Note to editorial team:
You need to explain the error of blind faith and blind skepticism and how Something Deeperism avoids both errors (though not all self-supposed Something Deeperists do Something Deeperism as well as some self-supposed Non-Something Deeperists), and then you need to relate those errors and that solution to groups, governments, and etc.
There’s probably other things you need to do to make this essay useful.

[Editors’ Note: OK, another longish essay on Something Deeperism. So we’ve taken the bottom and put it at the top, giving readers the option of satisfying themselves on less detailed outline:]

What are the implications of Something Deeperism for the individual? Even without all our above [now below] sketches, they are this simple rule to which any philosopher or believer can readily assent: The only hope for human beings is to put a constant full-being (ideas, feelings, and whatever else is within the conscious moment all working meaningfully together) engagement with the joy within which alone knows that and how human life truly Matters ahead of all our ideas and feelings about life’s meaning: The only hope is to put such an engagement ahead of our ideas and feelings about what Matters, or how nothing Matters, or how we don’t know if anything Matters or Not. Because only through that engagement can we humans find a path that is meaningful/interesting/followable/believable/standable to us.

What are the implications of Something Deeperism for the group?
OK!
I can answer that.
We won’t get everyone to agree that Something Deeperism is an awesome rule of thumb for thought and action–a nice sketch of a workable worldview, which of course will never be perfect and which only has meaning to the degree it points us towards fully knowing and living the gentle joy that passes but does not completely blow off human understanding. Different people have different notions, and we get super attached to them sometimes, and whatever.
But we should be able to eke out this minimal concession:
Any philosophy or religion will only be meaningful/livable to human beings to the degree that philosophy or religion respects, encourages, and fosters the following:

1) Awareness, clarity, honesty in thought (to the degree one fails in these goals, one’s thought confuses and/or mistrusts itself: you dissolve into a fog of equally-believable, and thus equally-meaningless possibilities; and within this fog the old hopes and fears clamor to the forefront, take over the ship and sink it like a pack of wild ultimately-directionless drives would have to).

2) A belief that other human beings are all fundamentally like we are, and that we can communicate meaningfully to ourselves and with other human beings, and that what we say and do actually matters; that is to say: we are all in this together and must treat ourselves and everyone else with respect and kindness (to the degree one fails to think, feel, and act in accordance with the sense-of-things here sketched [again: imperfectly, but not therefore necessarily inadequately], one’s focus turns away from one’s own conscious moment (which has become meaningless/boring/hopeless to it); and again into the chaos arising from this lack of meaningful conscious engagement, slip the demondogs of push-away/pull-towards, and the ship is again overrun by ultimate-directionlessness and sunk [maybe not irretrievably: indeed, the sooner you see water crashing in all around, the better!]).

3) A commitment to working to improve honesty, efficiency, decency/justice/kindness (all smushed together to highlight how decency requires justice and neither work for anyone unless everything is undergirded by kindness: not “decency” as in “burn sinner burn!” and not “justice” as in “revenge”, but “decency” as “fostering a place where we are given the space to explore in life with open-hearts and -minds” and “justice” as in “equal treatment under the law within a constant push for policies and procedures that help everyone find and live the Light in a way that is meaningful to them and helpful to all”) in private and public groups (including government). Just as an individual’s thought is more meaningful to that individual’s ideas and feelings and her thought-as-a-whole to the degree he thinks aware, clear … kind, a group’s thought is more meaningful to the individuals within the group and the group-as-a-whole to the degree that group demands, pursues, and improves honesty, efficiency, and the kind of fair play that allows everyone to participate in building a more open, caring, wise, helpful, uncorrupt government. Both mindless flag-waving and pouty-quitting go too far: they cause us to look away from what our government is up to and prevent us from doing our fundamental duty as citizens: working together to act as a final check on corruption and madness in government.

Addendum: What is corruption? What is madness? They’re both, like all human things, things of degrees.

