Harcz László: Concept collection of „The philosophy of evolution”

(The concepts are illustrated by conceptual examples)

Last modification: on 10th October 2018.

The hungarian original Glossary currently contains more than140 concepts that have been formulated according to my evolution-philosophical approach. The Hungarian version is available here on my blog, titled: "Az evolúció filozófiája fogalomtára szemléltető gondolatszilánkokkal".

I'm doing the translation all the time, but now only the concepts here are in English.

--- Desire: Desire is the driving force of life-sustaining instincts to execute their instructions.

--- "Flow": "The "flow", I think, is the ecstasy, the oblivious happiness, the culmination of bliss, the emotional orgasm given as a gift to the human being, a very useful, important and indispensable thing for the survival of evolution and life creates.

For example: You can experience the "flow" of those who are very good with hungry children, poor people, troubled fellow humans, and get the "flow" experience of those who struggle boldly against any kind of tyranny; or to create artistic creations that can bring the creator and the recipient of the work into catharsis, and in doing so it is able to highlight both of their own essence, fate, hate, immorality, useless, or even detrimental state of mind. That way, you can reach them to raise them to a sincere, honest, self-critical state of mind, to bring them to the highest degree of humanity.
"Flow", emotional and spiritual orgasm is thus the highest level of human life, the highest degree of happiness.
The flow was initially written by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (one of the three founding father of positive psychology).

--- Freedom of will: The question of "Freedom of Will" only plays an important role in moral decisions.

The right, moral decision is always the one that is conducive to life's survival, for evolution.

For this reason, there is no "freedom of will", at the most exist the ignorance of the individual to what the right, moral decision is in the given situation, because if one knows what is the right, moral decision, then he should not make a different decision.

"Freedom of will" exists therefore only for immoral or uninformed people who are willing to make an immoral decision.

For moral, responsible, competent and informed people, "Freedom of will" do not exist in moral matters.

--- Happiness is a rewarding feeling for our evolutionary (life sustaining) instincts, a sense of reward. When we feel happy, it shows us that everything is fine right now and we have made every effort to preserve and continue life. The presence of happiness also shows that our conscience is calm and pure, so we are morally committed to the preservation of life. The state of bliss is therefore the existence of the pure conscience, morality. In other words, we can be happy if we have done our very best in the development and preservation of life, so if we have immediately taken the inherent difficulties in the trouble, decided the right way to do so, we did not choose the "easier way".

Happiness has variable and constant conditions.

From the point of view of utility, happiness means different things in every age and place, depending on what is beneficial to the evolution and survival of life. These are the changing conditions of happiness; but morality is everywhere and at all times the basic condition of happiness, and morality is the immutable, the basic condition.

Happiness is given as a reward from our instincts and from their spokesmen, from our conscience, if we obey the constraints of our instincts and the needs of life-sustaining. So the difference between the happy and the dissatisfied man is that the happy man has fulfilled his moral duties, overcome the temptations of lighter way (he was able to withstand the temptations of evil-doing) and he took up the difficulties with the right path. So then, fulfilling his task honestly, he received the rewarding feeling and happiness from the life-sustainable instincts.

--- Humbleness: one of the principal virtues, because the person who is able to overcome his self-delusion compulsion and his false self-esteem compulsion is capable of the humility only, which are the principal onto the ethical bad road seducer tendencies, and false self-esteem, false self-awareness, exaggerated self-evaluation are caused. Humility is one of the most important virtues, because it only has the ability to be humble, who is able to overcome his compulsion of self-deception and false self-esteem, which are our most important, morally wrongly tempting tendencies, creating a false self-esteem, a false self-confidence, an exaggerated self-esteem.

--- Meaning of human life: The meaning of human life is the maintenance of life on its own, on the broader sense, the attainment of the highest degree of morality, because morality in man is the supreme condition of survival of life.

