Three Root Codes in Detail

Code for Existence: Social Survival

Endeavours are required for our continuing existence within a social group. Without endeavours (work, activities, goal-directed behaviour), neither a person, nor his family or community can survive. However, man is threatened by his own primitive animal nature: as long as we remain animals, our brains and body will continue to pump out biological imperatives in regard to: 

  • sex: be sexually active!
  • dominance: create power-based hierarchies!
  • fear: hyper-respond to fear by fighting or fleeing!
  • herd: follow the group despite loss of identity and sanity!
  • territoriality: acquire and protect territory!

Because these characteristics of ours are spontaneous, potentially destructive, and highly resistant to change, religions developed to make man something more than an animal. Religions seeks to instil customs that ensure sex, power, fear, herding and territoriality do not destroy something better that had emerged elsewhere in the brain-mind.

Type of Code List of religious commandments.
Its Goal Survival of the community. The community is given precedence over the individual because social groups, via the family, are the vehicles for cultural survival.
Its Orientation Personal-Communal: About raising a family, working hard and controlling instinct-based drives.
Its Method Formation of natural moral institutions, with organized religion as the most powerful. Internalization of beliefs and customs of the group, with public control of individuals via social mechanisms like rituals, pressure, disapproval, exclusion.
View of «Evil» Our animal-instinctual nature is the source of evil, and the solution is forcible suppression using personal and social mechanisms.
Location in THEE Corresponds to the Root Hierarchy of Personal Endeavour. Social life is organized using the natural moral institutions (PH"4) and ethical rules (PH"6) and authorities (sPH"6).

Code for Rightness: Primal Quests

Each of us should experience a need to address, explicitly or implicitly, the «purpose of my life» (as distinct from the purpose of life in general). This sense that my endeavours and personal existence should have an overarching purpose may seem silly, deep or mysterious to a philosopher. For everyone else, it is a simple and natural concern. As it turns out, there are only a limited number of options. These are captured in THEE as the 7 Primal Quests. Societies vary in their view of each. Nevertheless, all of them create a pressure for rightness in some form: i.e. get it right, feel right, be righteous, right thinking. Click to see TET in a new tab. (The sense of right = suitable also applies.)

Except for Pleasure-L'1, none are particularly driven by our animal origins. Many are oriented to overcoming instinct-driven behaviours for our own good &/or the good of others. However, this influence is primarily to support our inner self, not to support the community.

Type of Code Coherent religious or humanistic philosophy of life.
Its Goal Personal satisfaction. Live a meaningful or happy life in the world as it is, in a way deemed to be right by the underlying philosophy.
Its Orientation Personal-Egotistic: About adhering to what you judge to be the purpose of life for you.
Its Method Organizing and pursuing specific endeavours through life using an over-riding purpose-system that is satisfying and seems both natural and right to you.
View of «Evil» Evil is defined in terms of beliefs and rituals that characterize the previous stage in spiritual evolution. This counters the pull that the past continues to exert, so when the present stage is superseded, it becomes evil in turn.
Location in THEE Corresponds to the Root Typology of Primal Quests. Individuals are free to discover the Quest that feels natural.

Code for Goodness: Primal Injunctions

Many of us also experience a need to better ourselves and improve the quality of our own psychosocial reality. If we make our own world a better place, this has a knock on effect for others. So the focus here is on goodness as primary. The codes for living of this sort tap into the spiritual essence that humanity undoubtedly possesses. They are essential for the generation of a better world for each and all.

The significance of ultimate values emerges together with a strong drive to see unity with a greater reality than our own immediate personal and social worlds.

Type of Code Universal spiritual truths formulated as impersonal injunctions for willing adoption.
Its Goal Humanity-wide Development: Expressing a better Self as a basis for creating a better personal (psychosocial) world based in peaceful coexistence.
Its Orientation Impersonal-Humanistic: Management of egocentricity, egotistic urges and self-aggrandizement.
Its Method Minimize evil tendencies inherent in the practical need for duality by enjoining obedience to rules that are significant for each person as a representative of what is best in humanity.
View of «Evil» Evil is choice of the lesser good. The code deals directly with evil by indicating its personal origin and inhibiting views of evil as a thing or a force either within or without. (Evil as defined in the other Codes fits this definition.)
Location in THEE Corresponds to the Root Tertiary Hierarchy of Primal Injunctions. These Primal Injunctions interact to generate additional guidelines for better community living (R"HK), and combine to enable the generation of goodness (RsH").

Originally posted: 10-Jan-2013