The philosophy of the Flower and the Pyramid

What does the Pyramid want?

The Pyramid is not a conscious thing. It's like a fractal — zoom in on any section, and you will see tiny pyramids. It operates through our minds, but piecemeal, and self-replicating. Ultimately, the Pyramid is a set of ideas that keep us trapped within itself. It is sort of like an organic creature in the sense that it tries to expand to consume more and more, but unlike it in that it is not an organism — it is a goal. What is the goal? The goal of the Pyramid is self-replication. The Pyramid is the concept that subsumes all the interconnected choices and strivings of everyone in society aimed at improving, productivity, efficiency, and other non-expressive goals.

So the Pyramid is like a recursive, decapitated means that tries to substitute itself as an end. Individual human beings are the only ones who can have concrete goals, but when they act in service to the Pyramid, they lose their individuality and instead become part of the machine, and act to create a kind of gravity pulling towards itself, that obliterates the goals of those who are serving it. In this respect, the idea of the Pyramid is like the idea of the Matrix from the 1999 film of the same name — where people are plugged into pods and are serving machines that have uprooted human civilization. In the Pyramid, though, there are no authentic ends it works towards — instead the Pyramid is devoid of authentic values. It is an impersonal process — like an abyss people fall into by implicitly accepting to serve the Pyramid instead of their own goals.

The Flower is a concept separate from the Pyramid altogether. The Flower encompasses your impulses towards positive expression. I use “expression” here in a broad sense — it really means “action,” but I contemplate it more as positive action. Typically those actions are not conflicting with someone else’s actions, unless there is a deliberate attempt to create a conflict. With expression, there is no conflict because there is no competition in genuine expression — understood in a larger context of a society of peaceful beings.

The Flower is a way of thinking about your best life, and what leading it would entail, looking through your individual point of view. So, in this way, the best life is not the person who, for example, helps the most people, but the person who expresses themselves most authentically.

The philosophy of the Flower is that your life is unique and irreplaceable, so you should grow into the unique person that you are. You should try to give expression to your deepest and most authentic thoughts — to color them and share them with others. The reason you should do this is because, as human beings, we are all linguistic creatures. Every action we take is colored by our conceptual, linguistically based faculties. Expression is the way we bring into reality our minds. Essentially, expression is how our consciousnesses connect with the world. So it is through that interface that we find connection, meaning, and purpose. That is because expression is the very essence of what human beings are — conceptual, linguistic creatures.

So, the important thing in the philosophy of the Flower is to try to connect, to cultivate, to listen, to learn, in the aim towards creating the unique expression that is one’s own life, lived authentically. The goal is to create a signature on the universe of what is most important. In this view, most important has more to do with congruence with your values. The question that everyone must answer is — what are your most important values? Each person can only answer that question for themselves. But in the philosophy of the Flower, the most important ones have to do with expression and connection, and not so much with the values of the Pyramid, of ambition, success, etc.

In a way, you must discover what is most important to you. The philosophy of the Flower and the Pyramid can be helpful for that, because it provides a way of identifying what are the values of the Flower, and likely authentic values connected deeply to things you want to express, and what are the values of the Pyramid, concerned with efficiency, or domination. Someone who seeks power over others has less chance to achieve happiness than someone who knows that that is a value of the Pyramid, and not aligned with their personal self-expression.