“And everytime you think you know just what you’re doin’ That’s when your troubles exceed” — Guns and Roses
‘Success consists of getting up one more time than you fall.’
As the metamind grows and adapts it faces moments of eventual success. Moments where reason is comprised just of the rational mind. Not because there is no risk for the conscience to report, but because it has been successfully rationalized or rationally accommodated. Present risks are understood in total so the metamind is quiet. For some, they want or need to meditate to reach this state. For others meditation need not be a ritual, but simple state of mind.
The conscience suddenly intrudes on your clarity. You may rationalize, ‘What if I do not understand the moral course of action at all?’ It can be terrifying. With the conscience quiet the rational mind is free to explore all the darkness of self serving convenience. Exploring an evil(perfectly selfish) point of view. The conscience comes roaring back with the subconscious recognition, that it’s absence means one thing. As a direct product of the success of rationalization to the point of self actualization, you were briefly thinking like a psychopath. A moment of internal emotional whiplash, where you at your best suddenly became you at your worst.
There are several possible explanations for the sudden intrusion of a recently happy conscience in people who make a real effort towards self knowledge.
1. The untethered rational mind explores some new, dark, but personally gratifying future, which poses compounding threats to the self later down the timeline. We’ve recognized a new risk to rationalize. The conscience fires up and reminds us to act like a well adjusted human being. Pointing out dead ends (double down, defect(depart), or die) in our potential plans.
2. If you are not yet a self actualized as a meta-psychopath (I imagine it’s quite rare to fully arrive if possible at all), you may be detecting a layer of protopsychopathy. This is also a common situation. While many foolishly deny it, outsiders program our emotions all the time. Sure as you had parents or guardians, your emotions have been either completely explored, or are are still directing you from once external or alien decision making.
3. I think those are both more easily resolvable, but here is the real risk. That you are seeing the endgame. The outcomes have become final. That no amount of probability calculation can navigate through the problems facing you. This recognition that the three D’s, the psychopaths basket of choices, are all you have left. This is exactly what cognitive dissonance is. Frozen in the fear that your metamind no longer affords you any advantage, so you give up on it.
Number three, cognitive dissonance, is the most neglected and interesting case. The good news is huge. Most likely cognitive dissonance or any persistent failure of the conscience is a false negative. In a way faith(political, religious or other) is a shortcut to recognising this for structurally incomplete reasons. You have actually mistaken the inability to discern risk now from the inability to discern risk later. Of course faith alone can be tested, and can fail you (if it can’t fail it’s not faith but indoctrination or other forms of belief), leaving you in a lurch.
Here is how civgene helps.
Knowing that the conscience/metamind is a passively driven risk engine hands you the solution. Don’t give up. If your conscience can’t perform the risk calculation, that’s not telling your problems can’t be solved. It’s telling you you need more data. That’s it. Both not giving up, and trying new things has the best chance of showing you the moral, or low risk, way forward. Curiosity doesn’t just serve laziness or amusement, but is the key to a healthy metamind.
If you find your self in the pits of despair, seek new points of view. Socialize. Learn. Build. Invent. Create. And the answers will come. Use faith for rationalization, but not as a crutch or belief against your own personal darkness. If you hide behind ‘faith’ you can become trapped in a vain well of self gratification, devoid of new information, barrelling towards the same three Ds that haunt all that biologically define their success through jealousy. The conscience functions best interacting with all society, even the parts you don’t like. Explore and accept the world for what it is and you will understand how to navigate through it.