The more corrupt a human conscious moment, group of humans, or government is, the easier it is for evil (dishonesty, cruelty, vanity, meanness, greed, pettyiness, egotism: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) to win out in the constant inner struggle (within an individual, group, and/or government/political-entity) to rule, which victory allows evil to thus push the whole (individual, … government/political-entity) towards its foolish, self-defeating (because corruption = wisdom is not steering = that within which deserves to rule our thoughts and actions is losing control) ends; the less corrupt xyz human-entity is, the easier it is for goodness (honesty, kindness, selflessness, win-win, shared joy, Love: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) to win out in the constant inner struggle (within xyz human-entity) to rule, which victory allows goodness to push the whole towards better, more coherent, internally-meaningful and spiritually/emotionally/intellectually/actionably acceptable.

Insanity has the same basic effect: making evil win and goodness lose; but whereas corruption seeks confusion in order to mask its evil intentions and ruthlessly selfish and pathetically boring/limited/unimaginative worldview; madness (whether organic or to some appreciable degree caused by corruption’s self-undermining of a human-entity) more starts with chaos and flails about less purposely, perhaps even being on occasion nudged in a better direction by a better impulse, though ultimately–being without adequate levels of clear self-aware conscious engagement–tends like corruption to the worse and worse and worse worse worse.

The above writing was found painstakingkly etched into the glossy marine-gray paint job of a well-kept toilet stall’s door by an earnest citizen, who duly reported the finding to the proper authorities at WAP’s Department of Unexpected Spiritual Reflections. The above transcript was created by Bartleby Willard and Andy Watson, in cooperation with the reigning WAP archivist, Buddy McBusy Boddy.

Original Text begins here:

Too long has humankind, blinded by dreams of safest landings and grand victories, allowed itself to fracture and spin, cutting itself like a mad dog attacking itself: now viciously gnawing off its own legs; now frantically ramming its own eye onto a spike; now desperately bashing and scraping its own head into sharp coral, now finding a piece of broken glass along which to run its very own wolfy hide.

Too long.

The mistakes are many, but they reduce to one basic error: a crisis of identity. We think we are distinct from one another, that our wishlists conflict, that some humans are allies and others are enemies. This is not the path of wisdom. It is not the way forward. We’ve gotten away with it until now, blundering along, with our left eye taking advantage of our right, our pinky extracting a terrible revenge on our index finger: with Tribal Association A slaughtering Tribal Association B, until, after a great deal of burning blood and lonely boredom, the two associations merge into Tribal Association C, which in turn pats itself on its broad back and soon settles upon Tribal Association D to punish for crimes real and/or imagined. The crimes will be x degree real and x degree imagined, but the associations are always imagined. There is only one soul and we are all children of that one Light. To the degree we fail to Know (be “hip to”) and move in accordance with (be “cool”) that Light, we hurt ourself, we waste waste our time, we miss out on wonderful opportunities to explore, play, and dance as Light reflected through mind/matter.

I’ve been here now on this lonely overlooking outcrop a long lonely time. I’ve watched our armies rally, stand, fall, scatter, form again. I’ve felt the heart clench, open, quibble, falter, move, die, rise again.

I’m turning now to go back home. There’s a little pool beneath a tall thin waterfall and surrounded by trees, grasses, grey stones. I can go there, slip into the cool shadowy waters, and emerge on the other side of the waterfall. What I’ll find there, only The God knows, but that I must head there now, I’ve always known.

In purpling evening light, dark sky descending on soft blue clarity, a gentle coolness takes the air.

But, people, yes, people. People and their structures of mind and matter. People. What do I say to people?

Something Deeperism is nothing new, nor is it complicated, esoteric, only for the enlightened few.

Something Deeperism is simply the notion that:

1. YES!, there is a Reality that we can and should follow, and YES, the way to follow that Reality is by following our inborn rules for thinking and acting in a way that is meaningful to us: aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, decent, kind, selfless; with open-heart and -mind seeking to better and better Know that and in what way it really is True that loving kindness is the Way–that and in what way it is True to say we are all in this together.

