When something difficult, stressful, or traumatic happens, you can be kicked from a nexus state into a sink state. One kind of very difficult sink state is a monism state. In this state, everything is interpreted through the lens of one factor. These one factors can be relate to either zero-sum value or intrinsic value.
Zero-sum value means that the more I have, the less someone else has. The canonical example of instrumental value is money, which may be in limited supply. Left to their own devices, zero-sum values encourage unlimited competition.
Intrinsic value, on the other hand, is in unlimited supply. An example of an intrinsic value would be art (we can all appreciate the same art) or self-respect (we can all respect ourselves). Intrinsic value may accomplish a goal primarily via trust. That is, if someone cares a great deal about art – intrinsically – then perhaps they can be trusted to manage an advertising campaign involving graphic design. Perhaps they can even be trusted to be a banker – because they care about art more than money and they won’t embezzle the money.
In Nexus State Theory, self-control is defined as freedom from narratives, and monism states are these narratives. But zero-sum values tend to be sink states more often than intrinsic values. That’s partly because it’s easier to get caught up in a money obsession than to get caught up in an art obsession: since people must compete for money, the world signals that money is especially worthy of our obsession. Also, zero-sum behavior often involves antagonism, including antagonism toward others around us with whom we may compete for money. For that reason, zero-sum monisms are more commonly a cause of concern than intrinsic monisms.
Some examples of one factor attitudes can be:
Zero-sum monisms
- Violence. Violence can certainly be a way of getting other things, Many hierarchical systems of society have been based on violence. The aristocrats have the weapons, training, and elite solidarity which give them power over the common people. Thus, violence often results in a zero-sum ranking of people according to who is “stronger.”
- Money. Money is in limited supply, and it can buy all sorts of things – but probably not love and happiness. For some people, the worth of a social program can be measured by the money it generates. From this perspective, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) alone determines how well our society is doing.
- Status / performativity. For instance, this is a corporation buying advertising to display its wealth. This is zero-sum if status is comparative (our company is more famous than their company). Status may be interchangeable with performativity: we perform in order to influence others’ opinion of us, thereby increasing our status. Status may be aggressive (performing violence) or trustworthy (performing love or pacifism), and trustworthy status is often better, but can still be zero-sum.
- Winning. Winning is zero-sum, since not everyone can win a game or argument.
Intrinsic monisms
- Group solidarity. Historically, this came from kinship – the aristocratic clans were built on family feeling. This can also be Marxist (class consciousness). In principle, my solidarity doesn’t reduce yours. When solidarity of the entire society is partly rejected in favor of diverse group identities, this becomes social justice.
- Reason. Reason is a good way to generate trust – a reasonable person is more trustworthy than an unreasonable one. My being more rational doesn’t reduce your rationality.
- Morality: This may be a religious morality or a philosophical morality, such as utilitarianism. My morality doesn’t reduce your morality; it may even increase your morality
The fundamental trust paradox
Intrinsic monisms become powerful via trust. But trust doesn’t work well when viewed as a form of power. For one thing, it then becomes zero-sum: if the most trustworthy candidate will be hired, then trust becomes like status. Moreover, if you want to be trusted very badly, so that you can be powerful, then you might be tempted to lie or deceive others into trusting you. But when they find out they are deceived, they won’t trust you anymore. This is what I call the “fundamental trust paradox.” It is almost bad to think about power in relation to trust.
Transcendentals and Schelling points
The three transcendentals are truth, beauty, and goodness. These are types of intrinsic value, since my knowing the truth or appreciating a painting doesn’t prevent your doing so. This has the positive side effect that it can help people to get away from zero-sum monisms. Thus, if you value artistic beauty more, you might value money and winning less.
Truth and goodness also regulate zero-sum monisms via the idea of justice. Thus, if we can decide upon a morally good distribution of money, we will be less caught up in the obsession to get more money.
Problems with monisms
Depending on the circumstances, all of these monisms may be healthy or unhealthy to focus on. Intrinsic monisms seem more likely as a positive theory of human relationships than instrumental monisms; but they are not perfect. Solidarity, for instance, can seem positive – yet when taken to extremes and combined with violence, it is also the origin of Fascism.
There are several problems with monistic explanations and monism states generally.
- They are judgmental. It is easy to judge oneself solely on a given axis – I don’t have enough money, enough trust, enough solidarity, enough status / performativity. As an explanation for success or failure, monism suggests that you do or don’t have The Essential Thing that leads to good or bad outcomes. This can result in judging oneself and others.
- They aren’t constructive. When you build something out of legos, you don’t need just one kind of lego – you need many kinds. In the same way, a narrow-minded focus on money won’t help you build a better life. It won’t even help you get more money. At work in your office, you need to handle many different concerns, not all of which have a definite value in terms of money.
- They are addictive. The human mind, once exposed to one-factor explanations, finds them cognitively interesting and engaging. They help you feel like you can explain anything. They appear to provide the royal road to knowledge and hence to success. But by virtue of their very addictiveness, monisms show their limitations: while there may be some truth to them, humans tend to overuse them. Not everything is about money, solidarity, trust, or status / performativity.
I suggest that a major purpose of philosophy is to value the intrinsics, particularly in response to violence, status / performativity, and coin money.
