Main Page: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:55, 23 April 2024

Welcome to the metaculture wiki--the shortest path to scientific enlightenment or your money back!

Think of a basic science education as giving you the pieces to the puzzle of the universe. All of the facts are there, but nobody tells you how to put them together to create a belief system that provides meaning.

metaculture is the picture on the box, and it is a fractal.

The Goal

metaculture attempts to describe the emergent properties of a universal belief system based on empirical knowledge of our universe, our minds and humanity's shared culture.

Philosophical Goals

When fully developed, metaculture should provide:

A mental framework for rational comprehension of how the universe works.
A culturally neutral moral philosophy, updated for the future.
An evidence-based socioeconomic and political philosophy.
A viable path towards the creation of a universal in-group.
A readable Wikipedia that tells the story of human knowledge.

Any improvement to the ideas, perspectives, or rhetoric that better advances these philosophical goals should be adopted.

Social Goals

By providing an easy way for anyone to gain all of the the prerequisite knowledge needed to come to this understanding, the following goals for society should be advanced:

Promote the principles of science, reason, and critical thinking.
Use of Evidence-Based Best Practices as the basis for political and personal decision making.
Change primary meterstick for success from money/GDP to utilitarian happiness/GNH.
Reduction in cognitive dissonance due to conflicting interpretations of science and religion.
Update our culture's ethics and social norms to deal with capitalism and future technology.
Increase the incentives for economic and social justice and restore the balance of power.
Expansion of political, personal, religious, and economic freedom.
Oppose pseudoscience and the grift economy and undermine it with awareness.
Increase the trust in institutions that is required for democracy to function.
Enable the creation of secular institutions that serve all of the cultural functions that religious ones do.
Better preserve nature and the environment, avert climate change and other apocalypse scenarios.
World peace, unity, and and end to all war (if there's time).

Any improvement to the ideas, perspectives, or rhetoric that better advances these social goals should be adopted.

Open Source Philosophy

metaculture is a dynamic philosophy, growing and improving with humanity's ability to more accurately describe the universe. It collects into a single narrative structure what, to the best of our knowledge, science has to say about how our universe came to be, how it works, how our minds work, and best-practices for how to live our lives and construct our society to achieve constantly improving outcomes.

"Go ahead. Prove me wrong. I'll just hit the Edit button." --Wiki Contributor

It proposes secular version of scripture that enables it to serve all of the same cultural and psychological functions of religion while avoiding the shortcomings of dogma. It does this by creating a dynamic, open source, living scripture of science using the wiki platform. Giture, if you will pardon the programming pun.

If Wikipedia superseded the encyclopedia as the trusted shared reference for general knowledge, the metaculture wiki attempts to do the same for scripture. Using the wisdom of the crowd, and a well-moderated, self-correcting platform like Wikipedia, it should be possible to tell the story of human history, morality, and the origins of the universe in a way that is compelling, universal, and scientifically accurate. This can form the groundwork for a global shared cultural understanding that provides the psychological framework for a universal in-group that is necessary for a globally connected humanity to survive and thrive.

Unlike regular Wikipedia, this wiki should be designed to provide only the most important information needed to make life choices. It should be something people can fully read and understand, and use as shared reference, knowing that most other people will be familiar with it. This is one of the key psychological and cultural functions of scripture, and is desperately needed in a future where information overload is rapidly becoming a mental health issue.

A New Kind of Metanarrative

metaculture is not proposed as a replacement for any rational, universalist belief system you already hold that works for you. It is a new perspective on these common ideas that covers all of the philosophical bases from a holistic point of view, tries to appeal to a variety of modern cultural perspectives, and offers new ways of presenting the ideas that helps fill in the gaps of modern education that keep others from coming to the same understanding.

For many, it's just the thing you already believe, with more detail, and a symbolic fractal theme that ties together all of the ideas into a single, unifying concept.It is a way to unite all of the different people of the world who believe the same thing in different ways.

"It's like reading a more articulate and detailed version of how I view reality" --Satisfied Reader

If you come from a theistic or atheistic perspective, metaculture offers a path to reconcile the cognitive dissonance that conflicting scientific and spiritual modes of thought can cause.

