In effect, being in the LOGOS, but not of the LOGOS. In this paper, a distinction is drawn between "strategic freedom"-those constrained economic and political freedoms allowed by the strategic LOGOS-and "ultimate freedom"-those wider intellectual and psychological freedoms that are achieved by acknowledging the strategic LOGOS, but refusing to be defined by it. Avoiding the road to serfdom is not the same as taking the road to freedom. Even when democracy is achieved, individuals are tightly constrained by the life-system (or "strategic LOGOS") that they serve. Employing my general dynamic theory of human society-the "dynamic-strategy theory"-it is shown that the road to freedom involves negotiating a major paradox-what is called the "Great Paradox of Life". Both matters are dealt with in this paper. Philosophers have always debated the related concepts of "free will" and "individual freedom", while people throughout the world have fought and died for political control of their own lives. Whether the meaning of life has any intrinsic value is another issue.įreedom is an issue central not only to philosophical enquiry, but also to wider human aspiration. And, most pertinently here, it explains the meaning of life. As argued in this paper, it is the logos that explains the origin, evolution, and future of life on Earth in particular, and in the Universe in general. In turn, this realist general dynamic theory has been employed to construct a model of the hidden strategic logos. These laws have been explored in my books The Laws of History (1998) and The Collapse of Darwinism (2003). These "logosian" laws have been discovered by the author through a systematic observation of the emergence and development of life and human society over the past 4,000 million years (myrs), and by the construction of a dynamic theory that explains these observations. While the laws of physics determine the conditions under which the strategic logos has emerged, it is the laws of the logos-the laws of life and history-that determine the way in which organic life unfolds. This is why the scientific meaning of life is generally regarded as a great mystery. The cosmos, or physical universe, is relatively well known-it is even a subject of popular entertainment-but the logos, or universal life system, has remained hidden and unexplained until recently. ![]() This paper shows how the life-system I call the strategic logos, has emerged within the cosmos, how it deflects natural crises, how it defies entropy, and how it reveals the existential meaning of life. The question about whether the meaning of life is a matter of science or metaphysics can be resolved by examining the life-system underlying human society. I also show how Plato's cave allegory inadvertently undermines his own argument about the theory of the Forms. I frame this argument in terms of the great Chinese shadow-puppet show, which has a long history in that country. This shadow play on the walls of the vast Chinese cave is designed to impress and control the captive population, and to mislead Western observers. In this paper I argue that China has constructed a societal system that is merely a flickering shadow of real strategic societies in the West. Plato's cave of shadows is an effective allegory about the political and economic system of China today. Only when some individuals throw off their chains, leave the cave, and are exposed to the enlightening rays of the Sun are they able to understand the truth of Reality. The cave allegory concerns the struggle of humans to understand the forms by merely observing the shadow play before them. ![]() In REPUBLIC (Bk 7), Plato employs his famous allegory of the cave of shadows to illustrate the difference between the universal reality of the Forms as represented by the Sun, and the ephemeral illusion of the everyday world represented by the flickering shadows on the cave wall.
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