407 — Cosmos Is Hungry for Value — and You Are Too: Why That Matters More Than Anything

Critique of Yuval Harari’s statements on Human Rights: Human Rights are not fictions, but are grounded in a Field of Value.

Published in

Office for the Future

20 min readAug 2, 2024

Summary: This episode analyzes and critiques Yuval Harari’s statements, which offer us a prism into the Zeitgeist that defines our major institutions and drives reality. He assumes that value is not real, stories are but figments of our imagination, and any experience of meaning is an illusion; therefore, human rights are just a story, an illusion. This view, presented as a given of Cosmos — as being firmly grounded in science — fails to notice that there is a core set of shared patterns across the world of matter, the world of biological life, and the world of human mind. These patterns are patterns of value; they disclose the Field of Value from which everything arises, and they evolve. Value is disclosed in the recognition that there are desired qualities of Reality, qualities backed by the universe, which are better than others, whose manifestation is desired by Reality itself. Human rights are grounded in the Field of Value; they are more real than anything. Without this realization, we have no chance of responding to the meta-crisis.

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Our stories are too small

Here on One Mountain, our commitment is to articulate a New Story of Value that allows us to be the deepest, most potent, most poignant, most true, most good, most beautiful beings that we can be —

to evolve the source code,
to evolve love itself,
to evolve value itself.

But all of that is taking place uniquely in the context of the meta-crisis.

It is the context of a world whose hidden story is:

rivalrous conflict governed by win/lose metrics — a success story,
or a narrow romantic story — this separate self loves that separate self in a particular way,
or an egoic hero’s journey — the hero’s journey that is about me and my personal transformation.

That’s the best that we have, and those stories don’t work.

Those stories are too small. They are not equal to the experience of a global community with exponential technologies and exponential risks.

Our exterior technologies are exploding in ways that are not bound by government, and not bound by law, and not bound by value,
Our interior technologies are impoverished beyond measure.

The gap between wisdom and technology, between interior technology and exterior technology is the meta-crisis.

Telling the New Story of Value is our stepping into the meta-crisis.

This is what we understood — after thinking, and feeling, and crying this, and laughing this for years and years. I came to this conclusion independently. Barbara Marx Hubbard came to this conclusion independently, Zak Stein, Ken Wilber, Lori — everyone. We started the Center because we realized we need to tell the New Story of Value, we need to evolve the source code.

The source code of Reality is story, and we need to evolve the source code.
The source code of Reality is value, we need to evolve value.

By telling this New Story of Value, we change the vector of history. The only thing that ever changes the vector of history is a new story of value.

That’s our context. That’s what we’re doing here. Every week, we come together in community, in intimate communion, as a band of outrageous lovers, disguised as a think tank, disguised as a One Mountain, Many Paths, to participate together in the revolutionary act of evolving the source code.

We don’t do it by declaring things to be true. The declaration has to emerge from blood on the ground.

We spend all of our time deep inside —

contemplating, studying, practicing, reading,
consuming culture whole,
traversing the vectors of human knowing, interior and exterior, in all of the disciplines of wisdom;
and then figuring out how to we weave together all the strands of traditional knowing — pre-modern gnosis, modern gnosis, and postmodern gnosis,
how to purify them of their overreaches and weave their validated insights in a new fabric, a new hieros gamos, a new coming together, and spiral into the future, and create a new possibility.

That’s what we’re doing. We are creating hope, because hope is a memory of the future.

It’s the story that calls us into tomorrow.
It’s the story that can be the strange attractor that changes the vector of history.
That’s where we are. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.

THIS WEEK'S EVOLUTIONARY LOVE CODE:
Value is real. 
Value creates rights. 
Without value, there are no rights.
Value is disclosed in the recognition that there are desired qualities of Reality, qualities backed by the universe, which are better than others, whose manifestation is desired by Reality itself. 
Value is the script of desire, which discloses Reality’s Ought.  
Value is the Yes of the Cosmos.

A direct prism into the Zeitgeist

What is value?

Value is disclosed in the recognition that there are desired qualities of Reality.

It’s not created by human beings.
It’s not a construction.

There are desired qualities of Reality that are backed by the universe, which are better than other qualities. Their manifestation is desired by Reality itself. There is a Yes:

Yes, these qualities are better. No, those are not so good.
Life is a value of Cosmos; murder, anti-value.

I want to show you why this matters so unbearably much. The way I want to do that is, I want to play two clips for you. The first clip is exactly one minute and 30 seconds long, and the second clip is one minute and 37 seconds long. It is three minutes and seven seconds of watching.

These two clips are of my friend Yuval Harari.

Now, the reason that I sometimes talk about Yuval as a foil is not because I believe (like many people do on the web, which is, I think, absurd) that Yuval is some terrible figure, an agent of the empire, who should be attacked, and vilified, and demonized. Nothing like that. I’d be delighted to have Yuval over for dinner. I am sure he is a completely wonderful man. He was my son’s teacher for a little bit at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

I assume Yuval is a beautiful guy; and he is a really bad philosopher. He is a good historian. I read his doctorate on war; it’s a beautifully written doctorate on the nature of war, and a history of a certain segment of time of war. But his public books represent uncontaminated material (It’s a phrase that one of the greatest scholars of medieval literature, Chaim Soloveitchik, shared with me when I was 19 or 20).

There are certain writers who give you a direct prism into the Zeitgeist. They’re not forming the Zeitgeist, but they are unwitting or witting agents of the Zeitgeist, and they reflect what the Zeitgeist is actually thinking, but often doesn’t say. They pierce the veil, and they disclose what’s actually driving the Zeitgeist, what’s actually driving reality.

Yuval is one of those figures. He is an unconscious (and sometimes conscious) parrot of conclusions of modernity and postmodernity, or a particular strain of conclusions, which he articulates as givens of Cosmos. Meaning: if you don’t think that way, there is something wrong with you. These are expressions of the basic mainstream scientific legacy institutions — the knowing that defines universities, policymakers, the tech plex, most economic planners, communications, and education — all across the board.

I want to show you two clips, and then I want to comment on them from the perspective of the New Story of Value. We will then begin to understand what One Mountain is, why we need a New Story of Value, and how desperate we are for that New Story, without which we can’t respond to the meta-crisis, we can’t respond to existential risk —

to risk to our very existence, the death of humanity,
or to the potential death of our humanity, of the depth of what it means to be a human being.

Clip 1: Human rights is just a story — Noah Yuval Harari [1 minute 30 seconds

CLIP 2: Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies | Lex Fridman Podcast #390 [1 min 37 sec] (Start at 2:41:13 mark)

Yuval Harari is reflecting a hidden deep consensus

What Yuval is articulating is not a fringe position, but the mainstream position of legacy institutions around the world. He is reflecting the academic consensus on value and the nature of Reality, which lives in the legacy institutions that define policy and reality. It’s a big deal. It’s more than a True Self bypass. It’s a very deep conclusion drawn from studying the classical sources that are shaping the conversation today.

Yuval is dead wrong, to be clear. Yuval basically says, in any number of places — I’m giving a direct quote — that there is no meaning to life whatsoever. Any claim that there is a meaning to life is an illusion. If human subjectivity were lost from the planet, nothing would be lost.

If human subjectivity — meaning the interior experience of human beings and our entire experience of value and living — were lost, there would be no actual loss. Nothing would be missing, because meaning is made up. It’s not true. Any sense that there is a meaning to life itself is a pure illusion.

That’s a big deal.

Yuval assumes that value is not real. His understanding is shared by many, many, many people. Barack Obama says, best book ever, this book’s fantastic. Bill Gates, yeah, this is my book. Jeffrey Bezos, this is my book. Sam Harris, wow, this is my book. Lots of prime ministers, kings, heads of corporations, this is my book. They have all read this material, and they say this is great; this is my book.

He is reflecting a very deep consensus.

It’s a hidden consensus. No one actually says this stuff out loud. You can read the whole book and almost not notice this material. But it chills the very heart of Cosmos, and undermines our very core ability to respond to existential risk.

So, Yuval’s first assumption: value is not real. Value is made up. “Value is a social construct.” His words. “It’s a fiction.” His words. “It’s an imagined reality.” His words. “A figment of our imagination.” His words.

For example, Gaddafi’s Libya — Gaddafi, who was a brutal, strongman, who violated, with every form of torture, every form of human rights we can imagine. Yuval says, “Why is everybody so upset with Gaddafi in Libya?” Human rights is just a story. It’s made up. It’s like money. It’s like a corporation — completely made up.

Of course, he’ll often cite, as evidence for stories being made up, made-up stories — that is, stories that are really made up. He says, let’s take a look at Christian fundamentalism, or Sunni Islam, which says that Shiite Islam needs to be completely destroyed in one way or another, according to certain texts. Those are made up stories. Or let’s look at a particular version of communism held by Mao’s Red Guards who attacked everyone else in the country. Why? Because they were following a made-up story.

But of course, there are made up stories!

Yuval, my friend, that’s intellectually disingenuous, and unimaginably stupid, and deceitful, and not true on top of the whole thing. Of course, there are made up stories in the world. The fact that there are made up stories doesn’t mean that there are no real stories, the structure of story is not true.

And of course, there are socially constructed values that are actually fiction or imagined. Of course, that’s true; but that doesn’t mean there is no value. That doesn’t mean value is not real.

Value is the irreducible rightness that lives in Cosmos for its own sake

What is value?

Value is not a social construct that we froze into everlasting time and refuse to change. That’s the value that’s critiqued by modernity and by post-modernity. This is not what value is.

Value is a structure of Cosmos that desires an Ought, which lives in the very structure of Cosmos itself.

Value is the quality of irreducible rightness that lives in Cosmos for its own sake (not because it’s instrumentally right).

And value evolves.

There is a structure of value — and then, as that value clarifies, as it interacts with human beings, human beings gradually clarify and discover more and more of that value. More and more of that value is disclosed and revealed.

Eros is a value of Cosmos. Eros equals the experience of radical aliveness, desiring ever deeper contact and ever greater wholeness. So:

Desire is a value.
Radical aliveness is a value.
Deeper contact is a value.
Greater wholeness — separate parts forming a larger whole — is a value.

These are four values. Those are all values of Eros. Eros itself is Value. That’s the ErosValue Cosmos.

Now, that value evolves. Eros follows its own desire, and the desire is always for more value. Eros is always desiring more value. It’s what Whitehead means when he says, Cosmos has appetite for value.

At the very inception of Cosmos, there is an entire Field of Value.

There are all the mathematical values.
There are the sets of relationships between different kinds of quarks.
Protons and neutrons are a set of relationships that have a particular quality, they’re a particular value of Cosmos, and they play in a larger mathematical set of values.

Each value is a particular quality of Cosmos. Cosmos is not neutral. It’s not empty. Cosmos is filled with different qualities. Those different qualities are Value.

And then, value evolves.

Hydrogen is a value, helium is a value, nitrogen is a value. It’s a particular set of relationships with a particular quality, with a particular vector, which moves in a particular direction — it has a telos, it has a desire, and Cosmos doesn’t stop at hydrogen, it doesn’t stop at helium, it doesn’t stop at nitrogen, it keeps going. It creates deeper contact, greater wholes, more value.

That’s what Cosmos does. That’s its nature.

Then, as this value unfolds, it discloses more and more clearly. Eros discloses more and more clearly. We go through the world of matter, and we get into the world of biological life, and then we get into the world of human life — and gradually, Eros discloses as conscious loving, conscious caring — following each other, loving each other, holding each other.

But the configuration of relationships, and of holding between different parts — different values that hold each other and form larger wholes — lives all the way down in Cosmos. That’s a feature of Reality.

Let me say it another way.

Value is the aspirational Ought that’s backed by the universe.

Or:

Value is an intrinsic Ought which allures Reality towards its next level of fulfillment of depth and of wholeness.

In other words, value is the meaning structure of Reality. Value is the meaning and aspirational need and desire of Reality.

Value is both being and becoming

Value has two dimensions:

First, value is the very space in which the entire manifest world arises. The entire manifest world arises in a Field of Value. This is the quality of being.
Then there is another quality of value, that’s the quality of becoming. It is not just the space in which all of Reality arises, it is the need and desire of Cosmos. Cosmos has needs, Cosmos has desires, and the need and desire of Cosmos is value.

Or you can say it like this:

Evolution is love in action, or ErosValue in action, in response to need.

Need generates more contact, and new levels of wholeness. There is a need that early elements have — to evolve, to deepen, to create deeper intimacies, to create deeper configurations of relationship.

Evolution is this progressive deepening of intimacy. It is this progressive deepening of sets of relationships of love, of holding, of embrace, of new wholeness between parts. That’s what evolution is. That’s its nature.

Or: Evolution is love in action in response to desire.

Need and desire disclose value.

Value as being is the space in which everything arises, so value is not hard to find — value is impossible to avoid. Value is the Field in which all of Reality arises. Value (as becoming) is the desire for more value. The becoming quality of value is that value evolves. Value is not static.

For example, life is a value of Cosmos. Greater intimacy is a value of Cosmos.

It begins with mathematical values. It begins with subatomic particles. There is a very limited number of ways (a hundred plus something ways) that subatomic particles can form an atom. Then you have an unimaginable amount of ways that atoms can form a molecule. There is this increase in possibilities of contact. There is this increase in new possibilities of intimacy. So, intimacy is a value of Cosmos — more and more configurations of intimacy, more and more configurations of relationship —

which create more and more wholeness,
and more and more possibility,
and more and more vectors of attention,
and more and more depth in Cosmos.

Value evolves because Cosmos desires more value. Cosmos has needs and desires. Need and desire creates more value. That’s what generates Cosmos. Cosmos evolves because there is this desire inherent in Cosmos — this appetite inherent in Cosmos — for more wholeness, for more value, for more possibility, for more attention, for more Eros, for more intimacy, for more uniqueness. These are the plotlines of Cosmos. And that is the cosmic story.

There are common patterns of value in the worlds of matter, life, and human mind

In Yuval’s book, there are exactly two paragraphs — one paragraph on the world of matter, another paragraph on the world of biology — and then he starts the book. He says, now history starts.

No, no, no, actually, the world of matter is a world which is driven by an appetite for value, and that appetite for value evolves. We go through all the world of matter — that’s the first Big Bang. It then triumphs in the Second Big Bang (the emergence of biological life) — and a similar set of patterns of value governs the world of matter and the world of biology. Now, there are more patterns. There are deeper patterns, there are new patterns. There are new emergences in the world of biology, but there is a core set of common patterns.

That’s what systems theory understood. Read Ervin Laszlo’s 1972 book on systems theory (Introduction to Systems Philosophy: Toward a New Paradigm of Contemporary Thought), or his Evolution: The Grand Synthesis. In both of them, he sums up systems theory as the realization that there are common patterns in matter, and in life, and in the depth of the self-reflective human mind. Those are common patterns of value.

Reality is going somewhere. Reality has plotlines. Reality is a story.

Harari always says, stories just work because they create coherence.

No! The reason stories create coherence is because Reality is constructed from stories, from narratives. Atoms have stories. Atoms are a story —

there are causal relationship between events;
there is a plotline, a telos, a direction;
there are new possibilities creates through crisis;
there is some degree of freedom in the story.

An evolving freedom, an evolving intimacy, an evolving Eros — those are values of Cosmos. That’s the structure of Cosmos itself. You can’t skip the world of matter, and skip the world of biology, then go to the human world and say they made it all up. No, they didn’t make it all up.

There is a Field of Value. And that Field of Value evolves and unfolds.

Let say it differently:

Value is the script of desire of Reality.

This cuts through everything we just said.

Or: value is the meaning and the aspirational need, the demand of Reality.
Or: value is the script of desire which discloses Reality’s Ought.

There is an Ought in Reality. Reality is trying to go somewhere. It wants more life, and it wants more depth.

Value appears as a story. Value is a story. It’s a becoming.

Value is both the space in which everything arises, and it’s the plotline of becoming.

Reality has First Principles and First Values. Those First Principles and First Values are the plotline of Cosmos.

Cosmos wants more uniqueness, more individuated uniqueness, wants more clarified desire, desire is a value of Reality. In the First Principles and First Values books, we’ve listed 18 core structural values of Reality that drive Reality all the way through matter, life, and mind.

Harari has literally no cognizance of any of this, because the modern and post-modern world just assumed that Reality was inert, and lifeless, and materialist, and has no meaning, and everything is a pure social construct; and if stories are powerful, it is simply because they cohere people. No. Stories cohere Reality, because they are part of the structure of Reality.

First Principles and First Values are storied. They have a narrative arc. They are telling the story of Cosmos. Eros moves to more and more, deeper and deeper unfoldings of chapters of value in the great arc of the universe, and it’s an arc which moves towards value.

Story is real.
Story operates at every level of Cosmos.
Story evolves.

The story of evolution is the evolution of First Principles and First Values.

Values create rights

The next sentence in the code is:

Values create rights.

Rights come from values.

Value means need and desire. Need and desire create value. Clarified need and desire create clarified value.

Life is a value. What do I need to have life? I need food — so, nourishment, feeding someone, that’s a value. Sustaining life, value. That’s a need.

I need and desire oxygen. Oxygen is a value. Do I have a right to air and a right to food? Yes. Why do I have a right to air and a right to food? Because I need them, because I desire them.

I need and desire food, so, I have a right to food.

Let’s deepen it.

Let’s say that uniqueness is a value. Now, I have a right to foster my uniqueness.
Let’s say communion is a value. Now I have a right to create communion, relationship.
Let’s say desire’s a value. Now, I have a right to desire.

Value creates rights.

If there is a value of freedom and choice — in other words, life is not mechanistic, there is a degree of freedom — then I have a right to freedom

When we talk to each other, there is an implied experience of freedom, which is what creates aliveness between us; without that, there would be an anti-life, a deadness. There is an implicit sense of aliveness in Cosmos. Life demands a dimension of freedom. If you have a mechanistic universe, you don’t have a story, you have a mechanical manual. Freedom is a value of Cosmos. If freedom is a value of Cosmos, then I have a right to freedom.

And that right evolves.

At the subatomic level, it’s but a wisp of freedom. Then there are beginnings of greater freedom as we go up the evolutionary chain, to biology and then to the depth of the self-reflective human mind. As I deepen at each level, I get more and more freedom.

If you don’t have this, then what do you have?

You have my friend, Yuval, who gets up and says, human rights is just a story, and all stories are made up. And don’t go to stories, stories aren’t real. Just feel and respond to what’s in front of you.

No.

Story is the structure of Cosmos, and all stories are stories of value. Value creates rights, and value creates responsibilities.

But If I say there is no Field of Value, then —

there are no rights, then there are no human rights,
then love is not real,
then I don’t have a right to be alive, I don’t have a right to life itself, because there is no value.

It’s all a coincidence of a meaningless cosmos.

We have to ground Cosmos in the Field of Value

Now, let me ask you a question.

Do you think we have a bat’s chance in hell of responding to the meta-crisis — in a way that’s profoundly human, profoundly filled with love, profoundly compassionate, profoundly dignified — if we can’t even establish that life is a value, or that value is real, that any story of value is real?

Yuval is saying human rights aren’t real because he says story is not real. and value is not real, and stories of value aren’t real. Since value discloses rights, and there is no value, so there are no rights. Wow!

Does that matter? That matters beyond imagination.

If we don’t go back and ground Cosmos in a Field of Value —

then love is not real,
then life is not a real value,
then goodness is not a real value,
then truth is not a real value,
then beauty is not a real value.

If truth is not a real value, then the information ecology collapses.

If life is not a real value, then we’ll sacrifice huge swaths of life (as Thanos did in the Avengers movie) in order to save the rest of the Earth, we’ll kill half of the Earth, or kill the whole Earth — just do a reset on the whole thing, and leave a bunch of tech billionaires in bunkers, as was described by a number of writers.

That’s actually what’s happening today.

We need to ground Cosmos in a Field of Value, which means we have to re-vision value theory clearly and accurately.

That’s what we are starting to do in the First Principles and First Values book, and I want to ask you to read it, and comment on it, as we are now going to the next step and beginning to write the next step of the David J. Temple series.

Value is revolution.

It’s a value revolution. It’s an erotic revolution. Value is Eros. It’s an erotic revolution, it’s a sensual revolution. Sensemaking is sensual. We have to ground ourselves in the sensuality of the Field of Eros, which is the Field of ErosValue, which then allows us to do sensemaking, which allows us to establish human rights.

Value is Reality’s script of need and desire, which discloses the Ought of the universe. And the Ought is the inherent yearning and aspiration of the cosmic process, as it shows up in the world of matter, life, and mind — and in your particular life.

Value is the script of need and desire that’s backed by the universe.

(I am just giving you different ways to say this.)

First Principles and First Values are the plotlines of the Intimate Universe. Clarified desire discloses authentic value. Value is disclosed in the recognition that there are desired qualities of Reality — qualities backed by the universe.

I’ll give you one more. Better or worse is the nature of Cosmos disclosed by need and desire, the appetite of the universe. Value is the recognition of intrinsic inherent worth which discloses the need, desire, and demand of Reality.

Value is the intrinsic appetition, appetite, need, desire, or demand of Reality, which discloses the omni-coherence of the Intimate Universe. Omni-coherent means all of Reality is coherent, all of Reality is organized in patterns of value, and everything the universe does is to move towards that value, ultimately.

You can’t be upset by anti-value, or by evil, or by suffering if there is no Field of Value. It’s only the Field of Value that allows me to challenge anti-value.

If there is no Field of Value, the Hobbits can’t challenge Sauron. And there is no one to walk with Gandalf, because why shouldn’t there be just a world of Orcs and anti-value? But the lush green fields of the hobbits — that’s the Field of Value.

Value is the irreducible rightness of the Cosmos, which is both eternal and evolving.

Value is the recognition of the inherent appetition and desire of Reality.

Value is the nature of Eros. Eros is Value. Eros is ErosValue.

Without this, there are no human rights. Human rights don’t exist. Rights have to be rooted in a Field of Value.

In modernity, you could say rights are self-evident (“We hold these truths to be self-evident.”) That was a deist ploy to cover up the fact that we don’t know how to ground rights in anything, because we’ve read too much David Hume, and we’ve interpreted Kant wrongly.

We need to ground rights in a Field of Value. Otherwise, you have Harari’s statement, the world is meaningless. If human subjectivity was lost from Cosmos, there would be no loss at all. There would be nothing to grieve.

If we can’t grieve the possibility of existential risk, we can’t respond to existential risk.

But what is grief? Grief is the experience that I’ve lost value. I only grieve if I lost value.

Shame is the experience that I am alienated from the Field of Value. Shame is not just toxic shame, but the shame that I’m not being the full human being I should be, I’m alienated from the Field of Value — the good shame, the holy shame. If there is no Field of Value, there is nothing to ever be ashamed of and you just become “my precious,” a murderer, a violator of humanity.

To become a lover, to become a mad lover, to become a mad, erotic, ecstatic, and sensual being, I have to be grounded in the Field of Value.

Value is the hottest, the most sensual, the most erotic structure of Reality itself, which is Eros.

I know that was a little hard. That was hard work. But story is real, and value is real, and stories of value are real. And human rights are more real than anything.

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