A Metarevolutionary Manifesto: Serialized (Part 12 of 50)

[This is Part 12 of a series of posts which serialize my book, A Metarevolutionary Manifesto. Read Part 11 here.]

d. Calories

Calories - in general

A calorie is a unit of heat energy, interchangeable with all other forms of physical energy. 

H.T. Odum & Elisabeth Odum: “Since all kinds of energy can be converted into heat, we can measure the energy flowing into and out of a system in units of heat energy such as the Calorie… All processes require energy in some form—light, motion, magnetism, electricity, chemistry, etc. Because all forms of energy can be converted into heat, energy can be defined and measured as the ability to generate heat.”

All actions are energy transformations, and so the calorie is a useful unit of Action, and of Power. In what follows, we will explore the many practical, political, biological, and spiritual implications of energy. And it will be useful to keep in mind calories as a convenient, generic unit of that energy. 

It should also be kept in mind that the truly fundamental unit of action is Planck’s constant (also denoted by ℏ, or “h-bar”). Scientifically and philosophically, it is important that a quantum of action exists. There is a smallest possible amount of action, and calories are indeed composed of many of these quanta. But Planck’s constant is infinitesimal, making it less practical for some of our present considerations—just as the watt is a useful unit for measuring electricity, even though we could argue that a single photon is the more fundamental unit. 

Calories - in a metacrisis

The increasing complexity of a metacrisis creates a situation of competition, and leads in the direction of energy scarcity. Calories, then, can directly convey the amount of energy used in any revolutionary action directed at any crisis. By way of this, when judging that energy use in the context of a metacrisis, one may arrive at the conclusion that calories are a measure of morality.

One pitfall, already discussed, is Power’s perennial claim to ontological supremacy—in the form of various nihilisms. It is especially useful, then, to fully grasp concepts like energy, calories, and power. 

H.T. Odum & Elisabeth Odum: “Power is the rate at which energy flows. The power flow in a pathway is the Calories passing over it per day… The word ‘power’ is also used in a general way to indicate the ability to influence, as in ‘political power’ or ‘economic power’. We will show that even these processes may be measured by the flow of energy. That is, physical and biological measures of power, defined as the flow of energy per unit of time, may also be used to measure other kinds of power.”

Energy is indeed extremely important, and will continue to be a point of focus throughout this book. But it must not take the place of the Good as reality’s ultimate feature. The Good is more fundamental than Action, and so all energy flows are inexorably attached to the possibility of perfected Value, and morally judged by their effect on actual perfection.

Calories - in a metarevolution

The energy demands of each crisis within the system of a metacrisis creates pressure on action-centers to make the most-effective use of energy. A metacrisis will naturally tend towards obfuscating the best use of energy, as its constituent crises dynamically interact and compete for attention. This means that metarevolutionaries must actively strive towards ideal energy use as moral usufructuaries—morality being defined by the alignment of energy flows and transformations with the perfect actualization of the Good. 

We may now clearly see that the revolutionary approach pits itself against a crisis, without considering its energetic cost—either within itself or comparatively with other crises and revolutions. In a metarevolution, such questions take center-stage. Before we address any single element of our metacrisis, we must consider every element and determine, as best we can, where action is needed most. Units such as calories provide a standard metric for this consideration.

 e. Symbols

Symbols - in general

Symbols are like keys: points of entry into larger spaces.

Throughout the rest of this book, symbols (and the myths, heroes, and rituals they are connected to) will become increasingly important. A symbol is a unit of relationship, analogy, meaning, and quality. Victor Turner called them “units of ritual”.

Victor Turner: “The symbol is the smallest unit of ritual which still retains the specific properties of ritual behavior.”

Iris Murdoch: “[And a ritual is] an outer framework which both occasions and identifies an inner event.”

Taking these meanings together, it is reasonable to say that rather than measuring a quantity, as with our previous units, symbols are units which express value in the process of actualization.