&

2. NO!, our feelings, ideas, words, and deeds cannot understand/follow/believe-in that Reality in a literal, 1:1, definitive, or otherwise perfect way.

Something Deeperism’s goal is adequate poetic insight into the Light within that alone knows how we should truly think, feel, act, live.

Think of a poem about a walk along the creek on a carefree youthful afternoon.
Does the poem perfectly recreate the author’s experience and sense-of-the-moment within even the most attentive reader? No. But is it therefore fair to say that no communication of the gist of conscious moment A experienced by human-being M is meaningfully reexamined by A in M in the poem, and then, via the reading of the poem by conscious moment B in human-being N, meaningfully communicated to B in N? No. Indeed, a good poem read by a sympathetic and attentive reader can in many cases communicate conscious experiences meaningfully both within the author and between the author and her reader.

Think of thinking about feelings in terms of ideas.
Feelings are in a sense wider, deeper, and vaguer than ideas. But with awareness, clarity, honesty, accuracy, competence, and an open heart and mind, a human being can meaningfully think about her feelings in terms of ideas, and can even speak meaningfully of her feelings with other human beings.

Recall quickly the problem plaguing human ideas and feelings: they can always be wrong. Philosophers have long noted that if all we have are ideas and feelings, we can have no firm foundation for knowledge: ideas/feelings cannot stand outside of their interplay and assess themselves against some irrefutable standard of Truth. Even if God seized your heart and told you that xyz dogmas is True so forcefully and clearly that you Knew it to be True and were not wrong and Knew you were not wrong–still, in the next moment there would be the matter of interpreting that dogma in terms of your human ideas and feelings, which would still be liable to both general error (fundamentally misunderstanding how they relate to Reality) and specific errors (getting the gist of Reality and their relationship to It correct, but still biffing xyz specific interpretation of what Reality in xyz specific moment bids them to do). There’s always this gap between ideas (ie: stories-about) and feelings (ie: reactions-to) and that which they are thinking and feeling about; and if what they are considering is Reality (what is really going on, as opposed to ideas and feelings about what is really going on), for all they know a miss is as good as a mile. Not only that, but we all know first hand the conniving treachery of our own ideas and feelings: how willfully they confuse their own little hopes and fears, lusts and lurches for !THE TRUTH!

Now consider the following hypothetical scenario:
Shining through everything, and thus shining through each human conscious moment is a Light (aka: Truth, God, etc: we’re pointing imperfectly but not therefore necessarily inadequately towards what is prior to language; ie: we’re speaking poetically, but not therefore necessarily in a way that cannot fit meaningfully into an intellectual conversation) that is simultaneously True Knowledge and Absolute Reality, and thus has no gap wherein It might mistake Itself, and therefore no chance of error nor room for self-doubt.
As a human’s ideas and feelings take place inside the same conscious space as that Light, they can relate to It meaningfully. The Light is wider and deeper than they are; and It does not share their capability for error or penchant for self-deception; therefore, ideas and feelings will not be able literally/definitively/1:1 understand/follow/believe the Light, and to the degree they pretend they can, what they actually do is mislabel themselves for the Light, which of course causes no end of trouble. However, note, while we’re here anyway, that while mislabeling the Light causes all kinds of horrible oversteps, pretending that there is no Light and it doesn’t matter how one feels and thinks or what one does, also amounts to a grave and oft extremely destructive mislabeling of the true situation. Assuming, as we currently are, that there really is a Light and that It alone has the Goodness and Wisdom to adequately guide our ideas, feelings, words, and deeds.
We know how well we are following the Light by Its fruits, which are also Its path: aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent thinking and feeling centered around the push to better understand and live the Light (not so much that idea as the inner sense of things to which it imperfectly though not therefore necessarily inadequately points), with this seeking and living guardrailed by our inner knowledge that if we are not respectful, kind, and deeply aware of other human beings–if we do not love the Light (aka: God / the Truth / Buddha Nature / etc: again: this is prior to our ideas and feelings: they will not reach It literally/definitively) with all our heart and soul and mind and our neighbors as ourselves, then we are full of shit, and we need to stop, drop all our nonsense egotripping, and start over again, pushing out from within, pushing for the Light within ourselves and within every other living creature.

