Hard Thoughts

aka ecstatic dynamic relational ontology.

Most of what I like to think about, when it comes to philosophy, is not easy. And, maybe more importantly, it is not especially practical or readily applied to daily life.

But once a week I like to write something for you - something where I try to take what I am reading and thinking about and make it accessible and even useful.

But not today. Today you’re just going to get a direct feed from my brain to yours. I apologise in advance for the impractical and useless thoughts that follow.

Ontology

In academia, philosophy divides itself into many different areas of specialisation. One of those areas is called ‘ontology.’ This word refers to the logic or science of existence.

Philosophers that study ontology are interested in the question of existence. I’m one of these. We ask questions like “What does it mean to say that something exists,” “What does it mean to say that something doesn’t exist?” “In what way do things exist?” and so on.

These are the kinds of questions that drive most people completely insane because it’s pretty hard to think about and it seems to have little practical value. And the philosophers that write about this kind of thing are basically impossible to read and understand.

Ethics

On the far side of this is a different specialty in philosophy, called ‘ethics.’ This is supposed to be the practical side of philosophy. The question for ethics is: given everything else that you think is true, how then should you live?

I don’t find ethics in itself particularly interesting. If you know me, you’ll think this is a strange comment. My PhD is in applied ethics, I write about and talk about ethical positions all the time.

One of the reasons I don’t find ethics interesting as a topic is that it’s virtually impossible to talk to people about. Not because it’s hard to understand, like ontology. But because everybody thinks they already know all about ethics.

You hardly ever meet people that think ethics is hard. Mostly, people think it’s pretty clear what right and wrong is. They think that the people who ask questions about their ethics or who make ethics complicated and uncertain are a nuisance.

That is, people like me. And so it starts to seem to most people that even the practical part of philosophy, ethics, leans towards being impractical and ethereal.

The Combo

What’s really interesting though, is putting these different areas of philosophy together. Given what you think about existence, how then should you live?

There’s something really appealing to me about taking the most esoteric and impractical part of philosophy - ontology, and joining it up with the most grounded and practical part of philosophy - ethics.

You mioght think, given what I’ve said about both of these, that the end result will be completely indecipherable and definitely inapplicable to daily life. But… I dont think so.

How could this work? Let me give you my current thoughts about this.

Relational Ontology

Most people think that things exist. This seems intuitively obvious - you see the tree with your eyes. You touch it with your hands. You smell it. It’s there. It’s an object in the real world. It exists.

There are many reasons, however, to think that this seemingly obvious and simple intuition is not entirely accurate. These reasons are not all from philosophy. They come from cognitive science and physics as well (more on this later).

But yes, let’s say that the tree exists. In what way does it exist? In particular, how is the existence of that tree connected to the existence of other things? The air, the ground, even the mind of the person who sees, touches and smells it?

I have come to think that “things”, objects in the real world, exist in a specific way. They exist not in and of themselves but by virtue of their relationships to other things.

This means that the existence of an object is secondary, ontologically speaking, to the existence of its relationships.

And this means that relations exist foundationally and primarily. Things emerge into existence, they come to be in the world, because of there is a web of relationships to other things.

This web of relationships exists in a different way to things - it can’t be seen, tasted and touched, for example. But it is the ground of being for everything else.

I’m not the first person to think this way. You find this idea in, for example, the ecstatic relational ontology of early Christianity, when they were trying to understand the manner in which the Trinity exists.

You find something like this in the Tantrism of medieval India, where the relationship between energy (shakti) and consciousness (siva) is the ground of all being.

You even find something like it in physics, where the wave function exists primordially, and the things that make up the universe, that we perceive, only come into existence as the wave function ‘collapses.’

You also find it in cognitive science - our perception of the world exists as a conversation between what our brains predict and what our body perceives.

Relational Ethics

Let’s say you accept this idea, as obscure and difficult as it might be. The ethical question is “how then should I live?”

I think this idea has really far-reaching ethical consequences. Let’s take one small example.

There’s a lot of chatter in pop psychology and alternative spirituality about ‘alignment.’ The idea is that you will be healthy and happy if you live in alignment with… well, with what?

Mostly, the answer is: in alignment with your true self, your inner nature, your higher purpose, your this, your that, your your your…

Well, relational ethics says something quite different. If your existence is predicated on your relationships - with other people, with your environment, and so on, well, what then?

Relational ontology leads to a relational ethics that says the best way for you to be healthy and happy is to nurture your relationships.

Just one note of caution with this way of thinking. Let’s really boil it down to just one thing. Let’s focus on just a single relationship, between you and one other person.

Nurturing your relationship with that person is not the same as nurturing that person. This is where Christianity gets it wrong when it connects its ecstatic relational ontology to its ethics. It says “ relationships with others are primary. So sacrifice yourself, if you need to, for others.”

Hard no.

Relational ethics is actually quite difficult to think through consistently, because relational ontology is so hard to grasp.

In relational ethics, it is not you that is primary. And it is not the other person that it primary. What you are trying to do is to focus on the health and strength of the relationship between you.

Sometimes, you might choose something that you know the other person will find difficult, painful, objectionable.

You might even choose something that both parties will find difficult. According to my theory, this is an ethically justified choice if the goal is to strengthen, reset, reform, or make healthier the relationship itself.