A Small Teleology Lesson

Rather than reply to the plethora of Medium posts whose essential message is Me First or The Law of Attraction or Success Secrets or anything else that essentially relates goals to personal achievement, let me say sure, but not so fast.

If you wish to present yourself as a guru of success and achievement, at least consider that a general goal in life can be articulated. In philosophy this might be called teleology. In other words, what is the tendency or aim or result to which anything that is truly successful will tend?

It is at this point that rubber should hit the road, but generally doesn’t. Because the gurus by then have managed to avoid teleology with visions of what we might call narcissistic sugar plums like wealth, respect, admiration, access, hipness and all those other things we so desire.

If teleology is given its due, do we really want to suggest that when all is said and done the result will look like the conventional successes we can derive from a look at the graphics accompanying most advertising? I think not. The most accurate teleology I know does not place the individual and her or his achievement at the top of anything. It places the achievement of evolvement by the community toward more perfect community as the end of life. It’s teleology.

Where then does the person who cottons to the latest success post end up in reality? Is teleology nothing more than an add-on to life that has no relevance to the Koch’s as they go their merry wealthy way? Is there anything that says that attention to teleology is necessary for us to survive?

Yes.

It comes down to truth and beauty, the synonyms of Keats. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”

The Koch’s make billions by pouring more pollutants into water and air than most anyone else. Out of this ugly reality comes untold evils. Nothing says teleology is not hampered by the likes of such folk. But I have pitted my own being on the assumption that teleology will finally out and that it is the obligation of a truly human being to state the teleology in such terms that its truth can hit home and possibly influence things in its direction.

It is the assumption of teleology and of the democratic values that are part of it that we glimpse truth and beauty as we expose its opposites in real life.