It should work side-by-side with any religious or humanist tradition you practice, allowing greater understanding of science, spirituality, and other cultures without replacing your own. It's metaculture, not monoculture.

A thorough reading should serve as an inoculation against scriptural literalism and authoritarian ideologies, and a booster for critical thinking, regardless of whether the proposed belief system is adopted as a whole. It offers something for everyone.

Core Tenets

metaculture is a complete, unified philosophical and theological system that addresses all of the major questions of ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, etc. that philosophers, scientists, and religions have always dealt with.

The goal is not to rewrite these works but to combine the best of them in a way that offers a simple, universally applicable belief system that is consistent with both science and scripture and can be understood regardless of one's education level or cultural background.

The core tenets are:

Scientific Realism: that an objective reality exists and advances in science improve the accuracy of our understanding of that reality. The metaphysical, ontological and epistemological assumptions of metaculture are the same as those that underlie a modern understanding of Scientific Realism that accounts for the biases, power structures, paradigms, and other social factors highlighted by Kuhn and Derrida.

Utilitarianism: that the success of our ethics can be measured and improved based on the impact it has on human emotions. Furthermore, the assumed goal of utilitarianism (happiness and well-being) can be derived empirically from evolutionary psychology.

Fractal Aesthetics: that our sense of beauty derives from our evolved mental representations of the universe, and because the universe is inherently self-similar, complex and symmetrical, we find beauty in that which exemplifies these things. The fractal is also the symbolism of metaculture.

Pantheistic Universalism: that the concept of god is common to all religions because it is an allegory for the universe we all exist in, as well as a self-organizing pattern in the brain.

That any principle described herein, including these core tenets, is subject to future revision should empirical evidence contradict it. The Dogma of No Dogma.

Should another parallel effort better succeed in fulfilling the goals of metaculture, our resources should be dedicated to support the project with a greater chance of success.

metaculture allows anyone to quickly gain a robust, consistent, accurate, and self-correcting understanding of how our universe, brains and societies works. It uses science to provide direct and satisfactory answers to life's biggest questions, without reliance on supernatural stories or forcing you to figure it all out for yourself.

metaculture should convey all of the psychological and sociological benefits traditionally ascribed to religion. This include social cohesion, psychological support, personal meaning, positive social change, a good creation story and psychologically satisfying answers to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.[1]

What is god?
The fractal universe
Betting on reality
The role of religion
The scientific Creation Story
The scientific Afterlife
Consciousness, Free Will, and the Brain
Utilitarian Ethics
Maximizing Happiness is objectively the goal of Life
Creating reflexive happiness
Quality of life versus quantity of life
Economics and Capitalism
Politics and Justice
Best-Practices for creating a culture of happiness
The Importance of Persuasion

Complete Index of Pages:

Table of Contents, set to the lyrics of Eclipse:

Like Easter eggs? Find all of the tracks on Dark Side of the Moon and collect your achievement!

Why a Wiki?

God Bless Jimmy Whales

The wiki format was chosen to allow ongoing updates based on best-practices from the latest widely accepted research, contributions from many people with different perspectives on the common goal, non-linear reading order, and direct links to detailed descriptions and research on any subject that the reader is unfamiliar with.

There are a number of advantages to this publishing style, detailed on the wiki page.

The best way to read this wiki is to follow the links anytime you have a question or a curiosity. You will eventually get back to where you left off. Topics with multiple references may require multiple readings. Use the Montessori approach to self-directed learning.

Hovering the links with your mouse on desktop or using tough screen gestures will give you a preview of the first paragraph of each page and a thumbnail. This makes it much easier to stay on one page as you read and keep track of the ones you have already seen.

Why Bother?

The main reason is that nobody else seems to have bothered. There are a number of reasons why this is, most of which boil down to the progressive and secular aversion to dogma. This means that the closest similar attempts are organizations like Unitarian Universalists, Secular Humanists, and Sunday Assembly, all of which lack a comprehensive philosophy that can offer the kind of definitive answers that traditional religion always has. They lack the ideology and therefore the organizing power. metaculture provides a self-correcting belief system that avoids the pitfalls of dogma while retaining the inspiration and organizational zeal of a proper ideology.

