Welcome to the Institute for Theoretical & Applied Something Deeperism!

We’re here to advance the theoretical and practical knowledge of, love for, and engagement with the general worldview that: “Yes!, there is something like an Absolute Truth, and we humans can and should relate meaningfully to that Absolute Standard For Thought & Action–just not literally.”

Something Deeperism is not some weird, esoteric, marginal worldview. On the contrary: We are all already Something Deeperists: None of us can escape either the insight that without an Absolute Standard For Truth & Action our thoughts and actions flounder hopelessly and dangerously about, or the insight that attempting to claim literal understanding of the Absolute Truth makes no sense to any of us. Both these realizations are burned indelibly into every human conscious moment.

Sometimes we look away from these fundamental, inescapable insights; but all that accomplishes is confusing our own thought and actions: we slip away from awareness of our own place within our own feelings, ideas, and actions; to the degree we do that, we make less sense to ourselves, believe in and care our own thoughts and actions less, and generally lose agency and control over own thoughts and actions. When one’s awareness thus abandon its post at the helm of one’s thoughts and action, all the silly impulses that think they should rule grab at the wheel, and madness, chaos, and evil invariably ensue.

The question, then, is not whether or not we are Something Deeperists. The task is not convincing people to become Something Deeperists. The work of the Something Deeperist Institute is, rather, simply this: to together discover how to be better individual Something Deeperists, and how our organizations, systems, cultures, entertainments, and so on can help both individuals and groups get better and better at finding the sweet spot between (common error 1:) doubting away the only possible firm foundation for thought and action (aka: the Absolute Truth) and (common error 2:) confusing ideas and/or feelings about the Absolute Truth for the Absolute Truth.

Human beings being things of degrees, our Institute does not indulge in daydreams of perfection, but merely looks to push ourselves and our world a little more towards the gentle, the wise, the Good.

So far, the ITASD is only a pile of essays written by Bartleby Willard and Andy Watson. So far, these essays are a mixed bag, and it is far from clear even to their authors/only-readers what use they could ever be. So far, the goal is far off and hazy, the riders slump parched and clammy-exhausted, their mounts gallop with the stumbling sorrow of dying beasts, and worry sits high in the night sky, twinkling like the only star such hopeless hopes deserve.

We’ll now round up and organize essays already extant. Pray for us. We know our insides shattered, our fingers slipped, our adventures splattered and ineffective like the cool-drying muds that pinch our skin and mascara our eyelashes. We know! But we want to grow stronger, to get better, to somehow help ourselves and others. So pray for us, for our efforts. And join us as we pray: “Help us, That within and shining through Which Alone Knows, Cares, & Can!: Help us to all together grow in wise kind compassionate effective joy, and have fun together.”

Hey! Let me just say one thing: I think we should divide this project into two main categories: Something Deeperism in the individual spiritual path & Something Deeperism as a common reality for groups of people. The first category’s way chill; the second a little more circumspect, worried, peevish. Individuals can debate among themselves the pros and cons of various metaphysical positions and there’s no harm and some fun in a little jocular cajolery between metaphysicians. However, there are certain core values that all humanly-meaningful/practicable worldviews doggedly refuse to abandon, and this fact needs to be solemnly, earnestly, painstakingly, and repetitively acknowledged by all of us. Because when we forget how much we are all in this together and how much we all deep within know and are that Truth, we treat our fellow shipmates as pirates; they return the unsavory sabery (we made an adjective out of “saber” here; is it confusing?; we’re worried it might be confusing; we’d remove it, but, well, we just can’t, just can’t remove it right now) favor; the ship drifts cross-hull across the reef.

AMW/BW