Imagine that you have just been born. Certain terms might be used here in a slightly different context than you are used to, so try to ignore what you already know about the meaning of these terms (tabula rasa) and engage in bracketing and shoshin.

The One

"The One" shall refer to the ultimate, transcendent principle which relates to unity and simplicity, beyond all multiplicity and distinctions. The One can be seen as "godly" in the sense of "The divine encompasses everything".

Terms for this concept in different frameworks include:

Especially creation myths, which are always related to a world view's concept of the One, are, by definition, epic. Subjective human experiences of the One are the primary object of study in neurotheology.

The One can fundamentally not be "proven", because proofs need to exist within a space that has notions of "true" and "false" (see dualism), which is not the case for the monist One. Strictly dualist domains (particularly formal logic) are always somehow paradoxical and incomplete when they are applied to self-referential cases, i.e. there are always fundamental limitations in formal systems or theories, such as:

That is also why the fundamental question of metaphysics, Why is there anything at all?, cannot be answered. After all, the defining characteristic of an answer to a question is that it is true. However, this question is beyond any realm with the notions of "true" or "false". In terms of Eastern religions, this can be associated with the two truths doctrine. And consequently, depending on the interpretation of that, with the catuṣkoṭi and four-valued logic.

The human experience

Systems

Separation

"Separation" shall refer to the intuitive observation that a core part of the human experience is that some ideas, concepts, people etc. appear separate, separable and distinguishable from each other.

Separation is purely phenomenological, i.e. it describes "how the world appears to be" from the subjective human perspective.

Emanation

Because the One "includes everything", it also includes every concept and its opposite, including the unification of the two human concepts "monism" and "dualism" as well as the unification of "separation" and "unity". This concept shall be referred to as "emanation": Separation emanates from the One.

Consequently, the field of systems theory (i.e. the fact that, within the human experience, there are components which can form systems at all) directly emanates from the One as well.

Terms related to this observation include:

Constructing morality

Subjectivity

"Subjectivity" shall refer to the observation that within the ubiquitous system emanating from the One, "you" are just one of the parts. It refers to a certain level of separation you perceive between what you call "I", "ego", "self" etc. and your "environment".

Now

"Now" shall refer to your subjective experience of what is "real" in this exact moment, i.e. your self-concept experiencing consciousness. This implies a certain separation between "Who am I?" and "Who am I not?".

The Now can include aspects such as:

  • how your body feels right now
  • which emotions you currently feel
  • what your cognitive focus is currently directed towards
  • the thoughts you are having right now (e.g. these words, thinking about other things, people or locations, the past, the future, memories, ideas, plans, dreams etc.)
  • the feeling that time is passing, that you know whether one event was "before" or "after" another (temporality) and, most importantly, that you are aware that your current Now can influence your future Now (prospective memory)

Primordial striving

"Primordial striving" (German: Urwille or Urstreben) shall refer to an individual's fundamental inherent, intrinsic will, drive, motivation or urge. From the human perspective, it can be seen as the single compass "towards" the One.

Related terms include:

Terms related to an overly enthusiastic, uncritical primordial striving include fanaticism and zeal.

Additionally, some beliefs have a notion of concepts which bring humans further away from the One, and which are "fixed" through that respective belief, such as:

Primordial trust

"Primordial trust" (German: Urvertrauen) shall refer to the deep-seated confidence of an individual in a specific primordial striving. It can be seen as trust by an individual in that their "compass" towards the One actually points in the "right" direction. Primordial trust is the possibility of belief itself.

Related terms include:

Primordial trust is the most vulnerable core aspect of every belief system, because when this trust is somehow eroded or even invalidated, that constitutes the detachment from that respective belief system overall. One of the most obvious examples of this in Western societies, primarily directed towards the Christian god, is Nietzsche's "god is dead".

