Unique Self Theory
Contextual Quote
"The key insight that guides Unique Self Theory18 is that one of the central dimensions of evolutionary process is uniqueness. That is, one of the things evolution does is to produces the unique, and as evolution unfolds uniqueness increases. This means that the idea of evolution becoming conscious of itself can be reframed it in terms of uniqueness becoming consciousness of itself. The moral implications could not be more important."
- Marc Gafni and Zachary Stein [1]
Description
Marc Gafni and Zachary Stein:
"Unique Self is not another word for separate self or what is sometimes termed the ego self of western psychology. It is not the your particular talents or your personality type as it might appear on a Meyers Briggs test. Rather Unique Self appears most clearly “on the other side” of what is often referred to as True Self. True Self is the singular that has no plural. The total number of True Selves in the world is one. This True Self is only One; its realization effaces the various differences that accrue to the self commonly known and felt, the “skin encapsulated ego.” While overcoming the self and realizing the True Self is the great ambition of so much spirituality and religion, and the great offering of the axial-age religions, this alone is not enough. One the other side of True Self the personal re-emerges. This is not the personal before the impersonal True Self but the personal that transcends and includes the True Self. The non-dual tantric traditions (out of Asia and Egypt) have long maintained that on the other side of True Self is a non-dual return to the world, as the universal shines through the concrete and signal individual. But they did not yet have a sense of the irreducible dignity of the individual that was to enter world culture first through the Hebraic traditions and ultimately through the Renaissance and later the Western Enlightenment. Unique Self Theory integrates Western and Eastern Enlightenment in a higher integral embrace. We seek to valorize the metaphysical dignity of the individual, which emerged from the Western Enlightenment, but to source this dignity in the Unique Self, as opposed to the separate self. We also seek to incorporate the core realization of Eastern Enlightenment, which is that the individual at their core is indivisible from the larger seamless field of being, which we have been referring to as True Self.
Bringing these traditions of Enlightenment together (along with a host of related theories in psychology, sociology, evolution, etc.) opens up a rich landscape of distinctions, practices, and applications, which is the domain of Unique Self Theory.
Unique Self Theory entails the democratization of enlightenment because it points toward an enlightenment of individuation, beyond both ego and True Self, in which the realities of each person’s unique person, gifts, and obligations are re-vivified by their awakening. Enlightenment can no longer be seen as an elite achievement, precisely because each individual is noninterchangeable and irreplaceable and has a unique gift that only they can give. If only a lucky few get to be and act Enlightened, then rest of us—the masses—are by definition living and acting in ignorance and ego. This may have been a workable model before democratic government and before existential risks escalated to the point of placing massive responsibilities on the shoulders of everyday people. Today everyone must be awakened to give their fullest gifts and to do their needed good deeds, and these may not be the gifts and deeds traditionally associated with Enlightenment (i.e., you may not take to sitting on meditating on stage, holding discourse, and all the various trappings of those historically praised and treated as Enlightened). Every individual has the capacity to identify with their Unique Self, and thus to be and act Enlightened, although this capacity is too often occluded or inaccessible. When a group of individuals identify with their Unique Selves it lays the ground for the emergence of a Unique Self Symphony."
Characteristics
Zachary Stein and Marc Gafni:
"Here we lay out the basic ideas in schematic form as a series of related postulates:
1) Evolution is a process that moves from simplicity to complexity and from less consciousness to more consciousness (this is Teilhard’s (1955) “law of complexity and consciousness”).
2) This movement towards greater complexity and consciousness is also a movement towards increasingly unique forms of life.
3) Increases in complexity, consciousness, and uniqueness correlate with increases in creativity and Eros as organismic potentials.
4) Evolution is thus the move from unconscious uniqueness to conscious uniqueness.
5) The reflectively unique self—the organism aware of its own evolutionary uniqueness— becomes a possibility with the emergence of humanity, and can be thought of as a key strange attractor in the evolutionary process.
6) Thus your Unique Self is the personal face of a universal evolutionary process—in this way the qualities of personality participates in the evolution of the universe. "
History
"The notions of Unique Self and Unique Self Symphony emerged at the interface of religious scholarship, psychological meta-theory, and evolutionary meta-theory—expressed collaboratively in different forms by Gafni, Stein and Hubbard. This work naturally integrates with Hubbard’s seminal work expressing and exploring Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential (Hubbard, 2015, revised edition). For a detailed look at the genesis of Unique Self Theory itself, see the special issue of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice (6:1), which is dedicated to Unique Self Theory. The volume was edited by and largely penned by Gafni, with the lead article, The Evolutionary Emergent of Unique Self, A New Chapter in Integral Theory. See also major works by Gafni (2012; 2014) Unique Self; Two Views of Self, on the core articulation of Unique Self theory and the forthcoming work by Stein & Gafni, Towards a Politics of Evolutionary Love. For the first book length treatments of Unique Self Symphony, see: Gafni & Kincaid (2015); Gafni and Hubbard, Becoming the New Human and the New Society (Forthcoming); Gafni, Hubbard & Shmachtenberger, The Universe, A Love Story (Forthcoming)."
Discussion
The emergence of a Unique Self Symphony
Marc Gafni and Zachary Stein:
"To understand the true significance of Unique Self Symphonies a prefatory remark is in order. The sciences of complexity and emergence tell us evolution has a telos, a trajectory.
The trajectory of evolution appears to be towards ever-greater complexity, ever-greater consciousness, ever-greater uniqueness, ever-greater synergy, and ever greater intimacy. These qualities are inter-included and inextricable from each other all as a part of evolution’s arrow. The fifth quality—intimacy—is the one we will focus on briefly as a way to frame the nature of Unique Self Symphonies as an evolutionary emergent.
