Cosmic Kingism

A systemic worldview based on the Christian socialism of Martin Luther King Jr. and holistic interpretations of physics.

The King Thing

Martin Luther King Jr. was very expressive on the nature of the individual and the collective. The dual threat of communism and capitalism to his righteous path crystallised into a powerful vision:

“All life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied together into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality…Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.” (source)

In his analysis of communism, King elaborated on this vision of interconnectedness, and of the material and the spiritual:

“According to Communist theory, matter, not mind or spirit, speaks the last word in the universe…cold atheism wrapped in the garments of materialism…

Communism exploits the dreadful philosophy that the end justifies the means. Destructive means cannot bring constructive ends, because the means represent the-ideal-in-the-making and the-end-in-progress. Immoral means cannot bring moral ends, for the ends are preexistent in the means…

Christian gospel is a two-way road. On the one side, it seeks to change the souls of
men and thereby unite them with God; on the other, it seeks to change the environmental conditions of
men so that the soul will have a chance after it is changed.” (source)

It is interesting that, while attacking materialism, King still found a role for materials. He saw material conditions as a potential barrier for the salvation of the soul (not to mention this whole “𝑔𝑎𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 of destiny” thing).

This leads us to consider the physical aspects of morality. This topic has a ropey history, in the form of physiognomy (assessing a person’s character from their outer appearance), then phrenology, and eugenics.

These are all things King stood resolutely against. We can see that his analysis of the physical dynamics of morality are sited in the individual, but clearly stemming from “environmental conditions” rather than being innate to an individual (what with us being made in the image of God and all that).

One can plainly observe environmental conditions degrading morality in many ways. Extreme material want leads to dark places. Only the disempowered and impoverished sell their children, often to keep mouths fed. Those corrupted by greed and excess sit at the opposite moral end of this grim bargain — though of course, this second group has much greater power to resolve these mutually destructive social relations.

Beyond the environment, the body plays it part too — I reflect on the fading of bright minds through dementia, the deleterious effects of addiction and head trauma on thought and behaviour, and of course these bloody fingers of mine which broke routine and steered my mind to write this instead of playing guitar.

It is all performative proof of King’s view that the ends are the means and the means are the end; the great indivisible whole of many parts, having layered interrelated systems with processes inseparable from outcomes.

King presented a truly systemic way of thinking here. He divided matter, mind and spirit, yet these are bound within his singular garment.

For the reasons given above, I find the body and mind are clearly indivisible. As for the spirit, that’s a bit harder to pin down but as something that leaves when our vessel expires that too implies a physical relation.

To fully deliver King’s moral vision requires a better understanding of how these thing exist in the physical realm. This is not an impractical act of truth-seeking, but rather an essential step to living the process implied by that moral vision.

Let’s Get Physical

King was highly critical of materialism as a vehicle for salvation. Presciently, he noted that “Capitalism may lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the theoretical materialism taught by Communism”.

The subjugation, or elimination, of the mind and spirit by materials was a catastrophic error for mankind, in his eyes. He defined the problem of materialism as one of uneven relations between this triumvirate: “Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul… our material abundance has brought us neither peace of mind nor serenity of spirit”. (source)

At its highest level, King’s view of the interrelatedness of materials, mind and spirit is open to physicalist interpretations. Physicalism differs from materialism in that it deals with not just matter, but also spacetime, energy and all the various forces and processes within the universe.

The idea was neither well-developed nor prevalent in King’s time hence he gave it no mention, but his statements on the components within this singular garment of destiny — matter, mind and spirit — suggest these all arise from universal physics. For example, he viewed morality as a structural component of existence — “God has placed within the very structure of this universe certain moral principles”.

The physical mechanisms through which morality is carried out are found in actions — that is to say, a certain interaction of matter, energy and spacetime.

Moral principles can be thought of as a type of universal pattern — a certain theme of actions which bear an enduring and shared moral meaning through the content of their character and the process by which they were caused.

In the realm of physics, this description of action and patterns best aligns with the evolutionary process.

While discussion of evolution is often confined by scientists to a narrow definition about how biological traits are passed on by living things, the evolutionary idea is of much wider relevance.

Astrophysicist Eric Chaisson outlined a view of the creation of the universe, and its continuation into greater complexity, as the process of 𝐶𝑜𝑠𝑚𝑖𝑐 𝐸𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛. Chemist Robert JP Williams also sought to outline this idea more directly in his essay 𝐴 𝑠𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑚’𝑠 𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒, helping us understand evolution as a process of physics rather than just living biology. Lee Cronin’s assembly theory provides a practical framework demonstrating the relation of evolution and complexity.

Their work defines evolution to a more basic sense — it is the process through which the universe causes certain patterns of physical complexity to arise, persist, and change. So evolution is a force which not only shapes biological life, but has also established the laws of physics and all other patterns of existence (living and inert) in the universe.