The view of this book is that we live in a symbolic universe, or, as Christopher McIntosh has said, a “symbol-strewn landscape”. To understand them as a fundamental unit of reality is to recognize the ubiquity of interconnectedness. It will become more clear in what follows why everything may be taken as symbolic of anything else, in lesser or greater degrees of truthfulness.

For now, there are a few things to keep in mind about symbols. First, we have some etymological clues about the significance of symbols. In short, the word “symbol” has its origins in love and connectivity, and this accurately reflects the importance of the symbolic domain in the relationship of Value and Action.

Anthony Stevens: “The Greek noun ‘symbolon’ referred to a token or tally which could be used as a verification of identity.”

D.C. Schindler: “Symbols, as Hans-Georg Gadamer has explained, were originally the tesserae hospitales, pieces of a bone or pottery broken apart and distributed to members of a bond formed in an act of hospitality, able to be rejoined by those members or their descendants in a future act, which is both a remembrance of the original generosity and a new event itself.”

Anthony Stevens: “[And] the conjunction of sym (together) and ballein (to throw) emphasizes the idea that the strange must be thrown together with the familiar to construct a bridge of meaning between the known and unknown. In psychological terms, something unconscious is connected with consciousness, resulting in the experience of new meaning.”

D.C. Schindler: “[Of further interest is] the etymological connection between the words ‘symbolical’ and ‘diabolical’ [which] was first made known to me…by German philosopher Ferdinand Ulrich… The words ‘symbolon’ and ‘diabolon’ are etymological opposites: [symbolon] literally means ‘to throw together,’ ‘to collect,’ ‘to join or unite,’ and ‘to come together’; [diabolon] means ‘to throw over or across,’ and ‘to set at variance’… The more extended meaning of the verb [diabolon] thus includes ‘to slander,’ ‘to misrepresent,’ and ‘to deceive by false accounts’… To acknowledge the primacy of that reality, as the symbolical does, is to become a part of a larger order, to be situated in a whole and so have one’s own reality, so to speak, enlarged. The symbolical is always more than itself; it shares intrinsically in the order that it helps constitute and so what lies beyond it at the same time lies within it. This is why it is a ‘joining-together’, and why it is characterized by bonds.”

Next, as compared to a word or sentence in a narrative description, symbols tend to partially express the inexpressible or paradoxical. They are situated between opposites as mediators, and hence point beyond either half towards some yet-unrealized whole.

Ira Progoff: “One of the important functions of symbols is to point toward and to communicate insights and wisdoms of life that cannot be otherwise disclosed.”

Anthony Stevens: “Symbols tolerate paradox and can combine contradictory ideas.”

Ira Progoff: “This quality, the essence of the symbol, is its ability to express simultaneously the various aspects (thesis and antithesis) of the idea it represents… Since it is symbolic, the knowledge which it provides is never exact, only approximate and sometimes merely metaphoric. That is inherent in it and is both its limitation and its special capacity.”

This is why we have already given some attention to the threads to ideas weaving themselves into metamodern worldview. It was noted that the “analogical mode” has been neglected—and, along with it, symbols, myths, dreams, and much more yet to be discussed. So, not only are symbols incredibly important, they are also currently undervalued. Their “special capacity” is, in part, their unique mode of communication. In addition to this, it is important that what they communicate is more qualitative, making them different from other units we explored so far. 

Symbols are an especially adept language for the discovery and communication of meaning. This, again, makes them worth their weight in gold in our present context.

Symbols - in a metacrisis

We have discussed at length a symbolic interpretation of zombies. It is not just that such symbols and myths are useful explanatory devices—rather, their mode of communication is unique and fundamentally different from the narrative mode. Symbols are analogical. 

J.E. Cirlot: “Analogy, as a unifying and ordering process, appears continuously in art, myth and poetry.”

