Drafted Monday, October 16, 2006, printed Monday, October 16, 2006
File name: Politics of moral order and conflict resolution

Globalization as rethinking of values has been particularly objectionable to religions as they self-righteously believe their scriptures as defining the ultimate truth and values. Religions have indeed contributed two important theoretical constructs to civilization:
1. They have introduced models of conflict resolution suggesting the structure of family and societal relations and
2. They have sanctified these positions through the deification of the religions’ charismatic leaders, embodying their respective value systems.
More rigid the religion’s views stronger its opposition to changes. Threats to cultural values have been resisted with hostile behaviors. Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem stone vehicles driven in their neighborhoods on Sabbath, Catholic Christians attack abortion clinics, and the Taliban by oppressing women and attacking America as the Devil, the representative of unacceptable values. The problem then of globalization amounts to making new values palatable to the traditional systems of values and norms.

In order to achieve globalization as progress in the world we need rigorous science to understand religions, reconcile them and integrate the cultural systems of the world into a broader conceptual framework rather than dismiss them, denounce them, fight them or placate them. We need to proceed by understanding religions as objects of scientific nature such that all, believers and infidels, will recognize an undeniable universal moral order. The Formal Theory, a new theory addresses and successfully achieves this analytical task. The Formal Theory rediscovers the Aristotelian Teleion Holon, the structure of the dramatic process, the plot of stories, as the continuity of action, by conceptualizing the process as a natural science and moral order phenomenon originating in the unconscious.

This unconscious process performs the function of an equilibrial adjustment for the person who comes under stress, or conflict, shaping the emotional reality into a conflict resolution outcome restoring the rest state. Therefore the symbolic systems of any story have the universal structure of a physical and moral equilibrial process that resolves conflict. Science then studies symbolic systems, any samples of the creative process as the object for analysis of behavior. The unit thought process is defined as having a structure, consisting of a six-step dialectic, with the moral direction of resolving conflicts. Science then claims that the power play in any conflict unfolds as a calculus of formal transformations and that the moral authority for this calculus is not an external force or divinity but an internal organizing mechanism; the origin of all moral thinking, of all creativity, of all stories, of all religions then is claimed to be the human unconscious.

The Formal Theory of Behavior is validated by demonstrating that the process is manifested in all samples of creativity and that it is a natural science phenomenon abiding by the universal laws of equilibrial systems. Analysis of all symbolic systems attests that the mental process follows the laws of the pendulum oscillation, the Simple Harmonic Motion, and the equilibrial balance of the trays of a scale. The mental mechanism is comparable to these two physical phenomena but there are some differences. Unlike the perpetual motion of the pendulum and the reversibility of the balance of a scale the Teleion Holon, the human unconscious is an irreversible and circumscribed oscillation; it is a six part formal transformation process that has a beginning middle and end as the mental dialectic completes one directionally the pursuit of a new equilibrium, a particular formal transformation, defined by the innate need for a conflict resolution. The attainment of a new balance, the restoration of the rest state, stops the oscillation; it converts conflict to resolution, chaos to order, entropy to negative entropy. This hypothesis is readily validated by observing the formal structure of the thought process attesting that the mental process abides by the laws of the rigorous sciences escaping the principle of mechanical systems downgrading of conserved energy. The mind has anabolic, order upgrading capacity; it is a pump of anabolic conversion of energy.

The Formal Theory studies personal and cultural stories as conflict resolution entities, as manifestations of the malleable universal harmonic. The unit process becomes the needed scientific moral paradigm connecting choices abstractly to consequences, defining moral order not dogmatically, apocalyptically, as axiomatic propositions but as complying relationally to universal scientific principals. The conclusion from this finding is that all symbolic thinking, including moral stories or religions, may be viewed as natural science phenomena. The conflict resolution process, identified with the Aristotelian Perfect Universe, Teleion Holon, is the unit of the social sciences, integrating them into the Moral Science. This unit entity bridges the rigorous and the social sciences; it integrates psychology and morality as the intrinsic components of a scientific phenomenon; that means we cannot separate psychology from morality.

The unit conflict resolution has been scrutinized and validated. It has been validated in its capacity to predict, in its versatility to explain all traditional paradigms, in introducing many clear practical advantages in diagnosis, assessment and therapeutic interventions. The process is then proven to be the scientific moral paradigm that accounts for both psychological and moral phenomena.

Aristotle’s perfect universe becomes the unit process, the natural science energetic and moral order phenomenon integrating and reconciling religions as particular ways of resolving conflict, as complementary steps on the way to abstraction. The universal mechanism of conflict resolution understands and integrates the religions of the world as a continuum of moral discoveries on the nature of the unconscious process. The history of religion may be completed with the Moral Science as the final step providing and affirming the existence of a universal moral order. Science is then completing the conceptual task of all religions by providing the rational foundation of the nature of moral order making us conscious of the moral unconscious as a universal harmonic process.

The unit abstract construct of the process of moral order identifies a phenomenon that everybody can detect in his own thinking, structuring one’s own thought process; moral values are the scientific principals of conflict resolution. Conflict resolution, the calculus of power management, clarifies moral values for all as the unconscious conflict resolution principals of moderation, cooperation and mutual respect. Abstracting the nature of moral order frees humanity of the normative obsession of religions. Teleion Holon, the conflict resolution process, the unit of the social sciences, confers clarity to all symbolic systems, all moral choices, clarifying them as dramatic continua: transgressions get punished and thoughtful behaviors get automatically rewarded. Science then becomes Gnostic as it understands values as scientific principals.

The new school of thought has a campus, a spectacular country inn in a quaint VT village. Dr. Albert Levis, having worked on the concepts of the Formal Theory over forty years, acquired the Wilburton Inn, in Manchester, VT, to establish here a place for the education of the public through the study of the process. He installed on the grounds of the inn the Museum of the Creative Process consisting of four ‘Art As Evidence Of Science Exhibits’, demonstrating the scientific nature of the creative process. At this inn and its annex the Teleion Holon, Holistic Retreat, Dr Levis is teaching ‘Creativity and Power Management’ a concise program of emotional education that combines the study of the creative process with the study of personal creativity for self discovery and the integration of concepts, insights with holistic power management activities. Science and related assessment technologies facilitate the learning process so that students attain insights in one hour, enlightenment in one day and wisdom in one week.

Creativity and Power Management is recommended for the general public but it is a must for all professionals, all students of behavior, such as clergy, psychologists, and educators. Dr Levis wishes to introduce the program in the ordinary classroom as the civil right of the public for knowledge in behavior, insights in one self and wisdom as power management skills but also as the requirement for freeing the public of the traditional narrow definitions of morality which are detrimental to the health of both individuals and nations.

Concluding, science comes to respect traditions but also to question their narrow definitions of conflict resolution and their naïve, concrete, non abstract, definitions of the supreme moral authority as any one of the many spokesmen of morality perceived as deities. Idolatry has been denounced as the worship of the representations of moral authority. Science dictates the consensus on moral order and on moral authorities. Believers must remember this notion when they invest themselves totally into narrow value systems, be that communism, Christianity, Judaism or Islam dismissing all other religions as those of the infidels. The achievement of the Moral Science is that it automatically cancels both agnosticism and fanaticism, that it is affirming the moral accomplishments of all religions and that it denounces their limitations; science also dismisses the simplistic moral views of evolutionists. The secrets of the Moral Science are not in Darwinian evolution but in the recognition of the moral evolution of the world through the power of the metaphor; science only comes belatedly to understand the moral structure of metaphors, of all symbolic systems, especially those of all religions as perfect or scientific and moral universes.