Tenets

"Tenets" shall refer to the different rules, laws, principles, values, guidelines, teachings etc. which an individual attributes as authoritative for how to practically follow a certain primordial striving. Tenets aim to answer "Why this and not that?" and, for some types of tenets, even "This is how I want to live" for every imaginable situation in an individual's life. Such tenets, which are applicable to every aspect of an individual's experience of the world, shall be called universal. Tenets are an individual's moral compass.

Of course the One is not "achievable" and it's also not possible to be "closer" or "further away" from the One, because it's neither a location nor a state of mind nor anything else "specific". This means that fundamentally, all tenets are constructed by humans. For world views with a notion of worship, the One is the target of worship, the primordial striving is why it is worshipped and tenets specify how it is worshipped.

Notions of "ethics" and "morality" in a certain world view are directly derived from that world view's tenets. This means that fundamentally there cannot be any "right" or "wrong" primordial striving, because the tenets associated with the primordial striving themselves define what is morally right or wrong. On the level of sociology, i.e. when individuals interact with each other, tenets are thus closely related to social control.

Examples include:

  • dharma in Dharmic religions (with the striving towards a notion of the One like nirvana) with certain concrete rulesets, principles or practices that claim to make someone more aligned with dharma, such as
  • will of God in Abrahamic religions (expressed in different creeds, resulting in e.g. in the Torah, Bible and Qaran)
  • li in Confucianism
  • asha in Zoroastrianism
  • maat in Ancient Egypt
  • logos in Stoicism
  • natural order in the context of natural law
  • law, especially in modern nation states, typically to strive for goals like maintaining order, promoting the "common good" etc.
    • typically law is "less universal" than the other types of tenets mentioned above, because often it is negative, i.e. it tells people what not to do
    • in contrast, rights are formulated in a positive way (see e.g. three generations of human rights), i.e. they say what people should do
    • in some states, there can be a significant overlap with religious law
  • Värdegrund
  • different authoritative works in ideologies like capitalism, socialism, communism (e.g. "The Communist Manifesto"), liberalism, fascism (e.g. "Mein Kampf"), anarchism etc.
  • attempts to discover a primordial striving common to every human, in the context of philosophy and psychotherapy
  • many communities also construct tenets without an explicit connection to any notion of the One, such as the 10 principles of Burning Man, or otherwise typically labelled as something like "code of conduct", "ethical guidelines" etc.

People following a certain world view typically have a notion of seeing the act of adhering to the respective tenets associated with their primordial striving (see below) as

And, consequently, the opposite is seen as

Roughly speaking, an individual can respond to breaches of tenets (both by themselves and by others) along a spectrum of emotions, with the two extremes being:

  • guilt, shame, fear, remorse, and regret, with variations such as anger, hatred, contempt, disgust, horror, and social disapproval/stigmatization depending on the specific context
  • self-reflection, compassion, empathy, integrity, accountability, forgiveness, desire for understanding, respect, healing, gratitude

Pleasure

"Pleasure" shall refer to the experience of subjective well-being. Colloquially, it can be interpreted as simply "feeling good".

More concretely, this concept of pleasure can roughly be grouped into three aspects. Note that these aspects should not be seen as "stages" or a "sequence", but instead as parts which are all equally relevant without any specific order. They are closely related to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Satisfaction

"Satisfaction" shall refer to the fulfillment of basic needs in the Now, such as:

  • food, water, warmth, rest (surviving)
  • physical or emotional safety (feeling safe)
  • trust, sexuality, belonging, self-confidence and freedom (feeling like your presence is appreciated and that you are trusted and loved, both by yourself and by others)

Stable satisfaction

"Stable satisfaction" shall refer to a state of mind where satisfaction is something you perceive as stable, i.e. where your Now includes the emotion that you are not seriously afraid of re-entering a status where satisfaction not fulfillable.

The main difference is that satisfaction is perceived as an immediate part of the Now, while stable satisfaction is just a reassuring thought. For example, applied to hunger:

  • When you're satisfied in regards to hunger, you are full.
  • When you are stably satisfied in regards to hunger, you can be hungry, but you know that your fridge is full, that you have enough money to go to the supermarket or that there's another stable source of food in your life.

