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Too often, we invent false formulas for confusing ourselves into severing our connections with common sense. These false bases can never adequately inspire or fulfill us, and, when followed to their absurd conclusions, always lead to bitter fruit. If we are not to lose assimilating common sense, there needs to be a spiritual connection built on intuition and empathy, of a kind which cannot be entirely justified in mere empiricism. To appreciate moral issues always necessitates that they be connected back to first principles, not via pure empiricism, but via intuition and empathy that is receptive to the holistic field that defines us and avails us our parameters of freedom and dignity. The knowitall mindset that ignores that lesson of history is what is dissolving America.
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I would be surprised if the good influence of sacred spiritual authority could be proven empirically. After all, it's spiritual. What I mean is that faithless deceivers can abuse believers, and have done so throughout the ages. IOW, I suspect the indulgence selling Popes, Marjoes, and Jim Jones of the world., i.e., the agents of evil, render empirical efforts too inherently simplistic to help. Indeed, even death and anguish are part of the tool kit for how social evolution is guided. We have common sense qualitative tools of good faith. We can judge intentions by intuitively and empathetically appreciating acts of feedback. Acts are significations, logos. They have meaning in context, not in simplistic, single dimensional analysis. Common sense suggests social assimilation of humble respect for a Reconciler who leads us more by example than by force is needed to lead us to a more decent society. I doubt the issue can be resolved empirically. There are too many factors, many of them being qualitative. No doubt, statisticans can pick facts and variables to serve whatever interests may hire them. In the end, however, it will come down to the common sense of each good faith observer. One crosses the bridge of San Luis Rey with faith in a higher principle of reconciliation, or one does not.
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I doubt cultures, nations, or tribes can be ranked objectively by any mortal in terms of which is best and which is worst. They can be ranked by which averages to express the highest versus lowest number of episodes of violence per 100,000. And they can be ranked along various other single or even multi dimensional scales. However, we have no logical way to objectively quantify the entire flux of all dimensions in order to say which kind of society is best or worst, especially since the very definition of each identifiable society is itself in perpetual flux. (You never step into the same society twice.) Along the way, some will be eating and some will be being eaten. There is no stable, perpetual, objective set of moral laws that applies perpetually to each and all.
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Even so, within the unfolding context, there abides expression and communication of meaningfulness and worthwhile pursuit of fulfillment. Such contextual communication of meaningfulness abides with the measurable aspects of changing significations, i.e., Logos. By (appreciating the flow of) their acts (within a context of changing feedback) shall ye know them. And that is the connection by which I would intuit and believe, not prove, a test for evaluating social "progress." This is the test: What is needed to establish, sustain, and avail the meaningful COLLECTIVE assimilation of a system of mores that will facilitate the unfolding expression of decent human freedom and dignity among INDIVIDUALS? Fortunately or unfortunately, that is a test that is largely subjective to each person, whether of good will or bad will. Even so, it is a test for which we Pilgrims have a Reconciling Guide.
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A BORGDOM, while pretending to be sufficient in itself, would learn little about the external environment that supports its definition. To learn about that, it would need to send out relatively independent, competent feelers and scouts, able to defend, compete, cooperate, participate, and sense opportunity in relation to the cosmos that unfolds around, as opposed merely to within. It would need to facilitate empathetic appreciation for, and intuitive understanding of, the encompassing, wider, defining environment that is both cooperatively enticing and competitively hostile. A Collective that tried to become its own independent set of particulars, independent of God and the cosmos, that thus tried to substitute itself for God, would make itself irrelevant to God and merely transient to the cosmos.
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In that sense, I use the word "EMPATHY" to relate to feelings that connect the interior and exterior, to experience the exterior as if it were interior, and to experience the interior as if if were exterior, to appreciate the connection between the seemingly unconnected. I use the word "INTUITION" to relate to how empathies are understood and rationalized with Logos. Intuitive appreciation of empathies relates to how a conscious point of view reconciles itself with its contextual field of consciousness, i.e., how it reconciles quantitative significations and signs with qualitatively unfolding mores and purposes, i.e., how it under-stands subjective "ought" from objective "is," i.e., how it receives feedback to guide its service towards the unfolding direction of the Reconciling Field, i.e., how the SINGULARITY may transcend the collectivity and individuality.
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