Returning to King’s ideas, such an evolutionary framework helps us see two specific and interrelated aspects of morality. First is the structural aspect, found within the fundamental workings of the evolutionary process, and second are the manifestations that process creates, which are the resulting moral actions and states.

For King, the first is the work of God and the second includes the work of humanity. This physicalist systemic vision is very different from the cold materialism that he deplored: it is one in which people are agents of, and subject to, a universal morality. It is also one which prizes the complexity that evolution produces — “every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver”.

(There is no pressing reason for one to accept King’s Christian God as the fundamental power at the root of this, though God is the word people have historically used to describe such ideas.)

For people to become conscious of this process of universal morality — to understand, bolster and enact it — is to grant them tools to ensure our existence and thrive as a species.

It is without question that the lack of systemically-defined moral modes of thought (and actions which stem from that) is a driver of human, environmental, and moral degradation. King identified this and it was a regular focus of his work. The continuing increase in material complexity on Earth since his death only strengthens his case, for such thinking is required for the deliverance of sustainable living in the realm of physics and the elimination of needless want.

This is the underlying message in King’s statement “We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality”, and also the root of his existential warning that “Without this spiritual and moral reawakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments.”

Anti-anthropocentrism

There is an additional thought process integral to King’s systemic worldview that is needed to resolve some of the tensions arising from what I have outlined above, and that is to understand that people are agents within the universe, but never the master. In his Christian theology:

“at the heart of reality is a Heart, a loving Father who works through history for the salvation of his children. Man cannot save himself, for man is not the measure of all things and humanity is not God. Bound by the chains of his own sin and finiteness, man needs a Savior.”

While King tirelessly urged people to work to transform the world and each other for the better, he never mistook that for a belief that people are everything. People cannot know all. King was not a humanist: “humanism, thrives on the grand illusion that man, unaided by any divine power, can save himself and usher in a new society”.

At a physical level, we can never probe the smallest aspects of the universe, because there is a physical limit to our ability to be present beside those aspects and measure them. At the other end, we can never grasp the whole of the universe because its vastness and continual evolution greatly exceeds our biological ability to process it. No human method is unlimited by the human scope.

An anti-humanist worldview helps us understand that our senses and our language are specifically human tools rooted in our limitations. Neurological analysis of our language processing has shown how it does not take identical form within each brain, but rather it is a fuzzy concept that varies each time, with every imperfect transmission and deployment.

Even seemingly simple and overtly objective concepts like numbers may fracture upon application — consider the suffering wrought in this world by disagreement over whether a pregnant person constitutes “one” or “two” people. The single universe of many parts is not troubled by such ambiguous abstractions — we should see such issues as a call for both our compassion and our humility.

If we consider the brain as a material from which the mind emerges, and also consider that our moral ideas have a physical, structural basis within that material, then there is the possibility of stretching King’s ideas to say that a claim to absolute truth is a materialist statement.

I believe it’s important to make that stretch because doing so also offers room for a physical definition of the spirit.

“in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance…we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers…we have amazing knowledge of vitamins, nutrition, the chemistry of food, and the versatility of atoms. There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will.” (source)

Atheistic thinkers often dismiss talk of the spirit or God as a kind of magical thinking, but this is mere evasion of the task of looking past the language and grasping the implied systemic function.

All we have are stories built by evolutionary processes, which we then use reflexively to try our best to make sense of the unknowable. We can only deal in human definitions of truth.

Given a physicalist grounding for King’s systemic thought, we can frame the spirit here as our capacity to act as an agent of universal morality. This makes the spirit a relational quality, given that agency rests on both environmental and personal aspects, and shows our spirit expires when our agency does.

This emphasis on connecting the diminution of the spirit with the diminution of agency neatly aligns with King’s personalist demand for our action, with his objection to material want, and also with his repudiation of authoritarian and overly collectivist systems.

It is a worldview that requires our ongoing moral effort to shape the universe, on behalf of the universe, rather than one in which we can sit back in the comfort that truth or answers are fully known — we are not mere observers, we form part of the mechanisms for change.

Conclusion

By combining Martin Luther King Jr’s systemic view of morality with modern physicalist ideas, I have attempted to outline a process-based worldview which traces morality from initial universal aspects, through to its evolutionary emergence in the physical processes that compose human thought, and finally siting that worldview — and the imperative to promote it — within the same evolutionary framework, given it is a form of systemic thought which is essential to the resolution of existential challenges facing humans.

This view centres political and moral action for universal improvement based on systemic analyses, while inviting questioning practice and ruling out totalistic interpretations of the philosophy, given its grounding in the inability of humans to fully grasp universal objectivity. This idea that all the things we know are stories is of course itself a story, but one which gives a framework to understand why certain other stories are harming us at a systemic level and establishes us as the agents of the universe to address that.