Stable satisfaction can thus include factors such as:

  • knowing that you have stable structures around you which ensure that you always have enough food, water, warmth and housing
  • knowing that you genuinely appreciate your own body and feel safe in your own mind
  • feeling a sense of belonging and living in circumstances which you like calling „home“, both physically and socially
  • having structures where the fulfillment of some of your needs doesn't contradict the fulfillment of others (= freedom)
  • having people in your social circles with whom you feel like you are not judged for embracing what feels genuinely pleasurable (= "authentic" or "true") to you
  • knowing that you can always love and that you are always loved, no matter what happens
  • knowing that you have found peace with death, both your own and those of parts of your environment (e.g. other people you love)
  • knowing that, even if some of your basic needs are not fulfilled, you always have the hope that it will get better and that you always have the strength to act accordingly
  • knowing that, even in situations which feel immensely catastrophic, confusing or hopeless at first, you know that you can handle this, both through your own resilience and possibly through a support network around you, people who care and people who help you find your own way back towards stable satisfaction
  • having daily routines which consistently "feel good" and which you want to keep, because you know that they contribute to your pleasure in the future
  • overall, having a generally positively anticipatory outlook into the future, especially with the feeling that one's dreams seem genuinely realizable

Some associated terms for stable satisfaction include (both English and German):

Peak experiences

"Peak experiences" refer to experiences in which a subset of the aspects of satisfaction is strongly emphasized temporarily. Note that the temporary nature is what makes them pleasurable, i.e. living an entire life in only a single peak experience would typically not be sustainable or feasible in the long term.

This is yet another term from Maslow, who described peak experiences as "rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter."

In practice, peak experiences can come in varying intensities. Some examples include:

  • a deep meditative session
  • creative flow while creating art (e.g. writing, composing, painting etc.)
  • being in a deep conversation with someone where you don't even notice time flying
  • being at an event where you have many experiences which feel incredibly meaningful, pleasurable and inspirational to you (e.g. a burn)
  • the mystical experience of an intense, but highly insightful trip on psychedelics
  • a highly pleasurable sexual or sensual session (e.g. tantra, amazing orgasms, subspace and topspace in BDSM etc.)
  • dancing all night long to music you love and getting lost in the music (e.g. at a rave)
  • feeling a rush of gratitude for someone's genuine presence in a vulnerable moment
  • awe-inspiring natural encounters (e.g. watching a sunrise from a mountaintop after a long hike)
  • religious celebrations for respective believers such as Yom Kippur, Eid al-Fitr, Christmas, Vesak, Chinese New Year and many more (pretty much all cultures have institutionalized peak experiences)

Some associated terms include:

  • euphoria (Euphorie)
  • ecstasy (Ekstase)
  • bliss (Glückseligkeit)
  • rapture (Entzücken)
  • elation (Beschwingtheit)
  • flow in the works of Csikszentmihalyi
  • dhyana in buddhism
  • samprajñata samādhi in hinduism

Love

With the previous definition of pleasure, "love" can be defined as the desire to bring pleasure into the Now. It can be directed towards anything – the self, another being, nature or anything in between. Some associated terms include:

Wisdom

In a similar fashion, "wisdom" can be defined as the knowledge of ways to bring pleasure into the Now. Some associated terms include:

Flourishing

Finally, in this context, "flourishing" is defined as a hypothetical, idealized state of earthly (!) existence where pleasure in all its aspects (as mentioned above) is the norm in all areas of life for everyone.

Some associated terms include:

Henophilia

The term

"Henophilia" is a newly constructed term which combines:

  • "heno-": prefix derived from Greek "hen-" (ἕν), meaning "one" or "unity"; in this context related to the One
  • "-philia": suffix derived from Greek "philos" (φίλος), meaning "friend", "beloved" or "having a strong affinity for", denoting a close, affectionate relationship implying a deep sense of respect and love

Thus literally, "henophilia" means "unity love", implying both "loving unity" and "unity is love". It acknowledges that, because all world views are constructed, humankind can make a conscious choice on how it wants to construct a world view.