Anthony Stevens: “A symbol is a transitory embodiment of all that is analogous and associated with it. Its magical quality lies in its capacity to speak to many levels of experience at once. This miraculous power demands reverence if it is not to be extinguished. Psychic impoverishment is inflicted by over-restrictive definitions. Thus, in attributing objective meaning to symbols, and in compiling symbolic treasuries, one must exercise extreme caution… Even the most widely dispersed, most indestructible symbols will have different shades of meaning for each psyche in which they appear, for symbols, like the dreams of which they are part, are polyvalent: they have more than one meaning… Cultural associations as well as personal associations are always of importance. Skill in the art of interpretation lies not only in a knowledge of symbolic origins but in laying due stress on the symbol’s subjective impact: a tree may well be the World Axis, the Cosmic Tree, but it is also a subjective manifestation of a psychological process in the person producing it—an image of the Self, perhaps—and only contributes to personal growth and healing if it is experienced as such.”

D.C. Schindler: “We might think of the ‘parts’ of cosmos as so many symbols, which is to say that things are signs of the Good that is their always prior principle of unity; that, understood in this way, they are seen to ‘fit together’ by virtue of their most basic nature, to be suited to each other, and so to have a proper place, thus taking part in a larger order (which is for that reason always hierarchical); and, finally, that, in their ‘symbolic’ joining together, they make really present the transcendent Good, they are ‘transparent’ to it in their interrelation without ever exhausting its meaning… It is important to see that an order founded on goodness is essentially symbolical and that, conversely, the essence of symbol is goodness. These two principles are not related in a merely accidental way—they cannot be separated.”

Thus, the meaning of Man is perpetually incomplete, but the further discovery and evolution of symbols is a force moving us towards greater depths of self-understanding. In the first half of this book, the focus has been our metacrisis, and the zombie apocalypse is a symbolization/mythologizing of something essentially missing from the complete image of humanity. This has been a necessary step in our self-actualization, and in the second half we will see the other side of our meaning crisis—a light beyond a cave. The resolution, just as with the crisis, will involve symbols—not as a convenience of communication, but as a fundamental feature of reality and a necessity for change of any kind.

Symbols - in a metarevolution

Symbols are more than units of meaning. They are one type of vessel in which Value and Action come together. If a zombie symbolizes the unfulfilled potential to be fully human, there must be a symbol for something greater-than-human, some superfulfillment towards which we may strive.

Iris Murdoch: “Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture.”

Ira Progoff: “[And it is here that] we have the key to the pattern by which personality develops. The process of growth begins with an image of its goal.”

In their relationship to humans and other centers of action, symbols exert an active, magnetic pull. A meaning crisis can therefore be expressed through symbols of spiritual and moral impoverishment (such as zombies), and be seen as resulting from a deprivation of life-enhancing symbols. As such, we will have to return to the subject of symbols and the transformations they both represent and evoke. We hope to demonstrate that symbols play a major role in the development and depth of humanity, and the perfection of Value and Action’s romance. 

 g. Holons & monads

Holons & monads - in general

We have said that a central aspect of complex systems is that they are indivisible. If you take apart an animal to perform a reductive analysis of its parts, the emergent properties that were observed in the animal as a whole vanish, like a hand which grasps at an object only to have it evaporate. Once systems come together into a metasystem, a new center of action emerges which includes and transcends the wholeness of those individual elements. That is what makes it indivisible; it will cease to be itself if it is not acting as a dynamically organized, unified, coherent whole. 

To understand complex systems, specifically in the forms of a metacrisis or metarevolution, will require a brief explanation of the concept of self-organization or autopoiesis. Which means we will ask: If a person is an indivisible center of action, how can such a system come into being, especially if it is composed of other indivisible centers of actions? The answer requires something that is equally scientific and spiritual, because no center of action is merely a complex system of material units such as atoms. As such, our discussion is turning towards units which can express the fullness of reality, and stand as the true quantum of the Good. 

