Where to Start?
This is reminiscent of which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first, society or the individual? To my thinking, this is an easier dilemma to resolve than the chicken or the egg because my starting point was our ancient ancestral beings before language, villages, and tools, etc. Hence individuals developed before civilization, before our contemporary society or any local or global culture. That said, it is also true that nonlinear elements present in the reality of our ancient ancestral hominids had (and possibly still have) some effect upon the development of modern human beings due to the butterfly effect of chaos theory. Since human beings developed and continue to maintain or alter villages, cities and culture, those nonlinear elements that affected human beings subsequently affected the culture and societies developed and maintained by those humans. I can never fully remove the Unknowable, the Wonder and Mystery from reality. However, it is clear that individuals developed before villages, cities, and the institutions of modern civilizations. So, we start with individuals. To be specific, we start with me.
In Deathbed Reflections I recorded the clarity of my observation that we human creatures of Earth are Nature reflecting upon itself and that each and every individual is the consequences of the past. Each and every individual is the foundation of the future and the totality of the individual is the resolution of the tension between opposing paired forces. These are important fundamental principles that influence any and all reflections when human creatures are central to the topic discussed.
I, as an individual, was born into a reality that pre-existed me and will exist when I make my exit from Earth. My birth appears to me to be a demonstration of the two states of energy. In utero I was potential energy amassing and waiting to be unleashed upon my successful birth to move about the world bumping around from one set of experiences to others, like the steel ball bearing in a pinball machine after being launched by the powerful starting spring and piston to be reenergized by the array of flippers and bumpers that keep me in play. Eventually I make my exit through one of the exit holes through which I drop to become energy at rest waiting to be launched again as a kinetically energized particle to act and be acted upon within the dynamics of reality. Human existence, however, is not a pinball existence. The analogy breaks down quickly because the human individual is not an inanimate, unthinking, unfeeling object knocked around by flippers manipulated by a deity seeking to amuse itself with playful games. This analogy, however, hopefully works to demonstrate how I understand my life as a real expression of potential and kinetic energy states.
While my responses to my inevitable encounter with puberty and the subsequent movements through dating in middle school, going steady, dating in high school, pinning a girl in college, on and off engagements, marriage, divorce and marrying again has the appearance of chaotic motion with no discernible pattern, I was at all times a conscious, thinking individual. Every individual grows and develops. The development is unique to the individual and all individuals develop to a lesser or greater degree depending upon a vast array of particulars. From the minute érōs asserted itself in me, I was engaged to develop to whatever degree was possible for me to achieve into an adult male and partake in whatever life I deemed appropriate for me to live. In short I was born; I grew; I learned, and I lived the best way I knew how to live. To learn means to make mistakes. I made many mistakes. For those mistakes to be beneficial, I had to learn from them. I learned much. Many mistakes, quite possibly most mistakes, are a result of trial and error. It is this mistake-laden path that finally took me to the point in my life when I was able to see, really see, my current wife, my life, our love, and our relationship in the totality of our reality.
The individual must experience agápē existence in the confines of his or her individual life. It is exceedingly difficult to come to terms with agápē if you have never experienced it. This is paramount to understand. For me, I experienced agápē existence through the Wonder and Mystery of reality. It was a profound poetic experience that motivated this philosophical treatise to come to terms with my experience of agápē. In formulating this philosophical treatise, I gained clarity that one of the critical and essential elements was the nurturing of the other to the highest level of humanity that is humanly possible. My current wife was and is substantially critical in this because she is the one that has demonstrated the reciprocity that is likewise a critically essential element of agápē.
Whether or not I can sustain an existence in agápē remains to be seen. The degree to which I can emulate an agápē existence also remains to be seen. These are issues of my personal growth, but I have experienced the reality of agápē, at least for a short period of time. The future has yet to be revealed.
My life is not society. My life is not the civilization in which my life plays out. The society of which I am a part, the civilization of which I am a part, dwarfs me. Society and civilization is a collective of individuals coexisting under agreed upon philía characteristics for mutual benefit. So, while the individual is important, no single individual is of the same magnitude as that of the society or culture. It is significantly critical to understand, however, that agápē can exist within a society or a culture only if it first exists within the individual. If only one or two or three individuals live an agápē existence then the society and culture cannot be said to be an existence in agápē.
What has been established at this point is that:
1. Agápē must first be experienced.
2. This experience exists first of all within an individual before existing in society or culture.
3. My experience at this point instructs me to believe that such an experience is one of the wondrous and mysterious elements of reality.
4. Coming to terms with agápē is not the same as experiencing agápē.
5. A culture and/or society does not exist as an agápē existence until and unless a critical mass of individuals making up that society or culture lives an agápē existence.
These are the prerequisites for establishing a culture or society founded upon agápē existence. Since history seems to indicate that a society needs societal institutions to frame out the functioning of that society to the benefit of that society’s citizenship, let us examine the various institutions of a society living an agápē existence. The basic foundation of each and every such institution must be anchored to the essential characteristics of agápē to facilitate: a) the nurturing of each and every individual to the highest level of humanity that is humanly possible and b) the development and maintenance of individual reciprocity inherent in agápē existence.