning across cultures and eras. Supposedly inherent foundations shifted amidst changing contexts. Our imaginative concepts of transcendent morality succumb to impermanence.

Our search for the transcendent reveals only our imaginative storytelling nature. Setting our imaginations aside, embracing impermanence grants tranquility amidst the incessant change we find in today's world of constant becoming. The transcendent eludes our grasp, ever evolving, never fixed. All imagined absolutes wash away in time’s sea.  As a species, we endure only through change itself.

We must then chart a precarious path between our storytelling imagination (what Nietzsche called “necessary fictions”) and grounding ourselves in reality’s transience. For transcendence dwells only in the first, however essential; while the second brims with liberation, if we accept the Taoist insight of life's groundless ground of transitory impermanence. By at once honoring imagination’s significance and acknowledging its subjectivity, we open to an existence both self-created and unbound. Wherein transcendence gifts meaning, and transience freedom.

This is the core truth: no matter how deeply felt or passionately conceived, nothing transcends impermanence. Even our most sacred truths transform across unfathomable timescales. This is one teaching of what I call expansive omni-directionalism.  The universe runs by one law alone – perpetual flux. All else falls before the final verdict of impermanence. We imagine, we create, we believe – then all things pass on. 

This is the way of things.

 

(Written with assistance from ChatGPT and Claude.ai)