You see? It could work. And if that above scenario is not True, nothing can work. Because if there’s no Truth or we cannot relate meaningfully to It or we don’t, then our ideas and feelings are free to twist and turn self-servingly, and, despite heroic speeches to the contrary, they will and they do. And also because if the Truth is supposed to be literally/definitively grasped by human beings, the most fundamental Should of our lives is incomprehensible to our ideas and feelings, which we must rely on to relate meaningfully to our lives.

[Note that you don’t have to believe in the Truth to follow It adequately; and that believing in It does not necessarily mean you will follow It adequately. We are pointing with language towards what is prior to language, so a reader might disagree with our poetry but still jive with the underlying poem. The point of this essay is not to demand uniformity of belief, but just to point towards a gist where we can meet and meaningfully grow together: Loving Kindness is the Way (to attempt a broader, less theophilosophical poetry).]

If the above sketch is correct, the way forward is constant spiritual, emotional, intellectual, moral and existential seeking, attempting, reexamining, reevaluating, refining–always in the spirit of selfless joy and humble diligence. You are never 100% right or 100% wrong, but can be much more heading towards right or much more heading towards wrong, and the task is to keep working to head in the right direction–a task which has as a fundamental component both constant spiritual effort and constant awareness of the tendency of ideas and feelings to trick one into taking them more seriously than the Light within which they are supposed to be translating as best they can, but which they can never perfectly translate.

If the Truth is either nonexistent or completely unknown, there is no way forward. Thinkers can build all the fancy theories about creating meaning out of meaningfulness that they want to: such theories don’t really make sense to human hearts and minds and are therefore not livable philosophies. I mean, sure, since most people don’t really pay all that much attention to their own stated philosophies and religious convictions, one might very well put together a workable life based on such a philosophy. But the point of this essay is to point us towards a more accurate understanding of how human thought/feeling works, what it needs to be meaningful to itself (and thus able to follow its own thinking/feeling to its own conclusions), and how it could realistically hope to find and progress in that meaningfulness. Human goodness and wisdom are always things of degrees: we’ll never get them perfect, but a more careful description of where we find ourselves (ie: how our thought works, what motivates us, what possibilities we find within ourselves) is helpful in the same way stopping and looking around you is a good tool for getting less lost. That’s what this essay is for. Not to get all huffy about how you have to think and feel. But to think and feel with you, with all of us–we band of brothers, we happy sisters, we lucky genderless, raceless, nationless, teamless soul-flow.

What are the implications of Something Deeperism for the individual? Even without all our above sketches, they are this simple rule to which any philosopher or believer can readily assent: The only hope for human beings is to put a constant full-being (ideas, feelings, and whatever else is within the conscious moment all working meaningfully together) engagement with the joy within which alone knows that and how human life truly Matters ahead of all our ideas and feelings: The only hope is to put such an engagement ahead of our ideas and feelings about what Matters, or how nothing Matters, or how we don’t know if anything Matters or Not. Because only through that engagement can we humans find a path that is meaningful/interesting/followable/believable/standable to us.

What are the implications of Something Deeperism for the group?
OK!
I can answer that.
We won’t get everyone to agree that Something Deeperism is an awesome rule of thumb for thought and action–a nice sketch of a workable worldview, which of course will never be perfect and which only has meaning to the degree it points us towards fully knowing and living the gentle joy that passes but does not completely blow off human understanding. Different people have different notions, and we get super attached to them sometimes, and whatever.
But we should be able to eke out this minimal concession:
Any philosophy or religion will only be meaningful/livable to human beings to the degree that philosophy or religion respects, encourages, and fosters the following:

1) Awareness, clarity, honesty in thought (to the degree one fails in these goals, one’s thought confuses and/or mistrusts itself: you dissolve into a fog of equally-believable, and thus equally-meaningless possibilities; and within this fog the old hopes and fears clamor to the forefront, take over the ship and sink it like a pack of wild ultimately-directionless drives would have to).