Coins were commonly used in most of the locations associated with the Axial Age – the birthplace of philosophy. These coins would have set up a society in which worth was measured along a monistic axis (more coins or less coins) and created the cognitive illusion that everything can be measured along this axis. There would have been intense, dysfunctional competition to get the most coins. People might have wanted to avoid this dysfunctional competition and to value intrinsic monisms instead.
Before coins, it would have been obvious to people that there are many kinds of value in the world. Some people are good hunters, some are good farmers, some are good gatherers. Some people are good mothers or fathers. Some people are good friends, some are good leaders, some are wise and some are funny. But after coins, it might have seemed as though all status and value can be measured along a single axis – coins! The more people competed for coins, the more everyone would think coins are very desirable.
This was partly a cognitive illusion: coins seemed especially desirable in excess of their actual importance – because everyone wanted them. The problem with zero-sum monisms is that they produce competition, which can be unpleasant. Thus, if two spouses overvalue money relative to intrinsic values, they might compete with one another in a mean-spirited way. Zero-sum monisms may therefore harm dyads (pairs of people) or small communities, which may come apart due to these monisms.
This would have produced a number of social ills. For one thing, people might resort to any means, including violence, to get more coins. People might have felt terrible when they went into debt, as their worth as a person was measured financially. Nor should people in debt be aided – because simply by being in debt, they showed a lack of merit, and were ipso facto unworthy of aid. In light of these problems, intrinsic monisms might have seemed desirable.
The states (I mean “states” in the political sense of “countries”) in which these Axial philosophies developed generally were not large empires, but were medium-sized or small states. (Socrates’ Athens, the Buddha’s Shakya Republic, and Confucius’ state of Lu were small compared with Persia, Magadha, and the larger Chinese states). I suggest that while the large empires may have been equally caught up in the monisms of money and/or violence, the large empires were able to believe (rightly or wrongly) that these monisms were working for them. They wanted unlimited money and violence – and they had them! In any case, for the majority of us who don’t have unlimited money and don’t want to participate in violence, we are more likely to realize how unhealthy these addictions can be for us and for our society.
Thus, philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and the Buddha took two avenues to combating coin or violence monism:
1. Inventing alternative intrinsic monisms that were less likely to lead to zero-sum competitions.
I suggest Confucius proposed ren (benevolence) as a kind of alternative monism. Lao Tzu proposed the Tao. Plato proposed The Good. The Buddha adopted the idea of karma, which was arising around that time. Later, philosophers such as Bentham and Mill proposed happiness as a kind of monism. Some early proposals might seem odd to us: Thales of Miletus proposed water, while Anaximander proposed air.
Proposed new monisms need what I’ll call an “Aesthetic of Magnitude” – they need to appeal to reader’s sense that this is enough like zero-sum monisms to be worth thinking about. The proposed intrinsic monism must still be impressive and grand. Karma does this by making claims about leading to beneficial or terrible afterlives. Plato claims that his Good lives in a heaven of ideal forms. Descartes suggests the Reason monism by showing that it can prove the existence of God; Bentham and Mill then build on the value of Reason and mathematics (adding up happiness values.) Once the Aesthetic of Magnitude has been found, and the reader buys in, the philosopher can persuade the reader to value an instrinsic monism. Given that people often become inordinately obsessed with zero-sum monisms – beyond what actually makes sense – there is a sense in which philosophy is more practical than some obsession with violence or money. (The Godfather is a series of movies about the limits of violence, for instance.)
2. Proposing anti-monism monisms
One kind of monism is that which is opposed to monisms generally. Thus, for Socrates, admitting that one does not know anything is a source of value. But insofar as we do not know anything this too is a monism or one-factor explanation. In excess, it too might become a problem.
For Lao Tzu, although the Tao is in some sense unitary, it also unnameable and unknowable. The Tao Te Ching promotes a kind of unknowability monism about morality.
Getting out of a monism state
I suggest that part of getting out of a monism state involves accepting that one cannot get out. That is, if something bad happens, self-judgment comes along with that. Don’t make it worse by kicking yourself for being self-judging. Give it some time. Eventually, you will get out. Consider the Effort Timing Strategy.
I think that listening to others can be a good way to get out of a monism state. Once you realize that others have values that are different from yours, you may be able to let go of your monism. You have to respect others – it does not work if you believe that people who buy into your monism are wise people by that very fact, while people who do not buy in are unwise. It may help to understand that different people have different theoretical assumptions, which can usually be taken at face value. Thus, if a person says that a particular idea doesn’t fit well in their personal worldview – they are probably telling the truth. It can be helpful to try to understand others’ worldview and to check in with them (is this what you believe?)
After a crisis that drives one toward a monism state, getting out of that state might have the following stages. This is just an example – I’m sure different people have different experiences.
- The crisis.
- New information resulting from the crisis.
- Security reaction to new information: fear / anxiety. Imagining the implications of the crisis for oneself. Preparing to protect oneself against negative outcomes.
- Initial monism as reaction to new information: We may initially value a monism that doesn’t make sense for us – it may be too instrumental, too intrinsic, or just something that works for other people but not for us.
- Later monisms as reaction to new information. We are now able to value the monisms that make sense for us – whether more instrumental, more intrinsic, or just better for us. We may “trust our gut” when we feel that certain monisms aren’t healthy for us. This happens as we enter a nexus state and gain more of a say in what we will think and do. Or, perhaps we want to avoid monisms entirely and have more plural values.
Nexus State Theory 