Connecting the dots, henophilia is a world view consisting of:

  • flourishing as the One
  • love as the primordial striving
  • wisdom as the tenets
  • primordial trust in yourself

Expressed as a single commitment: "I strive for flourishing". When meeting another henophile, it is represented by the fundamentally trusting sentiment of "I know that you strive for flourishing and you know that I strive for flourishing". In addition to encouraging the conscious creation of pleasure-related synergies ("I want to do you good") it also has a profound impact on conflict resolution, because the focus is shifted from a confrontative mindset to an empathetic, reflective approach akin to mutually asking "How did I hurt you?" and finding a compromise on "How can I do better next time?". This means it is also closely connected to relational-cultural theory as well as nonviolent communication.

Henophilia can be seen as a path towards the highest stage of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, "transcendence". Answering "to be or not to be?" with an enthusiastic "let's be!". It aims to make the numinous ultimately joyful. It is Divine Eros. It is identical to feminist theology, as outlined by Ruether, as well as Krausism.

It means applying the principles of good sex to the rest of one's life.

Another term closely associated with Henophilia is "holistic regeneration" and thus topics like community building, inner growth-oriented spirituality, ecohumanism, metamotivation, collaborative governance, commons, positive psychology, holistic flourishing, etc.

Characterizing henophilia

First, let's make some more observations:

  1. subjectivity: I recognize that pleasure can mean something different for every being.
  2. reflection: I recognize that my subjective Now and the Now of my environment are interdependent.
  3. incompleteness: I recognize that flourishing can never be ultimately reached, instead it always has a process and project character.

Love, the primordial striving of henophilia, can be rephrased as Building bridges of pleasure between reality and flourishing. This means that next, we have the bridge, i.e. how the abstract, idealized, future-thinking, unachievable "goal" of flourishing is connected to subjective pleasure in the Now:

  • orientation: Making steps towards flourishing happens by realizing subjective pleasure, both in the Now and in an anticipatory way.

Thus the act of this metaphorical bridge building is equivalent to "love". Finally, the intentions for becoming able to actually build these bridges of pleasure:

  1. understanding the self: I want to learn and understand what it means for me to experience pleasure.
  2. understanding others: I want to learn and understand what experiencing pleasure means for my environment.
  3. realizing pleasure for the self: I want to actively infuse every aspect of my own life with pleasure, both my thoughts and my behaviors. I see myself as the core creator and cultivator of my own pleasure.
  4. realizing synergetic pleasure: I want to discover and realize ways how interactions with my environment result in experiencing more pleasure on all sides.

Death

"Death" shall refer to a state where you permanently cease to experience your Now. At least so far you won't remember having ever been actually dead for good, because when you are reading this, you are alive. For you in your current form, it's not possible to have anything more than near-death experiences. When you are thinking about your own death, it's always a future scenario. You will also never truly know whether you are immortal.

At the same time, life itself can be seen as the ultimate temporary peak experience. No matter how long you will live, the incompleteness of flourishing will always motivate you to create new synergies in the world, as long as you continue to adopt flourishing as your primordial striving. By definition, the fact that life is finite is the greatest force for creation in life overall.

The final moral edge case to consider is what can be called the "symmetrical trolley problem". It's similar to the trolley problem, but you are strapped to one track, a loved one is strapped to the other track, you can both control the lever and you can communicate for a limited time until the train arrives. Picture this: You are in a one-on-one situation with a person you genuinely love and who genuinely loves you. Both of you care about each other deeply and thus want to realize pleasure for each other. But in this situation, a resource required for your survival (e.g. food) is so limited that it's only enough for one person to survive. So a choice must be made:

  1. Either you both act egoistically, i.e. fight for the resource or steal it from each other. Survival of the strongest.
  2. Or you both act passively, i.e. you do nothing, or even altruistically, i.e. both of you continuously push the food away from yourself towards the other. But if you do that for too long, you will both starve.

