Lothar Schäfer has said, “Striving for a life in harmony with the order of the universe demands assuming personal responsibility for being reasonably well informed, enlightened, and for making an effort to overcome the complacent views of common sense.  Do not adopt as a fundamental standard of conduct any view of the world that is in clear contrast with what is reasonably known about the nature of the universe.” [1]

We need to include caution, modesty and tolerance, the impossibility of perfection, the willingness to forgive, teach, and learn, and an understanding that, “The rules of the physical order of nature are inexorably enforced, but the rules of the spiritual order of nature do not assert themselves in the same way.  Their actions are subtle.  They are there for human beings to accept of their own free will.”  “The maxim of harmony advises us to be inquisitive, not ruminative; curious, not merely interested.  Uncertainty in knowledge -- is what I think true? -- allows for creativity.  Uncertainty in ethics -- is what I do right? -- allows for Free Will.”  We “have inherited the need for explanation, the profound disquiet which forces us to search for the meaning of existence.  That same disquiet has created all myths, all religions, all philosophies, and science itself.” [1]  Going beyond the Love Synthesis is the craving for knowledge, the craving for explanations and purpose in life.

III.  Yet another reason is to recognize the Paradigms which control and limit our lives, often to our great detriment.  It is essential, for example, that we recognize the degree to which mainstream science’s commitment to mechanism has influenced our lives.  If in mechanism, physics takes the view that the universe is like a clock, closed, and entirely predictable on the basis of unchanging laws, then in biology, it implies that all aspects of life, its evolution, feelings and values, are ultimately explicable in terms of molecular properties. The same logic leads to a legal system which assumes that precise procedural technicalities constitutes Justice, or a political system which asserts that finely formulated personal rights constitutes an ideal democracy, or that responsible public service manifests itself by the enforcement of finely split bureaucratic regulations. 

“All of these attitudes are the attitudes of barbarians.”  It is, in effect, “the easy view of classical science and of common sense.  In epistemology, mechanism is naive realism, the view that all knowledge is based on unquestionable facts, on apodictically verified truth.” [1]  Almost all of our Assumptions are, inevitably, wrong or incomplete.  There is, furthermore, no more dangerous barbarian than the person who is convinced they are absolutely and irrevocably right.

“The mechanical lawfulness of nature, originally postulated by classical science, now emulated by all the pseudosciences, and mindlessly reiterated by an educational system that tries to be popular rather than instructive, is often depressing to us.  The discovery of the quantum world is a liberating experience.”  “...what Kundera called the unbearable lightness of being.” [1]