Instinctively, at the level of feelings and instincts, it is the acquisition of more and more powerful evolutionary rewards (enjoyment, happiness, etc.) because their experience indicates to the person that he has done everything to maintain the supreme command to maintain life.

That is why they say that the meaning of life is to be happy.

In the process, therefore, the meaning of life is the maintenance of life, which is best served by the observance of the instinctive rules, and the instincts inspire us through our desires to behave the most advantageous way of life preservation.

Our desires will be met if we obey the prompts of our instincts, of our consciences, even if it is always more difficult than choosing a leisurely, self-guileless, unmanageable "lighter path".

"Happiness-desire" is therefore the most natural feeling and the existence of it indicates a healthy spirit.

--- Moral, Morality: the most common and most significant forms of "moral lighter way", the struggle against the instinctual, self-serving, opportunistic, hedonistic constraints with elemental force, the false compulsions of our bodily enjoyment-seeking, and on the psychological emotional level, our constraints of our false joy- and happiness-seeking, our struggle against the constraint against of our false self-esteem and our false sense of community, against of our bad temptation instinctive constraints we have mentioned above, our struggle against for self-serving seduction of our desires.

--- Populism: Populism exacerbates, incites for agressivity (divides), democratism reassures and creates peace (integrates, unites, compels, concludes, creates compromise).

Populism is the disgorging of instinctive emotions without moral control and without self-restraint. With a family comparison, populism is essentially the same as the unpleasant spoil.

Populism is the political behavior of extreme public figures.

Populism means in my oppinion that the politician does not want to proclaim justice and honesty (morality), but he wants to woo the voters in any case.

The voters and, in general, some of the people can best available if we excluded somebodys from our community and especially when we make them a scapegoat.

Exclusion affects their false sense of community (their so-called "flock-instinct"), and scapegoating affects their false self-esteem (their so-called rank-instinct.

With the exclusion of certain individuals or groups, the false sense of public feeling of the crowd, that is, the false sense of security and the harm to the crowd, is felt by the members of the crowd, while the members of the crowd feel morally more than people in these scapegoats and are thus satisfied with their false self-esteem.

--- Self-transcendence: Determining morality means trying to defeat in ourselves of our enticements and impulses because they will take us to the wrong way. We want to overwhelm these temptations, "we have to go beyond ourselves."It can be seen that self-transcendence is essentially a prerequisite of morality, a necessity, a compulsion that leads to morality, and because conscience is evidently spokesman of our life-sustaining instinctual impulses to our minds, to our consciousness, 

self-transcendence is essentially the conscience itself, the spiritual constraint of being good and moral! 

Conscience helps us to overcome ourselves and to choose the "right path" and to take the difficulties of the right paths. 

Self-transcendence is our struggle against our constraints leading to the bad, eG. the instinctive constraint of our false self-esteem, in everyday formulation: our vanity, our excessive false self-esteem, our ugliness, our excessive hubris, but our struggle against our excessive pleasure-seeking desire, our laziness and our pursuit of an opportunist lighter way. 

Self-transcendence is a fashionable expression, and it's meaning: overwhelmed by itself,  overcomes itself, exceeding itself, overswinging himself. Candace A. Vogler came to the conclusion that the greatest difference between the happy and the dissatisfied man is that the former could swing over himself, he could swing over himself. (This is a good match for what the writers of the Bible have put in Jesus' mouth: "He who is following me must deny himself !"… Nothing new under the sun!...).

But what is in us, which we must overcome, which we must deny, is not explained in any wording. I have defined this obstacle that we must overcome, that we must defeat in ourselves and I was digging down one level deeper in human nature.

Self-transcendence, overcoming ourselves, overcoming our own self, means to overcome the self-motivated, self-interested, hedonistic, opportunistic seducing to   seek pleasure and joy that is the tendency, the urge, the seduction, the desire to seek and to choice the moral lighter path.

But I went further down to search for the reasons that led to the instinctive compulsion of false self-esteem, which is the most important and most abundant case of moral easier ways in practice.