Beginning with attraction at the subatomic level, one might accurately say that reality is defined by allurement, all the way up and all the way down. From electromagnetic attraction and gravity in the physiosphere (physical reality), to the dynamics of symbiosis and mating in the biosphere (life), to the dynamics of mimetic evolution in the Noosphere (culture), reality self-organizes towards every greater levels of interconnectivity. The interior of interconnectivity is intimacy.
When Unique Selves are connected to each other in small groups new levels of intimacy are achieved. From this intimacy a kind of collective intelligence emerges which is greater then the sum of its parts. Likewise, when Unique Selves gather via the Internet and connect into larger synergistically integrated collectives then a new quality of intimacy is born. The quality of intimacy found in a Unique Self Symphony is a kind of collective intelligence or enlightenment, representing a local apex in the expression of the evolution of intimacy. A genuine Unique Self Symphony contains a complex motivational architecture that is richer and more potent than any known system of economic or social incentives. One is motivated to participate in evolution itself, to give one’s unique gift, and to experience the vital Eros and joy of evolutionary community. Even more motivating is the innovation and creativity that is seen to be unleashed from Unique Self Symphonies. This is a bottom up, self-organizing expression of human creativity, soon set to emerge at scale as a new evolutionary form or structure.
Unique Self Symphonies occur in a state of shared non-duality as individuals cooperate beyond ego. This means all members experience a certain quality of interaction and reflection. Terms like reciprocity, democracy, transparency, and natural hierarchy all come to mind. There is a sense that all individuals are profoundly important and that their unique contributions are essential.
There is no voice in the group that is marginal. There is no hidden discontent among those who feel used, undervalued, or coerced. Talk to anyone in the group and you will get the same kind of positive statements about their participation: they feel like they are a perfect fit in the group, they are empowered and autonomous while also deeply merged in collaboration and communion. Trust and honesty create an opening in which almost miraculous group phenomena begin to occur, sometimes referred to as “Collective Enlightenment.” Contrast this with groups that “succeed” precisely because certain members sacrifice their uniqueness for the sake of the whole. They become distorted into the shape needed by the group and find ways to silence their inner longings to express more of their uniqueness. Importantly, groups that require some members to distort their uniqueness are unsustainable and inefficient; they will not last. This is because of what it feels like to be a part of them. Resentment, fear, alienation, neuroses, and illness, these all follow from the day-to-day distortion of self to fit a social role. It becomes literally imposable for someone in this situation to give their all and try their best. Inefficiencies follow from this. Needs for surveillance and micromanaging arise, as disgruntled group members cannot be trusted to do what is required of them. So while the group my “succeed” for a time and even appear to be synergistic — “like a well oiled machine” — in the long run the group will implode in eruptions of violence, revolt, and self-destructive behavior.
It feels fundamentally different to be a part of a Unique Self Symphony. In this case the emergent collective intelligence and group success is a direct result of Unique Self optimization for all members. There is a felt sense of reciprocal respect and recognition of the unique value of each participant. Each person is aware of their own Unique Self of the Unique Selves of all others. By making use of the unique contours of their puzzle piece, each member of the group merges with and completes both themselves and the larger whole. The Unique Self experience is both the heart of the phenomenon of collective intelligence and the key to its emergence in any given situation. It is also a moral compass, signaling the justice and health of any give social synergy. Groups that function by suppressing uniqueness are almost always unethical. Groups that function by leveraging and respecting uniqueness are almost always just and healthy. For much of human civilization this kind of personal sacrifice and willingness to truncate the self for group needs was held up as an ethical ideal. The result has been societies in which most of the members are living lives of quite desperation. While there have been times when the shared demands of group survival seemingly demanded societies of this type, that time has passed. Now the survival of our species depends on our overcoming societies that distort and limit individuals and creating instead societies that leverage uniqueness and allow for the emergence of Unique Self Symphonies. The possibility of a Unique Self Symphony of indefinite planetary scope, sweeping through cultures and institutions, as the late the Roy Bhaskar predicted, via “a silent revolution of love” — a global awakening, totalized collective enlightenment. Such is the end game of the modern capitalist world-system. The eschaton appears immanent, although its catalyst is not the God of Abraham, but the God of the Market.
Those structures that have for centuries provided for the global hegemony of certain economic classes and interests are failing now to provide for any kind of viable future. The question of “what’s next?” —as asked by Wallerstein and other heterodox economists — is a question about the silent revolution of love, a question about the shape of a society that looks “collectively enlightened” by today’s standards."
More information
From the footnotes:
"On the term “Democratization of Enlightenment" see, Gafni, Radical Kabbalah. pp. 273-278. Integral Publishers, 2012. See also Gafni, Unique Self, pp. 21-22,176-177. Integral Publishers 2011.
Two more popular presentations can be found:
- Gafni, Watkins magazine June 2013, 15:46, http://www.watkinsmagazine.com/the-democratization-of-enlightenment-by-marc-gafni;
- Gafni, “Three Steps to Democratization of Enlightenment,” Integral Leadership Review,” Oct 2012 http://integralleadershipreview.com/7609-three-steps-to-the-democratization-of-enlightenment/. "
- “Concrete utopian theorizing” is not about religious visions of hope or science fiction movies. It is an aspect political praxis and an important method within ethics and philosophy. It consists of articulating preferable futures for society in a principled and realistic way, painting a picture of the practices and personalities that are attainable. It gives a glimpse of easily imaginable utopian options visible from the present. These then serve to guide praxis for individuals and groups, who act not in light of some ideal or abstract code but in light of an actual possible and preferable future. See: Rawls (1971); Bhaskar, (1993) Benhabib (1986).