So what do you do? There is no "right" option, considering that (in this constructed mind game), at least one person will definitely die. But what's the effect of this on the survivor? Of course the survivor will grieve the death of their loved one. It seems like an actual win-win situation is impossible. But how can we still come closest to realizing pleasurable synergy, even in this scenario, to alleviate the grief at least a little bit?

The key is to be open to discussion with the goal of finding consent. After all, the least thing that you and the other person can do is to create a situation in which the survivor won't regret surviving. Maybe there are circumstances where one of the loved ones wants to gift their life to the other. So the loved ones can either die together, or they engage in discussion to figure out a solution. Of course it's totally up to them according to which criteria they want to decide. No external "rules" would make sense here, because it should be a decision made entirely consensually only the participants.

The core point is thus the openness to discussion itself. Most importantly, for both participants to go into this discussion knowing that "Assuming that we are both genuinely fine with such a decision, I would be open to giving up my life for you". This is the ultimate type of consent someone could give, where they become the judge over their own life, coming from a place of genuine love and care. Acting in this way, i.e. neither dogmatically keeping nor dogmatically rejecting your own life, but instead trying to find a synergy even here, can be seen as a type of henosis, the boundary between the One that's conceivable by human thought and the One that cannot be thought of anymore.

From the ideas stated so far, which existing views are related to the idea of henophilia?

First and foremost, henophilia always implies religious pluralism in the sense of the deep conviction of pantheism and non-dualism, namely "there is not only one truth". Exclusivism (religious exclusivism, but also other dogmas like Cartesian dualism), i.e. the belief that there is only "one truth which shall rule them all" or "one true set of tenets" must be overcome. Henophilia does not claim to state any truths, instead it merely expresses the "meta-truth" of "there can be multiple truths" and giving up the notion of truth as unchanging and immutable. Related terms are henotheism, kathenotheism and monolatry. More practically, this tendency towards "unity in diversity" also applies to all other aspects of the human experience, e.g. culture, relationships, gender, sexuality etc.

Despite this stance, henophilia is not "against" exclusivists or monotheists in the sense of seeing them as enemies to be "fought against" in any way. No idée fixe should be used to justify destructive conflict, neither henophilia itself, nor any other world view. Instead, many such outbursts of violence in any form, especially based on spiritual, political or religious grounds, can be seen as either trauma responses or learned behavior. To heal, both require compassion and empathy from those that don't see ideological exclusivism as a threat anymore.

Striving for synergetic pleasure in the context of henophilia means learning to find a balance between acknowledging and cherishing the subjective "I" (self-love) and also transcending it by becoming open to intertwining with love for the environment (other people, nature etc.). Concepts related to this balance include:

Henophilia encourages those for whom "god is dead" (atheists) to not equate this sentiment with the categorical rejection of all practices which are normally considered religious or spiritual. After all, while some of the current world views result in many issues (e.g. wars, power centralization, control, dogmatism, intolerance, manipulation), they can also have positive effects on people's lives (e.g. community, belonging, ethical guidance, hope, routines, support in grief). The aim of henophilic projects is to iteratively develop new and adjust existing societal structures and tenets through strategic, consensual, wisdom-based, structural tweaks which foster the socio-psychologically positive effects of beliefs (with "positive" in regards to subjective pleasure as defined above) and discontinue the propagation of their negative effects. Through the One, all beliefs, religions, philosophies, world views etc. can be seen and can see themselves as striving to unify humanity with itself and with nature instead of dividing it further. Henophilia is thus also related to eclecticism and syncretism and it can be seen as a perennial philosophy.

The consciously chosen immunization strategy of henophilia is the belief (i.e. the unprovable, subjective attitude) that steps towards flourishing can be made. It is the fundamental hope (= primordial trust) of "we can do better", culminating in the collective striving of "we will do better". For the individual, this implies a consciously dogmatic belief (i.e. a belief you have consciously chosen and where you categorically ignore every voice telling you otherwise) in "I love myself", "I can love others" and "I deserve to be loved".

Henophilia can exist in parallel with other beliefs. The aforementioned framework consisting of "primordial striving", "primordial trust" and "tenets" can be applied to any interpretation of "the One". For henophilia, we chose "flourishing" specifically in the earthly sense, i.e. in regards to what can actually be experienced by humans, in order to bring together life on earth. But any individual can adopt one or many additional beliefs when it comes to metaphysical questions like "What happens to me after death?", i.e. where the One is a concept beyond death of one's human body.

When acknowledging the unity of all existing beliefs of divinity, it is even possible to go as far as seeing especially Abrahamic monotheism merely as a misinterpretation of "the One". After all, the Nicene Creed, the shahada and the shema yisrael all refer to god as "one".

Henophilia cannot have "leaders", "prophets" or any other people making statements which would have more "authority" than others or which would even claim to be legitimized by any external divinity, as divinity is not seen as external anyway. The path towards flourishing (striving towards love, trusting in the self) is always individual, and in combination with the ability to conceive a theory of mind implying empathy, it can spread autopoietically. Of course there can be more concrete groups of individuals where a certain hierarchy and distribution of roles might simply be useful, trust-enhancing and productive. But henophilia overall is decentralized and without large-scale power hierarchies by definition.

This also means that no one can be "convinced" of henophilia. The conviction that striving for unity in diversity and thus flourishing must always come from within. At the same time, it is certainly possible to build spaces which radiate this kind of unity in a pragmatic, transparent way. An incredible way of conveying henophilia is not a speech or a presentation, but rapport. People can only convince themselves of henophilia once they feel that it is possible. And those that already have this privilege can direct a self-chosen (!) share of their energy towards simply acting according to this feeling.

Henophilia is fundamentally humanist, but not in an anthropocentric sense, but instead embracing the unity of humanity and the nature it lives in. A closely related term is ecohumanism.

Henophilia strives to stimulate the creation of morally universalist tenets. After for a long time, some belief and value systems have developed to be morally incompatible with each other, henophilia motivates the radical, limitless willingness and openness to overcome these sometimes deeply engrained dichotomies and instead transition to a dialogue akin to "I find something to be morally right. You find the same thing to be morally wrong. So how can we understand each other and subsequently expand our view of morality to unify our counterpositions?".

Henophilia does not aim to give answers to questions like "What happens after death?", "Why do we exist?" etc. Instead, it has more fundamental duties:

  1. It expresses the sentiment that there is space for an individual to answer these questions in whichever way they prefer.
  2. And, even more importantly, it encourages individuals to build exactly these spaces and an overall environment of stable satisfaction, so that one way of how these spaces could be used would be to even become able to calmly think about and discuss such questions in the first place.

Henophilia is highly pragmatic. Even though it motivates to strive for the abstract, utopic state of flourishing, it aims to do this in a constructive way instead of invoking feelings of being paralyzed by the vastness of this endeavor. It advocates for acting in a way according to one's conscience, guided by the wisdom acquired so far. This will always be imperfect, but due to the effortless accumulation and distribution of wisdom enabled by clear communication as well as digital technologies, subjectively obvious mistakes should only be made once and do not need to be repeated, while keeping the space for experimentation. The nirvana fallacy should be avoided. Another related aphorism is "Perfect is the enemy of good". The approach of henophilia can be summarized through the oxymoron "pragmatic perfectionism".

This means that henophilia highlights the desire to act. After all, love barely matters if you don't show it to yourself as well as to your environment, i.e. the people and nature around you.

Using non-perfectionist step-by-step approaches is crucial to henophilia, especially because it always starts at the individual, but strives to unify humanity. The smallest level (flourishing on the individual level, e.g. personal development) and the largest level (flourishing on a societal or ecosystem level) are always intertwined. As mentioned, it's about building bridges between reality and flourishing. This means to first acknowledge how the own mind and body as well as how larger, more complex systems in the world work and then sharing privileges and knowledge to allow every individual to stimulate initially small, but intentionally compounding, sustainable, replicable, participatory steps towards flourishing and resolving societal dichotomies instead of attempting to change everything at once. It is not only about reacting to problems to fix them, but it's about creating structures and healing trauma to prevent the core reason of these problems in the first place. This is also closely related to, when it comes to subjective life improvements, using one's privileges to allow others to overcome learned helplessness.

A core part of henophilia is to make people who seem to be "against" each other in any way (see amity-enmity complex) realize that they all fundamentally just want to live "good" lives. And then it's about seriously considering both views of such a "good" life and thinking out of the box to not only settle with a mere compromise, but instead discover genuine synergies. This can be applied to an individual (e.g. integrating opposing internal forces like traumas) and subsequently to growing groups of individuals (e.g. integrating moral differences). Interfaith studies, i.e. studying the same concept expressed in many different belief systems and ideologies, are highly effective in getting to the fundamental essence of different pieces of wisdom.

Henophilia emanates radical optimism, the unshakable desire and willpower of every individual towards creating a future of individual and thus collective flourishing, both in the immediate moment, over the course of an entire lifetime and for every time span in between. Especially when an individual starts feeling hopeless or confused on their way towards flourishing, that indicates a strong emotional need for care, encouragement, empowerment and mutual uplifting, which must always be upheld globally. This inherent motivation for henophilia and radical optimism, both individually and collectively, is one of the most important traits to learn and cultivate, because all collaborative projects are based on the attitudes of the participants.

Summary

Henophilia is not a new belief system. Instead, through the deconstruction of belief systems in general, it aims to illustrate the shared essence of beliefs overall: Making humans live better lives. At the same time, it can be easily seen that the fundamental flaw of how many belief systems actually work today is that flourishing (= a better world to come) is primarily seen as something abstract, mythological, metaphysical, non-empirical, hard to understand, even harder to achieve, sometimes even forbidden to think about and often as something which is seen as created externally (e.g. by gods) and/or which is only accessible after death. In practice, especially when combined with the belief that only one single ideology is "true" (exclusivism), this is often instrumentalized for the centralization of power, for example religiously or politically, which is when beliefs with originally good intentions effectively become opium of the people (also see learned helplessness).

But whether it's with yourself, with nature, in a one-on-one friendship, a small community, an entire society or an entire ecosystem: When having a shared compass which points towards genuine, reflected, holistic flourishing by seeing both you with yourself, humans with each other, but also humans with nature as "ultimate collaborators" instead of "ultimate competitors" and, in the process, working on realizing synergetic pleasure, first individually and then collectively, in a constructive, pragmatic, non-perfectionist, self-directed, decentralized, collaborative, strategic, step-by-step manner, "heaven on earth" can start feeling more and more achievable.

The starting point is trust. Firstly the primordial trust in yourself, and then trust in that you are not the only one committing to "I strive for flourishing". Then we start dreaming. And then building.

Non coerceri maximo, contineri minimo, divinum est.
Not to be confined by the greatest, yet to be contained within the smallest, is divine.
– Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion

This project

Intention

henophilia.org is a possible starting point for bringing together the bridge builders, i.e. establishing structures for individuals to assist each other in each of the four intentions mentioned above.

This means that in the entire domain of striving towards flourishing, henophilia.org specializes in establishing pleasure-inducing positive feedback loops, such as:

  • making the idea of henophilia accessible and understandable by every human on earth
  • aggregating and distributing wisdom, always respecting the source and context of that wisdom
  • contributing to building platforms which connect people and projects which aim to realize synergetic pleasure
    • one core aspect of this will be projects that are interdisciplinary and interfaith in every regard, e.g. for fundamental topics like cultivating self-love, establishing a new death culture, peacemaking initiatives, new economic models (e.g. for communities), exploring the potential of interdisciplinary science
  • openly sharing knowledge to allow people to learn how to build decentralized organizational structures (e.g. physical spaces, universal basic income, foundations etc.) to become able to actually dedicate their time to henophilia and to later share this privilege with more and more others
  • hosting events, building communities and eventually building societies and ecosystems oriented around the concept of henophilia

Some ongoing projects are:

  • realizing mechanisms to greatly facilitate the realization of philanthropic projects, see https://hermesloom.org/ with the mission statement "Driving regenerative societal transformation through humanist artificial intelligence."

