The Ethics of Fruit and Tree

You didn't just fall out of a coconut tree.

A few posts ago, I made the argument that, at least in one sense, the universe is perfect. This is because there’s no other way it could be, which is in turn because it is everything: there’s nothing outside of it that could ever have changed its nature. I claimed, therefore, that “evil” only exists in the subjective belief in separateness, either that one is separate from the universe or even that other things and people are separate from the universe in such a way that they could have been other than what they are. For example, to believe that someone acted “immorally” requires the belief that they could and should have acted otherwise, which is to fail to recognize that they, just like ourselves, are an inseparable part of the universe which is always expressing itself as a whole, according to its own inner dynamics and nature. To claim that someone should have acted differently is to claim that they are not connected to everything around them in the present and everything that preceded them in the past. Every single thing and person is like a fruit on the tree of the universe—its own growth and expression is none other than the growth and expression of the tree.

The primary ethical implication of this is that we ought to treat everyone, including ourselves, with a compassion born from the understanding that they are the product of everything that came before them. We should also express reverence born from the recognition that each and everything and person we encounter, including ourselves, is an expression of the infinite whole, of the All, of God. This also has profound political implications, because it forces us to acknowledge that both ourselves and our most depraved opponents are products of the same vast system, flowers on the same tree. We all have much more in common with each other than most of us realize, or perhaps would like to admit.

Hamilton Nolan makes this point brilliantly (and even uses a tree metaphor) in the context of the upcoming US election and, specifically, Dick Cheney’s endorsement of Kamala Harris:

For generations, there has been a mutual agreement from both major parties to do what must be done to protect America’s ability to militarily dominate the world—the gun that protects our concurrent ability to be richer than everyone else, the velvet fist that allows us to extract trillions of dollars in value from the Global South and use it to raise our own national standard of living. This commitment to maintaining the global order, people like Dick Cheney understand, is more important than all the other, smaller issues that voters get worked up about. This is the tree, not the branches…It is going to be very hard to uproot this tree without acknowledging that you and me and Kamala Harris and Dick Cheney are all sitting in it, together.

So, if we are asking ourselves what we should collectively be doing differently going forward, concluding that our problems are caused by immoral people is not only superficial—amounting to trying to reshape the tree by plucking off a few of its fruits or trying to cure the illness by treating only the symptoms—it is also deeply confused if it amounts to the claim that people should have spontaneously been something other than what they are, like an orange sprouting from an apple tree.

But it may be asked at this point whether such a view of individuals as expressions of the whole eliminates any meaningful understanding of freedom and condemns us all to nihilism, since everything and everyone is always just going to be the universe unfolding according to its own nature. I think this is the result of taking the opposite viewpoint from the individualist, moralist one we’ve been talking about. Instead of individuals and their choices being real and important, the nihilist viewpoint claims that only the universe as a whole is real and that no meaningful change or development is possible (since it just is what it is). From this latter viewpoint, individuals are inessential and any apparent meaning or value is illusory. Of course, the truth is that most people hold a mix of the two: most people are fairly self-obsessed most of the time and consider others’ actions from a moral standpoint, but in their reflective moments or when they think about the “big picture,” they may cheerfully state that “nothing matters.” Both of these viewpoints are, of course, one-sided. The individualist viewpoint claims that there’s no tree, only a trunk, branches, and flowers; meanwhile, the nihilist viewpoint claims that there is only a tree, but no trunk, branches, or flowers. We need to understand that the individual and the universal are mutually essential—neither is anything without the other.

It turns out, then, that there is a sense in which the universe is imperfect: the degree to which we, as an expression of the universe, do not realize that that’s what we are. We are the universe experiencing itself, but our realization of this fact is imperfect, and we frequently lapse into the confused belief that ourselves or something in us is somehow separate from or outside the universe. So long as we do, the universe cannot fully realize its own nature—our own nature. Our overarching ethical purpose is therefore to perfect this realization of our nature, to understand that the parts and the whole give rise to each other, are nothing but each other, each referring infinitely to the other for its definition. And we will find that the pursuit of this ultimate goal will have the effect of clarifying and resolving our shorter-term goals, because as we more fully understand the kind of being that we are, the more we will understand what would be good for such a being, and what such a being ought to do.

Thanks for reading, and please subscribe to Hamilton Nolan’s Substack; it’s great.