2) A belief that other human beings are all fundamentally like we are, and that we can communicate meaningfully to ourselves and with other human beings, and that what we say and do actually matters; that is to say: we are all in this together and must treat ourselves and everyone else with respect and kindness (to the degree one fails to think, feel, and act in accordance with the sense-of-things here sketched [again: imperfectly, but not therefore necessarily inadequately], one’s focus turns away from one’s own conscious moment (which has become meaningless/boring/hopeless to it); and again into the chaos arising from this lack of meaningful conscious engagement, slip the demondogs of push-away/pull-towards, and the ship is again overrun by ultimate-directionlessness and sunk [maybe not irretrievably: indeed, the sooner you see water crashing in all around, the better!]).

3) A commitment to working to improve honesty, efficiency, decency/justice/kindness (all smushed together to highlight how decency requires justice and neither work for anyone unless everything is undergirded by kindness: not “decency” as in “burn sinner burn!” and not “justice” as in “revenge”, but “decency” as “fostering a place where we are given the space to explore in life with open-hearts and -minds” and “justice” as in “equal treatment under the law within a constant push for policies and procedures that help everyone find and live the Light in a way that is meaningful to them and helpful to all”) in private and public groups (including government). Just as an individual’s thought is more meaningful to that individual’s ideas and feelings and her thought-as-a-whole to the degree he thinks aware, clear … kind, a group’s thought is more meaningful to the individuals within the group and the group-as-a-whole to the degree that group demands, pursues, and improves honesty, efficiency, and the kind of fair play that allows everyone to participate in building a more open, caring, wise, helpful, uncorrupt government. Both mindless flag-waving and pouty-quitting go too far: they cause us to look away from what our government is up to and prevent us from doing our fundamental duty as citizens: working together to act as a final check on corruption and madness in government.

Addendum: What is corruption? What is madness? They’re both, like all human things, things of degrees.

The more corrupt a human conscious moment, group of humans, or government is, the easier it is for evil (dishonesty, cruelty, vanity, meanness, greed, pettyiness, egotism: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) to win out in the constant inner struggle (within an individual, group, and/or government/political-entity) to rule, which victory allows evil to thus push the whole (individual, … government/political-entity) towards its foolish, self-defeating (because corruption = wisdom is not steering = that within which deserves to rule our thoughts and actions is losing control) ends; the less corrupt xyz human-entity is, the easier it is for goodness (honesty, kindness, selflessness, win-win, shared joy, Love: you know the direction I’m pointing towards!) to win out in the constant inner struggle (within xyz human-entity) to rule, which victory allows goodness to push the whole towards better, more coherent, internally-meaningful and spiritually/emotionally/intellectually/actionably acceptable.

Insanity has the same basic effect: making evil win and goodness lose; but whereas corruption seeks confusion in order to mask its evil intentions and ruthlessly selfish and pathetically boring/limited/unimaginative worldview; madness (whether organic or to some appreciable degree caused by corruption’s self-undermining of a human-entity) more starts with chaos and flails about less purposely, perhaps even being on occasion nudged in a better direction by a better impulse, though ultimately–being without adequate levels of clear self-aware conscious engagement–tends like corruption to the worse and worse and worse worse worse.

The above writing was found painstakingkly etched into the glossy marine-gray paint job of a well-kept toilet stall’s door by an earnest citizen, who duly reported the finding to the proper authorities at WAP’s Department of Unexpected Spiritual Reflections. The above transcript was created by Bartleby Willard and Andy Watson, in cooperation with the reigning WAP archivist, Buddy McBusy Boddy.