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First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come
AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.
First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.
Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next.
Taking the form of forty-two telegraphic propositions, this extended monograph provides a brief unpacking of CosmoErotic Humanism as worldview, and the First Principles and First Values that form it source code. The propositions collected here unpack the urgent moral need to articulate a new vision and theory of value.
Humanity must redefine what it understands to be valuable if it is going to survive. Humans must understand the importance of what they value in the Cosmos—the reality of value itself—beyond the notion that what they value is, for example, simply an arbitrary price that can be fixed to a commodity.
The idea that a tree is only as valuable as what it can be sold for is absurd.
The idea that a person is only as valuable as what they can contribute to society is also absurd.
In fact, both the tree and the person incarnate a dimension of value that is immeasurable and fundamentally irreducible to its commodified form. Yet just this kind of absurdity has been driving global culture for centuries.
There has been great confusion in value theory over the last two hundred years. On the one hand, conservatives have attempted to simplify the discussion to a single list of preordained and eternal values, which must be protected and to which all people must pledge allegiance.
At the same time, driven by a reductive materialism, scientific communities largely claim that only what is described by physics is real and that therefore nothing ultimately has intrinsic value. Given this metaphysical assumption, contemporary value theory has stridently argued that value is but a contrived human invention.
The rise of postmodernity has only exacerbated this trend, labelling all values "social constructs," "fictions," or "figments of our imaginations." This claim has now entered mainstream culture.
First Principles and First Values argues against this. Value is not merely instrumental or economic. It is not a social construction or cultural contrivance—not a mere fiction covering over a truly valueless and therefore ultimately meaningless world. The propositions here begin to demonstrate that value is intrinsic to Cosmos, all the way down and all the way up the evolutionary chain.
Value is foundational and evolving. It is not that human beings contrive value; rather, value precedes life. Life is an inherent expression of value. Life is contrived in pursuit of cosmic value. Cosmic value in this way generates life, as life emerges in pursuit of value. We live inside of value even as value lives inside of us. Reality is value.
But this is all ahead of the story.
First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.
Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next.
Taking the form of forty-two telegraphic propositions, this extended monograph provides a brief unpacking of CosmoErotic Humanism as worldview, and the First Principles and First Values that form it source code. The propositions collected here unpack the urgent moral need to articulate a new vision and theory of value.
Humanity must redefine what it understands to be valuable if it is going to survive. Humans must understand the importance of what they value in the Cosmos—the reality of value itself—beyond the notion that what they value is, for example, simply an arbitrary price that can be fixed to a commodity.
The idea that a tree is only as valuable as what it can be sold for is absurd.
The idea that a person is only as valuable as what they can contribute to society is also absurd.
In fact, both the tree and the person incarnate a dimension of value that is immeasurable and fundamentally irreducible to its commodified form. Yet just this kind of absurdity has been driving global culture for centuries.
There has been great confusion in value theory over the last two hundred years. On the one hand, conservatives have attempted to simplify the discussion to a single list of preordained and eternal values, which must be protected and to which all people must pledge allegiance.
At the same time, driven by a reductive materialism, scientific communities largely claim that only what is described by physics is real and that therefore nothing ultimately has intrinsic value. Given this metaphysical assumption, contemporary value theory has stridently argued that value is but a contrived human invention.
The rise of postmodernity has only exacerbated this trend, labelling all values "social constructs," "fictions," or "figments of our imaginations." This claim has now entered mainstream culture.
First Principles and First Values argues against this. Value is not merely instrumental or economic. It is not a social construction or cultural contrivance—not a mere fiction covering over a truly valueless and therefore ultimately meaningless world. The propositions here begin to demonstrate that value is intrinsic to Cosmos, all the way down and all the way up the evolutionary chain.
Value is foundational and evolving. It is not that human beings contrive value; rather, value precedes life. Life is an inherent expression of value. Life is contrived in pursuit of cosmic value. Cosmic value in this way generates life, as life emerges in pursuit of value. We live inside of value even as value lives inside of us. Reality is value.
But this is all ahead of the story.
- GenresPhilosophy
306 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 2, 2024
21 people are currently reading
76 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 24, 2025
I enjoyed the book in many ways. It is easy to read, I feel sympathetic to its philosophy. It is definitely a push against reductionism. But there are critical remarks that I have as well. Quite a few of them. The authors emphasize love and Homo amor but ignore that brutality and hostility are also parts of reality. Any Integral approach has to account for the actual reality of these aspects instead of providing a one-sided view which attempts to reduce everything to the Love force (this force is evolutionary and powerful, but nevertheless there are many other, ontologically important forces). There are many good things about this book, but it also is not perfect. It attempts to criticize TechnoFeudalism as well as provide critiques of Harari and Zuboff (Surveillance Capitalism), while appreciating their contributions, but, actually, I saw much more convincing works which both criticize and appreciate these views. I also don’t find that building a book out of a list of principles and values is such a good idea. I prefer branching out trees, with hierarchical ordering and a clean organizing principle. In overall, I enjoyed the book, but I think it is a supplement to Ken Wilber’s Integral Evolutionism rather than an independent achievement.
June 15, 2024
Laying the necessary, spiritual groundwork for post-metacrisis flourishing. Dense and compact with lots of repetition on their notion of value - not necessarily a bad thing since it hammers the central point home, just don't expect this to be a light beach read.
If you are someone concerned about the human impact on the biosphere and our collective future on this planet, here is a much needed breath of optimism that doesn't settle for delusion!
If you are someone concerned about the human impact on the biosphere and our collective future on this planet, here is a much needed breath of optimism that doesn't settle for delusion!
July 6, 2024
Humanities last chapter or next?
As an active member of MIT’s Presencing Institute: U-Lab 1&2, I am recommending this to all of my cohorts as an essential compliment to Otto Scharmer’s Theory U. And, making it required reading for my Hub. Shifting Change agent to “Way” Agent
As an active member of MIT’s Presencing Institute: U-Lab 1&2, I am recommending this to all of my cohorts as an essential compliment to Otto Scharmer’s Theory U. And, making it required reading for my Hub. Shifting Change agent to “Way” Agent
September 16, 2024
The most important book I have read on navigating the meta crisis thus far.
January 22, 2025
Evolution is always seeking for a deeper level of intimacy.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews