Pythagorean Illuminism as a Linux Distribution

Introduction:

Well it only took me seven months to get around to writing my first official post on Pythagorean Illuminism!  I guess when push came to shove, I felt like I needed to be a little more "authoritative" before I started to write about Illuminism (plus the fact that it's so much easier to simply continue reading other people's content rather than producing your own).

Anyway, in the last seven months, I managed to finish the entire God Series, as well as start reading some more "neutral" books on philosophy in order to get a more balanced perspective on some of the basic tenets incorporated into Pythagorean Illuminism (henceforth referred to as "PI"): a good example being "A History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russel.

It's pretty clear that the God Series takes an advocate-only stance vis a vis itself, and a polemical stance against its competitors e.g. mythos-based religion and empirical-based science.  That is to say, it's not necessarily trying to present a balanced analysis of PI or its alternatives, and thus doesn't go out of it's way to present any arguments against itself, other than a few straight-forward arguments they can easily knock down.  One of my aims in this blog, is to present a more balanced take on some of the ideas, from a layman philosopher without an agenda or bone to pick.

But one thing I should make clear though.  If I do differ with them on a point, I will try to explain why rationally, and according to a rational "rule set".  I won't do what  some reviewers have done, which is attack them from a scientific, empirical perspective, or, worse, an emotional touchy/feely perspective.  It's a rational-based system, and you have to examine it from that perspective.  It's really not a fruitful exercise to say something like "well where's the empical evidence for that position".  In other words, I will try to engage them on their own terms.  Their logic is usually impeccable though, so this will be a tough challenge.

My target audience is someone who has read anywhere from one to a few of the books, and thus has some background with the ideas.  As a result, I won't attempt to explain the ideas as I discuss them.  I guess what I'm trying to get across is what I would tell myself if I could go back in time to the point when I had read only a few of the books.  At that time, while I liked most of the ideas, I was worried about some of the beliefs expressed, and wasn't quite sure how much I could "buy" into the overall system as a result.  There's nothing worse than investing weeks of reading time into a philosophy, much less making a life-changing attitude change, if it's going to ultimately pulverize into giant ball of flaming woo-woo .  Hopefully, I can allay some of the same fears of others experiencing this as well, or those who are simply unsure about what to make of all the new ideas.

Introduction to Pythagorean Illuminsim:

Pythagorean Illuminism as a Linux Distriubtion.

I think the best way to understand Pythagorean Illuminism (PI), is to think of it as a Linux distribution.  Let's take the example of Red Hat, one of the earliest Linux distributions.  A linux distribution is composed of several major subsystems: a kernel, a shell, a window manager, a GUI, system tools etc.   You need to have all of the subsystems in place in order to get a fully-functioning, independent, stand-alone distribution.  

There were two major singularity events in the evolution of Linux distributions: one was the creation of the kernel, and the other was the creation of package managers.  Most of the major subsystems for a linux-based system were in place, in the form of GNU, anywhere from 5-10 years before the kernel came along (*1).  The kernel is the most fundamental part of the OS, and also the hardest to write.  Before the kernel, you could only have a hybrid system, where the tools ran on top of a proprietary kernel.  Once the linux kernel came along, it allowed hackers and other technically oriented people to actually create a full, stand-alone system.

(*1) Which is an inversion of the way most OS's evolve, with the kernel, being the lowest and most fundamental part, coming along first, followed by all the user-level tools.

The problem was only hackers could do this -- not exactly a recipe for world domination. In order to glue all the disparate tools together, one had to go out and manually download the source off the web, build them, and somehow glue them together.  Gluing them together was difficult because each tool was developed independently and had unique requirements, or dependencies.  For instance, most linux tools use glibc which is a common library.  One tool might assume glibc version 1.2 and another version 1.5.  If you try to run the tool designed for glibc 1.5 against glibc 1.2, it might crash or behave erratically.

It was also hard to decide which tools to include, as there are usually multiple competitors for each area i.e. several types of shells, several mail clients, several window managers etc.  And some would be well desigined, but unstable, while others would be stable, but poorly desigined.  You needed an expert, someone who really knew all the tools, and had an informed opinion, to pick the best ones i.e. a curator.

What Red Hat did was to create a package system, that tagged subsystems with their dependency requirements, e.g. glibc v 1.2, and then built all the tools to that one level.  This insured that all the subsystems in the distribution were build in a consistent way, with no inter-dependencies issues, and thus were much more stable as a result.

They also curated what they believed were the best tools from all the available choices.  In some cases, if they liked a particular tool, but it was a little buggy, they also provided some basic patches to fix the subsystem to their standard of stability.  Better to commit to a subsystem that has good intent, but a not so good implementation, rather than a subsystem with good implementation but not so good intent.

In effect, Red Hat did three things:

1. Curated the best subsystems from all the myriad possible combinations of subsystems.

2.  Fixed up any poorly implemented (but well intended) subsystems.

3. Provided glue code, in the form of package management, in order to combine all the disparate subsystem in a consistent way.

Which, in a nutshell, is exactly what PI does.  Except they curated, patched, and glued philosphical "subsystems" together, instead of software subsystems.

Most of the "subsystems" in PI are not part of PI proper.  They are standard schools of philosophy that have been around for hundreds, even thousands of years: Idealism, Platonism, Hegelian Dialectic, Monadology etc.   They just picked what they thought were the best, from a mathematical/rational and consistency perspective, tweaked a few of them, and glued them together into their one unique creation: "Ontological Mathematics".

PI as Linux Distribution -- App Correspondence:

We can carry the analogy even further and list what parts of the PI "distribution" correspond to the kernel, which to the essential system utilities, and which to the non-essential (but still very important) user utilities, and finally the "crap apps" (AKA "adware") that you probably want to replace.

Kernel:

There are several choices for what would constitute the kernel of PI: 

the God Equation (Euler's equation)

Monads, 

the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), 

zero/infinity
Ontological Mathematics

Essential System Utilities:

Hegelian Dialectic

Nietzsche/Schopenhauer Will to Power

Dual aspect monism

Telelogy

Logos Gnosticism

NeoPlatonicsm

Non-Essential User Utilites:

Meyer-Briggs personality types.

Jungian archetypes.

Bicameral mind.

Tribuanal mind.

* Note: while these are labeled as "non-essential", they actually contain some of the most interesting ideas, applicable to systems outside of PI.  These might correspond to the "GUI" of the distribution -- maybe not essential, but makes the whole thing a lot more accessible and attractive.

Crap Apps/ Adware*:

Meritocracy (*2)

Gnostic Mythology (archon/ phosters)

BDSM/Sin for Salvation (easily the biggest WTF? of the entire series)

* yes, this is very opinionated on my part.

These are like "SharePoint" in Microsoft Office.  Everyone just wants the Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, but Microsoft insists on throwing in a few loser apps in an attempt to get greater market share for them, of which Sharepoint, a crappy database/message posting app, is probably the best (worst) example.

*2 The authors spend a lot of time on Meritocracy, in particular.   The fact that I am labeling it as a crap app, after reading the entire series, will ban me forever from joining their ranks.  I'll have more to say about Meritocracy later, but I think PI is extremely compatible with a libertarian point of view, in spite of their strident objections to the contrary.  It was the video blogger Illuminatus Pythagoras, an ardent libertarian, who made me realize PI is compatible with libertarianism.  If PI ever went mainstream, I guarantee you the first Cathoic/Protestant split that would occur would be between the establishment Meritocracy wing and a contrary Libertarian wing.

PI as Linux Distribution -- Summary:

In summary,  thinking of PI as a Linux distribution is hopefully a unique and insightful way to look at PI.  By doing this, it conveys several points that may not be obvious.

First, 85%-90% of PI is non-original:  it's standard, well-worked out philosophy.  You may not agree with it, but it came from outside of the "Illuminati" and thus is "non-controversial" or beyond dispute.  By non-controversial, I mean you could disagree with what PI has to say overall but still gain lots of useful ideas.

Second, it highlights the one main unique contribution they do make and that you won't see anywhere else: Ontological Mathematics.   

And third, just like any Linux distribution, you get some degree of  customizing, the mixing and matching, that you can apply to make the system suit your needs (or wants).  For example, in a typical Linux distribution you can override the default app provided with your own choice, or customize desktop GUI to taste.  (I realize the authors would cringe at this statement, as they're absolutely convinced PI is the sole truth and any deviation from it degrades it.  But until one becomes a full Illuminatus, I don't see any harm in picking the pieces you like, as long as it's for your own rational reasons).

In other words, you don't have to accept everything they're saying and just incorporate the best parts into your own personal belief system, if you so choose.

Conclusion:

In this post we tried to understand PI from a different perspective: that of a Linux distribution.  The main point I hope to convey with this analogy is that you don't have to accept all of it, so don't worry if you find one or two things that you find strange or unacceptable.  In other words, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.  But also, one should appreciate what a great value this provides even if they didn't "invent" a lot of the ideas presented.

Overall, PI is an excellent idea catalyst, and it presents it's ideas in a very entertaining, yet thorough fashion.  It's philosophy taught right, and it's definitely worth your time to see it all the way through.

In future posts we will look at PI from other perspectives, and and also do more of a deep-dive on some of the specific components.

More Info:

I also produced a video Ontological Mathematics as a Linux Distribution, created about a year after I wrote this article, that further explores this topic.