We need a unit which does not leave out others like particles or bits, but does not end with them either. In a sense, we need a unit which is both material and spiritual (and, similarly, quantitative and qualitative). If the loving mixture of Value and Action is all that there is, there must be a true quantum of this relationship. 

And because we are approaching all of this from a metamodern perspective, it is worth noting that “spiritual” refers to what we have termed the Good—and people are images of relative value-in-action implied by its absolute possibility. As such, we say with a rather naturalistic overtone, we are spiritual beings. One can speak of being “ensouled” in a non-supernatural sense—it is simply being an individual whose actions are always discovering, expressing, perfecting, or destroying the actuality of the Good. Spirituality, then, is the practice of becoming a microcosmic symbol of the macrocosmic relationship between Value and Action.

Such ensouled creatures, as we began to say earlier, self-organize—but from what? This is where we say that there must be some “spiritual atom” or basic element which may combine itself into metasystems of greater spiritual complexity. A human, for example, must be an extremely complex system unifying a staggering number of these fundamental units.

A metaphysical and linguistic change will help us begin to move beyond our impasse. One initial change involves subsuming the concepts of a “part” and “whole” into the concept of a “holon”, and contextualizing our previous units (which, other than symbols, all leaned towards being quantitative and expressive of Action) within the metaphysical unit of a “monad”. Let’s first address the notion of a “holon”. 

A holon is simultaneously part and whole, and reality is composed of holarchies—the organized relationship of holons within holons within holons.

Ken Wilber: “A whole neutron becomes part of an atom; a whole atom becomes part of a molecule; a whole molecule becomes part of a cell; a whole cell becomes part of an organism. Each stage is a whole/part, or holon, and the resultant nested hierarchy is a growth holarchy.”

Lynn Margulis: “Life on earth is a holarchy, a nested fractal network of interdependent beings.”

Arthur Koestler: “The holons which constitute a living organism or a social body are, as we’ve seen, Janus-like entities: the face turned towards the higher levels in the holarchy is that of a subordinate part in a larger system; the face turned towards the lower levels shows a quasi-autonomous whole in its own right… Some hierarchies do indeed have a well-defined apex or peak, and a definite bottom level… But the grand holarchies of existence—whether social, biological or cosmological—tend to be ‘open-ended’ in one or both directions.”

Holons are a category beyond “part” or “whole”—they are simultaneously whole/part, or wholes within wholes. And, according to Koestler, it is the god Janus who represents the holon’s opposing forces of self-assertion (i.e. the holon’s “wholeness”) and self-transcendence or integration (i.e. the holon’s “partness” in relation to larger holons). 

We received the name “January”, the month of transition from the old to new year, from Janus. And he symbolizes, with his two faces sharing one body, that we must find a way to live harmoniously despite internal contradiction. Neither of the extreme ends of life’s polarities may dominate if we wish to create healthy holarchies. It is the way of metarevolutionaries to create unities of opposites.

Arthur Koestler: “This implies that every holon is possessed of two opposite tendencies or potentials: an integrative tendency to function as part of a larger whole, and a self-assertive tendency to preserve its individual autonomy… Under favorable conditions, the two basic tendencies…are more or less equally balanced, and the holon lives in a kind of dynamic equilibrium within the whole—the two faces of Janus complement each other.”

Koestler goes on to say that we experience these Janus-like polarities in the following ways.

Arthur Koestler: “integration <––> self-assertion

partness <––> wholeness

dependence <––> autonomy

centripetal <––> centrifugal

cooperation <––> competition

altruism <––> egoism.”

This points to a crucial difference between a dynamic of wholes-within-wholes “holarchy” and a mechanistic, parts-within-wholes “hierarchy”. Worldviews which incorporate the latter have been the norm throughout history. As in, hierarchies are an ever-present feature of life and reality, and should not be taken in this discussion as the “enemy”. However, there are many pathological forms of hierarchy—and the sickness is generally, in fact, a symptom of imbalance between the partness and wholeness. In a totalitarian government, for example, it is not hard to see that the wholeness of the dictator tends to erase the wholeness of other individuals—reducing those individuals to objectified parts of the one and only whole. And of course things can swing in the other direction: Sometimes we lack wholeness. 

