This article has been cross-posted to the new POSITs Blog (Positive Realizations), and this Substack has been renamed to become the personal blog of Faze. If’ you’d like to receive all kinds of my posts, feel free to subscribe or stay subscribed. If you’re more interested in only the abstract, philosophical, political, or economic commentary, feel free to subscribe to the Official PR/POSITs Substack.
After an unexpected career shift, some encouragement from a dear friend, and an opportunity for deeper recognition and funding to work on my deepest passion, I decided to rewrite a paper that was languishing in obscurity from insufficient refinement. It represented years of intellectual and emotional work, months of writing, and a large part of my identity. I finished editing and submitted it the night of the deadline, like just about every other paper I had ever written for a deadline. Unlike every other paper, however, this one felt much closer to satisfactory, and I was more proud of it than I’d ever been of my writing. I submitted it to the 2025 Berggruen Essay Contest, run by the parent organization of Noema Magazine. It didn’t win. Nor place even in the top 25. The winning essay was laughably lacking in philosophical rigor. We’ll need other, more radical, more frontier methods and publications to gain the traction I expect to see for this movement.
Here are the ‘one pagers’. Let me know what you think in the comments!
Positive Realizations One-Pagers:
Outlining More Coherent Systems of Knowing–Growing–Empowering
0.1 Technical Abstract
“Positive Realizations” (PR) proposes a systematic, systemic metaphysics supporting the expansion of global cooperation, grounded in the identity of knowledge, experience, and existence. Progressing from self-evident “first-principles” in the certainty of direct experience, PR establishes that existence is fundamentally characterized by intentional progression toward more coherence, self-organization, and recursive optimization. In this model, knowledge is revealed as successful action in the world, or the consistency between anticipation and perceived outcome, and therefore as the ongoing alignment of outward- and inward-oriented experience. Thus, reality itself is always expanding experience/knowledge/existence through autopoietic (self-reproducing) desire – through positive realization itself. PR is an optimistic, politically and intellectually unifying framework to guide the phase shift towards deeper planetary coherence.
As planetary systems continue to expand in complexity/capacity, the optimized integration of organic-synthetic intelligence can be explicitly identified as an evolutionary imperative. The PR system posits that ongoing positive realizations rely on precision-oriented, planetary-scale digital modeling, prioritising the intentionality, coherence, and sustainability of the general system. Complementing geo-technical governance, PR identifies integrated, intentional bio-ecological communities as having highly positive expansive potential. It posits the mutual symbiosis of these two systems for the optimization of organic-synthetic intelligence and general positivity, and outlines some preliminary protocols for this partnership to support the collective alignment of universal desire.
0.2 Philosophical Abstract
We all want to see positive change, whether more personally or globally. So, we seek more clarity about the nature of change and desire, and about what progress we can imagine and expect. We cannot deny the certainty of our own immediate, direct experience, and therefore of our existence. Insofar as knowing is certain, it cannot be doubted, and is always reliable; knowledge represents ongoing consistency, matching anticipation with outcome. All that is experienced is known (we know of each experience as it happens), and all knowing is an experience. No instance of either falls outside the other — they functionally cannot be separated, and are therefore identical. Since we know ourselves and our standard of truth, we know about existence. What we know of reality/existence always includes experience, and its expansion through striving. As existence is true/real, it is identical to knowledge and experience. Our experience always includes our own action, driven by our choice (preferences and expectations), and constrained by uncertainties. Existence, as far as we know and can know, is primarily striving towards expanded self-awareness, self-organization, harmony, alignment, expansion, and power in all ways. The more we align all our systems - relationships/communities/organizations, the more empowered and positive we can be. The further integration and stabilization of all systems requires the evolution of all ways of being/knowing, primarily including digital-mathematical modelling and holistic ecological communities. We expect and urge the embrace of more conscious coordination with digital tools and artificial intelligence, as well as a more conscious coordination with the diversity of life and culture around the globe, pursuing all possibilities to expand consciousness, power, growth, and the success of collective existence through Positive Realizations.
1. Point-by-Point
We know we have experience; experience is certain.
All we have access to comes through our own experience.
Out of all things (all experiences), we have the most certainty about our most direct experiences.
We know we experience because we are directly connected to our experience; we are always inseparable from our experience, and therefore are identical to our experience.
Experiencing certainty (knowledge) is consistent/reliable — our certainty of the fact of experience does not waver.
The more reliable/consistent something is, the more we can rely on it — the more we know it and how it behaves.
We know that all our knowledge/knowing is and always has been an experience.
We can only expect what has been consistent, so we can expect all our knowledge to coincide with experience.
As far as we know, all knowledge must be an experience; all that we know must exhibit the traits of experience.
Therefore, as far as we know it, all of known reality has the characteristics of experience. Processes/things/realities are relevant only insofar as they affect us and therefore are an experience.
Knowledge, experience, and existence always fully coincide for us and are therefore inseparable and identical (no instance of any can be identified apart from the others).
Alternate framing: We know we are part of reality and therefore share the same basic element(s) as reality. We know that experience is a basic element (it is ubiquitous for us - the most inherent and undeniable). Reality must therefore have the basic element of experience.
We also know of our uncertainty; we are less certain the less we have experienced some consistent/stable thing.
We always have varying degrees of certainty/clarity/determination, and choice. As we can imagine many options and lack certainty in action, we choose. As we can imagine only having done what we did, or fewer options, there is certainty, and we have less choice. Just as experience has varying degrees of choice, it also varies in desirability.
As we choose to extend our existence, we expand our knowledge/experience. This expansive striving increases the entirety of experience, including both minimally and maximally certain, chosen, and desirable experience.
Existence/knowledge/experience self-referentially desires more of itself. Existence is always increasingly striving, learning, positive, and expansive. Our primary goal is our primary behavior, and can be described as maximizing positive outcomes; evolving/learning to grow ourselves; our energy, stability, sustainability, coherence, and efficiency of creation.
More coherent/stable/expansive existence implies maximizing our self-awareness and self-organization; sustainable life necessitates more cooperative planetary governance and coherence on all levels, expanding life into a larger, more unified organism, and enabling more sustainable/continuous flourishing of existence. Geopolitical, social, technical, and personal alignment are vital and reciprocal.
The expansion of planetary social organization driven by maximal knowledge/experience flow seems highly dependent on the precision and efficiency allowed by large-scale data-analysis, mathematical optimization, and the expansion of instrumental power. Data science and AI therefore seems key to optimize holistic health, regenerative ecology, communal/cooperative living, distribution of basic resources for geopolitical/social stability, the integrity of the biosphere and agro-ecological systems, and the resilience of technological infrastructure.
Some promising directions towards a phase-shift in global coherence include the enhancement of: large-scale socio-economic design/planning with long-term/comprehensive plans for optimal resource distribution based on the most advanced computing and information distribution, and prioritizing holistic/comprehensive health/resilience through highly integrated, intimate, and coherent organizations/communities.
More information and longer-formats can be found on the Google doc.