If it seems hard to get your mind around what THEE is about you are not alone.  This Taxonomy is a «Big New Idea».  I had trouble grasping it for many, many years. 

I just kept going: finding useful patterns and making useful distinctions in a state of unknowing.  Now I am clearer.  Mainly due to banging my head against reality, first trying this and then trying that. 

You have no idea how many times I have drafted the sort of explanations provided in the public pages of this website.

It must relate to my bête noir, Change-RL3.  As I noted in another blog, there are over 4 billion hits when you Google: "why people don't change". More...

Our cultures are responsible for art, music, religion and even self-sacrifice: are they?  Our brain's wiring determines who we are: does it?  We will understand consciousness by mapping all the connections of the 100 billion nerve cells: will we?  Books and projects of this sort are the current rage.

Between biologists of the one sort trapped inside the brain, and biologists of the other sort who think they understand social life, there is scarcely room for a thinking person.  Improving our societies is then impossible.  What a relief not to be responsible for our social ills! More...

Those who blow the trumpets for spirituality seem to be a dangerous breed.  Perhaps because we are all suckers for charisma.

I suppose it's like smoking.  Obviously unhealthy in my eyes from the day I was exposed to it as a child, it took decades till others recognized that.  Charisma is as easy to recognize as tobacco smoke.  So just see it for what it is.

Spirituality is a vital component of human functioning.  When spirituality works, it enables us to be fully human in a very ordinary, everyday sort of way: we know who we are, we are aware of what goes on around us, we contribute, we care about others, we take responsibility for ourselves, we say 'yes' to life, we realize that we are each part of something bigger and greater than ourselves, we see through flattery and shrink from corruption.  And so on and so on. 

When spirituality is cut off More...

Purpose is popular.  How times have changed.  And science can't take the credit.  People can. But is responsibility popular?  Is it obvious to you that purpose and responsibility are very nearly the same thing?

Probably not. (But correct me by commenting below!) As a result, I can't help but notice that this emergence of purpose into consciousness has not yet got very far.  Let me explain.

Purpose is like a three-sided coin.

On one side, purpose is More...

Good action counts for a lot.  But once a person has the ideology of power fixed in their head, they can never feel safe enough. Goodness flies out the window. There is never enough power, never enough wealth.  It is not the imperative of greed, it is the imperative of survival.  Technology now allows us to survive without willful cruelty and domination, but that does not make sense to power-driven individuals.  They want the power and the glory.

So what do we do about the callous power-centred leaders of most countries whose desire for control and personal wealth is unrestrained?

That’s a trick question.

“We” never do anything. 

If “we” have any influence at all, it is to sustain and support the existing social system. “We” are responsible for those leaders … for the way they think, how they got into such positions, and why they stay there.  So the British “we” is responsible for UK atrocities not the PM and cabinet; the German “we” was responsible for Nazism in Germany not Hitler; More...