Two big ideas have been the source of endless strife and much debate throughout the ages: “God” and “the State”.

I have not yet posted my work on “the State” because it requires explaining minor modifications of published frameworks. However, our present global predicament pushes me to explain here how these ideas are intrinsic to our personal functioning. We can then consider the consequences for our societies.

Given today's world, a world riven by war both declared and undeclared, we should strive to understand what is happening. More...

How could we ever do anything without power? Power empowers: yet we know power is a problem. Social interaction is the human condition—and it cannot possibly be improved without exercising power.

The problem is that it is now a universally recognised truism that power corrupts. Why? Read on for a taxonomic answer! But first let's explore some issues.

Recent academic research suggests that power heightens pre-existing ethical tendencies. But this sort of study actually avoids the power issue. It confuses «having power» with «exerting power».  Power in the political or social sense is not just being powerful or having authority, but using it on others. More specifically: “using it to get someone to do what they otherwise would not do”— More...

Time, as part of space-time, is one of those basic physical universe realities. Or is it?  

I have just read the latest collection of articles from the Scientific American. The accounts were fascinating and rather diverse. But before I comment, let’s review my first engagement with time in the Taxonomy.

You may recall that I identified four experiences or realms of time in, of all places, the production of goodness. There is linear time: the time of the hero. I mean you and me in our daily struggle. Then there is cyclic time: the time More...

The scientific culture of the 20th century had a phobia of subjectivity and anything to do with the mind. Not unreasonably, because scientists saw how subjective intrusions disrupt thinking and investigating.

For much of the last century, psychology divided into two battling camps. On the one side were psychoanalytic sympathizers who aligned with Freud's discoveries but not his scientific bent. On the other side were scientific behaviourists who ruled that the mind was non-existent or irrelevant and impossible to study with empirical methods. Most natural scientists were sceptical More...

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN 2012 but not posted till 2025.

This life is not just physics and biology. 

It is also experiential and social. Any reduction or contempt for this meta-reality (metaphysics) prevents us studying how we are creative and ethical. When we create or make a moral choice it feels real because it is real. Being real, it has real-world effects apart from neuronal firing. Ignoring these effects is dangerous, really dangerous—just as ignoring a safe falling onto your head is dangerous. On the other hand, you can ignore your neurons entirely: there will not be the tiniest difference to what happens. 

If you have a scientific bent, as I do, then you will believe that anything that is real can and should be studied.  I call this meta-reality: psychosocial reality.

Grasping personal psychosocial reality is tricky because More...