Will: Conjectures

The Origin is a Unity

Will is a unity: in formula terms: R, representing the Root Cell. However oneness cannot be comprehended.

Will emanates the Hierarchy of Endeavour (formula: RH) and comprehension can then commence. Sometimes it is worth referring to «creative endeavour» to emphasize that all human endeavour is truly creative. Will is utterly personal, and on the border of biology. Its first emanation must also be personal. So the full THEE-name for the Root Hierarchy is Personal Endeavour.

From the hierarchy that is born of the Origin, a myriad of manifestations flow, and these are all experienced and perceived as being «willed». «The human elements in endeavour» are all manifestations of will and personal endeavour. They must be accounted for and ordered within THEE.

ClosedWill in the Literature 

Properties

  • The Will-R is intrinsic to life and cannot vanish without death.
  • Will-R is postulated to be the reservoir of creative energy and psychosocial potential, whose nature is obscure but which must have a biological source.
  • Psychosocial potential is a fancy term for the possibility of distinctively human creativity being brought to bear in situations where instinctive or biological reactions are unsatisfactory or insufficient.
  • Will-energy enables intense attention and presumably powers personal and group activity. It may be the source of «vitality» or «high-energy».

Will Energy

People appear to operate with two forms of will that have diametrically opposing qualities:

  • positive, creative, constructive;
  • negative, harmful, destructive.

However, will-energy is probably neutral or positive, because bivalence contradicts unification. Bi-valence emerges with values (within RH-L6), which are definitely polarizing. Findings and conjectures in the Your Better Self series of frameworks support the idea of a single form of will-energy. But these are speculative conjectures.

Will cannot be absent or non-functioning until death, and the same probably applies to its components: the levels or domains of will. The inner complexity of each domain of the will unfolds as we use its specific energies. A person can function as if these levels were absent. In such case, the levels then present as harmful states.

  • Futility or apathy might look like lack of RL7: Willingness.
  • Aimlessness might look like a lack of RL6: Purpose.
  • Inarticulacy might look like a lack of RL5: Communication.
  • Depersonalization might look like a lack of RL4: Experience.
  • Chaos or confusion might look like a lack of RL3: Change.
  • Ignorance or superstition might look like a lack of RL2: Inquiry.
  • Inaction or passivity might look like a lack of RL1: Action.

Assuming no severe mental illness, these states will be, or can be, altered or reversed. The dysfunction of apparent lack may have many causes.

Extreme volitional pathologies found in schizophrenia, severe depression and mania, lie on the border of biology if not within it. Psychological states like listlessness, tiredness, exhaustion, apathy, boredom may reflect a failure to engage the will, but more likely express a perverse and mostly unconscious use of Will. 

  • Detrimental or perverse use of a domain (root level) to harm oneself or others is possible and too common: read more.

This page contains the limits of conjectures made about Will to date. It is very difficult to say much with any confidence.

  • Continue now to the mundane (or at least less mystical-philosophical) Levels of Will, which are the basis of our personal endeavours.

Originally posted: 27-Jan-2011; Last updated: 13-Feb-2014.