I think the constraint of false self-esteem is created by our instinctive self-deception, driven by the seduction of the instinctive self-esteem and the moral "lighter way" .

Thus, the four most important of our worst-for-all constraints were ours: the self-deception, the false self-esteem, the selfish, opportunist constraint for pleasure-seeking and self-esteem, and the false community consciousness, that is, the false group consciousness. These malevolent compulsions, seductions, temptations cause the greatest difficulties for our life-sustaining instincts and their spokespersons, for our conscience.

In fashionable words, this is the self-transcendence.

--- Transcendence:

Immanuel Kant writes: 'Immanents are the principles whose application is wholly within the limits of possible experience, and as transcend those who break the categories'.

Thus, we have called transcendent those phenomena, things, etc., which could not be explained and understood from the biology, from the everyday experience, from within, because until recently we had very little knowledge about genetics, heredity, and life-sustaining instincts.

We do not get an enough good explanation of the definition of transcendence in Kant and in the philosophical literature, but with our life-preserving evolutionary instincts (which are probably derived from our genetic heritage) are likely to explain all the phenomena, impulses and interpretations that have so far been "within the limits of possible experience" could not be explained.

Thus, the concept of transcendence can not be used in the sense of the word "supernatural" because it is now possible to explain the notion and its effects with the impulses of life-sustaining instincts, so with simple, biologically well-understood concepts can understand the meaning of notion.

"Transcendence" is certainly associated with human thought and feeling when we perceive the suggestions of our life-sustaining instincts. These suggestions often come with the force of constraint, often we perceive them only as a suggestion, a slight influence. The urges of instincts tend to be stronger, the more important their role is for the sustaining of life.

The transcendence, therefore, is obviously the same as our life-preserving instincts, their effects, and not "beyond the material," imaginary, spiritual formation, but an integral part of our biological being.

--- Truth: In general, truth is the consideration of the interests of the other (of all) parties, and the whole truth is taking into account the interests of the whole living world, and expressing solidarity to the whole wildlife.

Truth stands on the ground of reality and firmly insists on the real situation, facts, and events, basically increasing the efficiency of our evolutionary decisions and thus increasing the chances of survival.

There is no morality without justice and there is no truth without morality.

What is moral, is just and vice versa.

The notion of truth is also expressed in relation to evolution because what is useful and important for evolution, for the survival of life, must prevail.

Evolution is the basis, point of reference and the root of all aspects that are related to life.

1. Truth and morality are the basis of the desired human common value system.

2. There is no truth without morality, and there is no morality without justice, because both are necessary for the survival of life and because both are against the existence of falsehood, deceit and injustice.

3. The truth is what your conscience dictates, because conscience, truth, and morality are the proponents of all life, of all living nature in our instincts.

4. The truth is in human terms (relationships), what our conscience dictates for us and that is conducive to the survival of life. In general, truth is the consideration of the interests of all parties, and the whole truth is to consider the interests of the entire living world.

5. By showing the truth, you can not gain power. Curiosity, dripping, poisoning, crucifixion more ...

6. True truth, even from the ground, will eventually come out. The only question is, if the earth still exists then ...

7. The world is becoming increasingly tense, because people in the absence of truth and common human value system are increasingly bad. The true word could silence this smoldering lie, but there is no one to say ... But if that were so, no one would be sure to hear it ...

8. The truth is, if we consider the interests of all sides. The whole truth is that we take into account the interests of all nature, the whole living world.

9. Truth is not a question of power, mass base or electoral base.

10. Two stupid politicians have argued about which one would have the pendulum of the pendulum clock, that is, the truth. Each of them tugged at him, but when he let go, it turned to the other side. Then the sage took the pendulum and stopped it in the middle, saying, "That's the right way." And then the pendulum was still in the middle for a very long time.

11. The truth in daily life unfortunately only prevails where it brings more profit to the individual than the lie ...

Harcz László