Holons, on the other hand, give us a constant reminder of this dynamic balance. We are reminded that at every level, there awaits the possibility of extreme self-assertiveness and extreme self-transcendence—which create worlds of excessive chaos or excessive order, respectively. The middle, as Peterson says, is heroic. 

Jordan Peterson: “The fascist, who will not face the reality and necessity of the unknown, hides his vulnerable face in a ‘pathological excess of order.’ The decadent, who refuses to see that existence is not possible without order, hides his immaturity from himself and others in a ‘pathological excess of chaos.’… The pitfalls of fascism and decadence may be avoided through identification with the hero, the true individual. The hero…stands on the border between order and chaos, and serves the group as creator and agent of renewal. The hero’s voluntary contact with the unknown transforms it into something benevolent—into the eternal source, in fact, of strength and ability.”

If you value life, you must value the dynamic interplay of partness and wholeness—those self-conflicting tendencies within every holon. Janus, in this setting, is a symbol for that unity of opposites—representing our goal of a healthy balance between every holon’s oppositional strivings.

We are holons: complex systems nested within many other complex systems—Earth itself included. Our metarevolutionary goal in this context is to form Janus-facing holarchies, not unidirectional hierarchies where power only flows from top to bottom. This is a necessary conclusion following the fact that we need action on a planetary scale to confront our metacrisis, and that a top-down (tyrannical) approach as a means to this end is not desirable or even viable. Holons in a holarchy must not lose the property of being ends-in-themselves.

We must see ourselves and our planet as holons, and therefore inherently valuable in a spectrum of ways spreading from the metaphysical to the political. Value, therefore, must be a coherent idea from the perspectives of humans and planets and the totality of actuality. We are not, in this view, free to dominate and destroy the planet any more than we are free to kill another person. Conversely, a hierarchy that ensures its own health and sovereignty by removing all disorder (hence, all freedom, self-assertion, or wholeness) is not free from the human perspective. Both of these scenarios fail the Janus test—they are not a healthy unity of opposites.

These points should illustrate the basic “habits” of all of the units we’ve discussed so far. Among these units, we find atoms (basic unit of matter), bits (basic unit of information), and calories (basic unit of energy). And, if complex systems such as humans are composed of self-organizing simple units (or holons) such as these, which is the most fundamental? The Good, after all, is the first principle of everything, and so the ultimate unit must be a unit which partially and relatively expresses the Good. The ultimate unit must relate to both Value and Action, or value-in-action. This “simple substance” or embodied unit of meaning, as Leibniz proposed, is what we will call a “monad”.

Robert Latta: “This new atom or unit of substance…[is what] Leibniz calls a monad.”

Gottfried Leibniz: “Substance is a being capable of action. It is simple or compound. Simple substance is that which has no parts. Compound substance is the combination of simple substances or monads. Monas is a Greek word, which means unity, or that which is one. Compounds or bodies are pluralities [multitudes]; and simple substances, lives, souls, spirits, are unities. And everywhere there must be simple substances, for without simple substances there would not be compounds; and consequently all nature is full of life.”

A monad, in fact, includes and transcends the other basic units we’ve discussed—because in actuality there are no disembodied “ideas” (no “Value in a vacuum”). Simply, then, monads are embodied units of quality, and the most direct way of understanding the love between Value and Action. A monad, conceptually, combines Planck’s constant (as the quantum of action) with the Good; as in, it is the smallest-possible unit of value-in-action. A worldview which includes monads, as we understand them, is fundamentally optimistic and therefore incompatible with metaphysical nihilism.

