What Is An Example Of A Transcendent Quality
Although such costly signals may function as honest expressions of ingroup commitment rather than exploitative supernormal stimuli, given the historic and current preponderance of religious manipulation, it is possible that costly commitment signals are sometimes repurposed for deception and exploitation. Indeed, the continuously improving ability of cheaters to mimic costly signals is what is responsible for the evolution of even costlier honest signals, suggesting that the evolution of unforgeable religious signals is still (and perhaps always will be) a work in progress. Dawkins’ (1976) sister concept of the “meme” suggests that memes (or units of cultural evolution) may benefit from the induction of transcendence without the necessary presence of a human exploiter.
Albeit speculative, I believe that something like the ensuing account of the exploitation of transcendence by Zen teaching may explain the effect of epistemic transcendence on self-sacrifice during war. When discussing matters of religion or transcendence, ambiguity and obfuscation are typical pitfalls. Whether religious or secular, everyone has their own view of what religion is, often focusing on this or that feature to the exclusion of all others. Some stress the rituals, taboos, communal ceremonies, and feelings of belongingness that religions engender (Ginges et al. 2009; Sosis and Bressler 2003). Others view specific beliefs and dogmas about the supernatural as the linchpins of religious observance (Harris et al. 2009). Similarly, “transcendence” can refer to a feeling of connectedness with one’s environment and the beings inhabiting it, to one or another New Age belief about spiritual communion, or to meditation- or drug-induced mental travel to other dimensions and realities.
What a ‘Transcendent Experience’ Really Means
Then, one day in 2008, she learned about a study at Johns Hopkins University looking at people facing imminent death. The research team, led by psychiatrist Roland Griffiths, wanted to know whether having a major transcendent experience — induced by psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms — would help people like Janeen face death with peace rather than despair. So they brought terminal cancer patients into the lab, administered psilocybin to them in a private, controlled setting, and then later assessed how having a mystical experience affected their attitude toward dying. The bedrock of this model is Frankl’s “freedom of will” as a central aspect of human existence in which we would respond ethically and responsibly towards others and the demands of life on us. Wong quotes Frankl’s term “response-abilit” as a focus of our capacity as human beings to respond thoughtfully and morally to the experiences we encounter, and through this we have the ability for self-determination.
Conversely, being under the spell of someone maleficent does not necessarily have to be horrifying to be reproductively costly; indeed, one would expect exploiters to have evolved the ability to elicit seemingly positive affective states in others as a disarming maneuver. “Self-transcendence” is proposed as a way in which individuals might find relief and support in the context of COVID-19, as well as other times of uncertainty. However, the authors propose that the multiple definitions of self-transcendence within existing literature lean towards the complex, sometimes obscure, and imprecisely spiritual. A concern is that this creates a circumstance, where the possibility of supporting self-transcendence in a wider population will become excluding in this complexity. We argue that this much-needed clarity in our understanding of self-transcendence may serve as an inclusive and democratized resource in which to support well-being and resilience in the context of COVID and beyond. For example, a virus that manipulates its host to engage in bouts of sneezing and coughing while around other potential hosts is using the host as an extended phenotype of itself.
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Early childhood, for example, will likely be the stage at which supernatural experiences take precedence. Regardless of whether such experiences are transcendent, Kelemen (2004) suggests that children are, in fact, naturally predisposed to theism. Philosophical definitions of transcendence often emphasize the idea of going beyond or exceeding the limits of human experience, and may focus on concepts such as rationality, consciousness, or the nature of reality.
This is usually accomplished by costly material and emotional signals, as previously discussed. Although children have reported quite intense spiritual and mystical states (Tamminen 1994), such friendship and group-solidifying emotions occur mostly in adolescence and young adulthood (see Atran 2002, pp. 166–169). As discussed by Wright (2009) and Norenzayan et al. (2016), the invention of agriculture led to a gradual, if uneven, rise of ever-more powerful and all-knowing deities who were especially concerned with human moral conduct—a process that finally culminated in monotheism.
Defining quality from different points of view
These definitions are generally grounded in reason and empirical observation, and seek to provide a framework for understanding the world that is not reliant on religious beliefs or supernatural forces. In such states, people typically report feelings of awe and rapture; of time stopping; and of feeling a sense of unity with other people, nature, God, or the universe. Wong proposes that the “will to meaning” is a motivational factor, and the meaning mindset is a cognitive capacity or response to identify and discover meaning in life. He believes these two factors lead to a discovery and experience of self-transcendence.
“Peak” experiences were one of the characteristics of self-actualising individuals identified by Maslow which he defined as wonderful experiences, rapturous, and ecstatic moments (Maslow, 1968, 1970). In these experiences, individuals what is transcendent-based quality would appear to become self-forgetful, unselfish, and ego transcending (Maslow, 1964). An integration or unity within their being was experienced, and between the individual and their sense of the world around them.
As I will elaborate in this section, the propensity for transcendence may be taken advantage of by those who would elicit it in others in order to benefit themselves. Aesthetic appeal may not be sufficient for a manipulator to circumvent the skepticism of would-be extended phenotypes. Better if a manipulator uses both aesthetic and epistemic states to manipulate a victim. However shaky on empirical grounds, the elegance and symmetry of Buddhist concepts such as reincarnation and dependent origination provide aesthetically pleasing—and transcendence-inducing—states of knowledge. As previously discussed, humans are equipped with specialized cognitive mechanisms whose naturally selected function is the acquisition of knowledge relevant to survival and reproduction.
- While there may be some overlap between these two definitions of transcendence, they are ultimately grounded in different epistemological frameworks and ways of understanding the world.
- Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) sought to discover the ultimate foundation of our beliefs of the world and our existence through an understanding of the framework of our own consciousness.
- Although transcendence is defined as the opposite of immanence, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
- He was able to put his own needs and interests aside and see the big picture and how he fits into it.
- The rest of us know only that the experience left her reassured about her place in the universe, whether she was alive or dead.
This scale is one-dimensional, considering only a comprehensive sense of self-transcendence, and measures this construct by questioning the respondent on several characteristics of a mature life. According to Viktor Frankl, transcendence is rooted in our spirituality, and spirituality is the part of humanity that separates us from all other species. One cannot become a fully actualized and “whole” person with reaching self-transcendence, and that requires the individual to come to a satisfactory conclusion about their place in the higher order of things (Wong, 2016).
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