Reflection

The concept of henophilia has implications even for the choice of the word "henophilia" for itself. Of course that word is completely arbitrary. That term was only chosen to be able to talk about the concept at all, but it never claims any authority. Everyone can make up different words for what is called "henophilia" in this text, everyone can start attributing symbology to it and everyone can write about it. The only shared constraint should be that no one sees their term as "the only true term", their symbol as "the only true symbol" for henophilia etc., because that would contradict the point of henophilia itself.

As pleasure, meaning, trust, belief, beauty and art are closely interconnected, by expressing henophilia, henophilia.org sees itself merely as a highly dynamic art project, focusing on holistic creativity and creation. Ideas deserve to be aesthetic. Just like any art, the beauty of henophilia cannot be described, but it can only be felt.

Co-creation

Following the spirit of realizing synergetic pleasure, of course this is a co-creative work. If you deeply resonate with this and want to start ideating and building, please get in touch via [email protected]. If you disagree with anything or think that something is incomplete or incorrect, please get in touch via email as well or raise an issue on GitHub. Additionally, this text shall be available under the CC0 1.0 Universal license, i.e. in the public domain.

Last update: 2024-10-17

Epilogue

Primordial trust in yourself is equivalent to henophilia, i.e. one core part of henophilia is itself. From the practical side, belief systems are always somewhat self-referential and that's what makes them mystic. Maybe henophilia.org is the better promised second volume of Hölderlin's Hyperion?

When you befriend unity by embracing it practically, you will realize its effect more and more, every day, every month, every year, until the end of your life. The persevering trust in your own creation of long-term pleasure (or even just the hope thereof!) is something that will make you feel powerful. But not powerful in the "egoistic leader" sense, but benevolent, down-to-earth, sharing, compassionate. Grounded not only with earth, but grounded with "who you really want to be". Like, really, really want to be. Because you are earth.

It will stimulate those dreams of yours like you've never felt before. Even if some dreams seem unrealistic for now, we know that the essence is always pretty similar: Feeling heard, feeling seen, feeling like you matter, feeling like you don't need to constantly defend yourself, just getting a fresh breath of air beyond all the "normal people". Feeling home in every regard. A home you can make your own, no matter how crazy or ordinary you like it. With people you love. And where you just know "I am loved" and where all doubts just seem silly.

Just like trust, henophilia is a purely cognitive concept. It's a verbalization of consciously and confidently following one's personal well-being, which fundamentally implies the well-being of those we love and our environment. The opposite of "love" is not "hate", because the love we mean has no opposite.

Especially if you react with "yeah of course, it's so obvious!" to this, I would genuinely love to hear from you, as it's a bit of a passion project of mine. Despite my research, I just haven't found anything actually similar. Buddhism and Taoism have a lot of overlap, but unfortunately they are often seen as separate religions, so that people often focus on their differences to other belief systems instead of believing in the unity of all belief systems itself. Sometimes it feels a bit weird that in the spectrum of "possible world views", henophilia and the implied faith in one's own creative power (Glaube in die eigene Schaffenskraft), and thus the unshakable belief in self-love (according to the definition of "love" from above), isn't the norm yet, because it seems pretty obvious to me. That the desire to heal broken unity is the single most important belief for every individual in humanity to cultivate. And that there is a path beyond healing: joyful creation. And that that path is pretty fucking powerful. It's art, after all. Divinity is within you and it always has been.

–J