To understand this view, we have been building an appreciation for other basic units like bits, because information is a crucial element of all complex systems. A metarevolution is a metasystem composed of centers of action—which we will henceforth also refer to as monads. Monads, aside from concentrating (centering) the principle of Action, accumulate love, freedom, and meaning in degrees of increasing complexity. The self-organization of monads leads in the direction of expanding consciousness and a greater actualization of the Good—which is the potential and telos of everything.

The view of monads as the most fundamental elements of both the possible and actual accords with the thesis of this book, which is that the Good is an all-pervasive feature of reality, and, indeed, its most fundamental feature. Actuality is a mysterium coniunctionis of the “two worlds” of matter and Form. Another way to say this is that the Good is both relative and absolute (or immanent and transcendent). Every experience takes place in this spiritual plenum, which colors every choice with value-potential and moral duty; every action transforms the garden of actuality into a more-perfected or more-distorted image of the perfection which waits dormant in the seeds of possibility.

A meaning crisis is particularly potent within a metacrisis because it deals with principles which are prior to (or deeper than) those found in almost every other crisis, including the ones most familiar at the time of writing, such as the ecological (or climate) crisis. Pollution and destruction of our “material” environment is in fact a symptom of the broken metaphysics we discussed earlier; meaninglessness and nihilism are the chief maladies of both the inner environment we call “mind” and outer environment we call “Earth”; and our meaning crisis is the child of a broken ontology which imagines much of the world as lifeless, soulless material. 

If, instead, our worldviews include the postulate that everything, from “bottom” to “top” is composed of monads, then actuality is a gradation of goodness-in-action, capable of striving towards an expressive symbolization of pure freedom, perfect love, and infinite value. Even as monads will naturally fall short of the Good in these respects, it is their perception of and desire for the Good which is the Value-oriented telos and steering wheel attached to the powerful but otherwise blind engine of Action. 

In other words, there is no material atom which is not married to a spiritual atom (or a complex metasystem of spiritual atoms which may rise to the level of complexity and consciousness found in the human soul, and who knows how far beyond that). Thus, every process of material production and every transformation of energy is a “religious” (moral) concern.

By viewing the evolution of complex systems from the monadic perspective, we invite the discussion of transformation which will take place in the second half of this book (which was also hinted at in discussing calories and energy). With this metaphysical basis (justification) for transformation, there can be no mistaking the absolute Good with purely-relative goodness. This is an antidote to narrow utopianism which privileges, for example, the perspective of materialistic human wealth. Transformation guided by the light of the Good should not be confused with the quest for material abundance, which is transformation groping in the dark for power. Success will be measured by increasing distance from the vortex of meaninglessness we call the zombie apocalypse, and increasing intimacy with the Good.

To underscore what this means for our meaning crisis and metacrisis overall, let us recall that religions have been shaped by the scapegoat mechanism which perennially ameliorates mimetic crises arising from misplaced appetition (or mimetic desire). We can say, then, that the intensity of a mimetic crisis (which involves distorted appetition resulting from misdirected perception) is directly proportional to the obstructedness of a monad’s perception of the Good. 

R.W. Meyer: “Monads [can be described as] psychic points of view, or spiritual microcosms…[which] represent the whole [universe] individually, i.e. as diversely as possible.”

Gottfried Leibniz: “[And so a Monad has] perfection in proportion to its distinct perceptions. Each soul knows the infinite, knows all, but confusedly.”

If perfect perception of Monas Monadum (the Good) results in perfected desire, then it is the direction of attention and love which transforms us, as complexes of monads, away from or towards the possibility of perfect love, true freedom, and full participation in our spiritual (naturally valuable, meaningful, and morally rich) plenum. And the point must be made that any and every change you can imagine is, at its core, a change in the relationship between monads.

Gottfried Leibniz: “All nature is a plenum. There are simple substances everywhere, which…continually change their relations.”