There is also the fact that this author finds it fun, interesting, and cathartic, and would do this even if nobody would ever be able to read it. There is also this uncontrollable urge to do so. But hopefully you will read it and find it some combination of enlightening and entertaining!

Who is This For?

This is for all of the people disillusioned with organized religion, politics, capitalism, technology, and all of the other institutions of modernity that appear to be arrayed in a confederacy against our happiness and ability to thrive as natural humans.

There are others that peddle belief systems catering to the disaffected and offer conspiracy theories in place of analysis, and scams instead of solutions. Spiritual grifters use quantum woo to sell supplements and seminars to people whose symptoms are a condition of modern life, and can never be cured without doing the work of organizing for social change that conspiracy theories distract them from.

It is for all the young men who are being led by the pied pipers of the manosphere towards the right-wing faux-philosophy of Jordan Peterson. If you are searching for meaning and a belief system that will help you become a better person and eventually meet a woman--is misogyny really what you think women want? The majority of women are progressive. Do the basic math. Real men are realists, and metaculture is a viable, reality-based alternative to the manosphere.

It is for all of the progressives that yearn for a social safety net that will use the incredible wealth of our society to protect people from the abuses of capitalism and reestablish the balance of power between workers and owners. You know that the vast majority will support evidence-based policy if they can just see through the propaganda that pervades our media. You know that the people who stand in opposition to progress use religion as the basis for their decision making. How can they ever change their minds about climate change without changing their literal view of scripture?

metaculture is for everyone, but in the present moment it fills a vital need to present an alternative belief system that fulfills the same need for certainty offered by religions, scam artists, and right-wing ideologues. It is able to do this by putting science and self-correction as its core value to avoid the pitfalls of dogma.

Why the Lower Case "m"?

metaculture is not a name for a particular philosophy. It is a common noun used to describe the emergent, global, common culture that will allow future generations to recognize their shared humanity and cooperate effectively while retaining long-held traditions, heritage and uniqueness. It represents the generalized sociological and psychological principles that underlie all human cultures, whatever those may be, rather than a specific theory about what those are.

Similarly, we know there are "true" laws of physics that govern the universe, and science can only improve our approximation of them over time. metaculture's current form is like the current state of science, with the common goal of better approximating the thing it seeks to describe by incorporating new evidence.

The lower case "m" emphasizes the fact that metaculture is not the philosophy of any one person or group, but an abstract and inevitable concept that, whatever form it takes, will be the next step in cultural evolution. This wiki seeks to describe that thing, regardless of whether or not it is that thing. Though it offers itself as an alternative among few viable candidates.

Likewise, references to god are also lower case to indicate the generic term for god and not the implied Judeo-Christian God that the capital "G" typically refers to.

Does using the lower case at the start of a sentence reinforce the notion of the common noun usage? Or does the distinct violation of language rules make it even more of a proper noun? We will not get into this.

Who Are You?

While some corporate ethics involve pithy slogans like "don't be evil" that sound good but do little to help resolve modern moral dilemmas, Meta Enterprises is directly addressing the problem of evil by developing a universal ethical philosophy that resolves the conflict between science and religion. We also sell OCR solutions.

We are the good Meta. We are the original Meta. Since 1998.

While it was originally developed and hosted by Meta Enterprises, metaculture is not meant to represent the opinions or perspective of any individual, organization or ideology. Rather it is an attempt to describe the unwritten belief system that a growing number of secular universalists arrive at on their own each day. The components have been written about extensively but separately. The metaculture project seeks to weave this common collection of ideas into a new metanarrative, allowing it to be easily understood, recognized and taught to others. It is a necessary prerequisite for the building of secular institutions that bring people together in celebration of these common goals, and for traditional religions to adapt their theology to enable coexistence in a globalized world.

As such, all authorship on this wiki will be anonymous, so that the ideas are separated from any personality or group.

For any feedback, commentary, or to request an account and become and editor of this wiki, please email fractalguy@metaculture.net