A rock, a cow, and a metarevolution are all metasystems of monads, which means as systems-of-systems they are informed by (but not a mere sum of) the perceptions and desires of the elements (the centers of value-in-action we are calling monads) which compose them. Transformation is the name of the process which can change the pattern of relationships between monads, and thus the perception and appetite of the monadic plenum as a whole. Transformation, therefore, is also a sort of stewardship of energy, which is equally capable of actualizing or destroying the possibility of the Good. When “God is dead” (when a transcendent god is killed and becomes an immanent god) our perception is aimed exclusively at each other, the Good disappears from view, and desire is mimetically reflected in a hall of mirrors called nihilism. This is in contrast to optimism, which can be compared to heliographic communication—also a process of mutual reflection, yet one which carries a light which is transcendent to, or ontologically prior to, each mirror.

Gottfried Leibniz: “The monad represents, as in a kind of center, the things which are outside of it… Since the world is a plenum all things are connected together and each body acts upon every other, more or less, according to their distance, and each, through reaction is affected by every other. Hence it follows that each monad is a living mirror, or a mirror endowed with inner activity, representative of the universe, according to its point of view.”

So when Good is the Sun to which the earthly mirrors lovingly respond, as in the plant which positions its leaves to maximize the inflowing of light, then mimetic desire becomes a source of healing, growth, and the perfection of desire, and will tend to transform flows of energy in such a way which actualizes Value.

Finally, we can say with certainty, it is not units of quantity (such as atoms or bits) which are the ultimate, fundamental units of reality; the ultimate unit is the monad, the embodied unit of quality. By the same line of thought, it is the Good, and not Power, which is our ontological first principle. This is the choice of optimism over nihilism. It is also ahimsa, in the sense that optimism keeps us at the greatest distance from violence, whether in its striving for ontological supremacy, or in its actual mutilation of monads.

Mohandas Gandhi: “Ahimsa is the highest duty. Even if we cannot practice it in full, we must try to understand its spirit and refrain as far as is humanly possible from violence.”

Holons & monads - in a metacrisis

Crises are the holons of a metacrisis, and revolutionaries are the holons of a metarevolution. Both are formed in and from a monadic plenum, which is the real immortal union of Value and Action. The question now is, what are the pathological forms of hierarchy (or holarchy) which diminish the wholeness and indivisibility of holons (causing anguish—which can be defined simply as a state in which the most meaningful possible universe is not being actualized)? And how can our metarevolution be oriented towards forms of complex organization which nurture the flowering of freedom and love at every scale of our grand holarchy?

On a related note, having monads as our most fundamental units creates a sharp break with the nihilistic orientation. Our meaning crisis stems from Power’s perennially-planned coup, which attempts to negate the Good. So it becomes obvious that our best defense is our true form of optimism, and, as we now see, its fundamental unit, the monad. For, in monads, Value and Action are eternally intertwined. 

Holons & monads - in a metarevolution

This discussion of complex systems aims to underscore a key theme of our metacrisis: We live in a world in which the complexity of our problems exceeds the complexity of our problem-solving. The way out will involve the evolution of organized complexity—which naturally leads back to the individuals who self-organize in the ongoing expression of life.

By uncovering a view of the universe which accords with modern science without being deficient in meaning, we will be laying the groundwork for understanding the spiritual autopoiesis which leads in the direction of increasingly perfect love and freedom. Better problem-solving is meaningless without this recovery in metaphysics. Therefore we are speaking generally about the nature of meaning, as well as the common patterns of complex systems which may embody or reject meaning. If we can rediscover the Good, uncover the underlying patterns of complex systems, and develop a theory of how these systems transform into new systems and metasystems, then we can predict what kinds of actions will be useful (and which will be iatrogenic) in the context of a metacrisis, and give it a beautiful purpose which it may otherwise lack or substitute. In short, transformation needs to be oriented towards some end—and the Good is the only rational (non-nihilistic) object of desire which transformation may aspire to actualize.