The Infinite Staircase

by Geoffrey A. Moore

In this bold new book, high-tech’s best-known strategist makes a seminal contribution to the search for meaning in a secular era.

Two questions fundamental to human existence have always been the metaphysical “where do I fit in the grand scheme of things?” and the ethical “how should I behave?” Religion is no longer a source of answers for many people, and nothing has replaced it.

Moore uses his signature framework-based approach to answer these questions, taking us on an intellectual roller coaster ride through physics, chemistry, biology, the social sciences and the humanities. Along the way, he builds a metaphorical ladder that leads from the big bang to the need for ethical action in our daily lives.

Combining an extraordinary range of scholarship with an accessible and entertaining writing style, The Infinite Staircase: What the Universe Tells Us About Life, Ethics, and Mortality provides a coherent and unified platform for a full human life.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science, Business

217 pages, Paperback

Published August 10, 2021

About the author

Geoffrey Moore is an author, speaker, and advisor who splits his consulting time between start-up companies in the Mohr Davidow portfolio and established high-tech enterprises, most recently including Salesforce, Microsoft, Intel, Box, Aruba, Cognizant, and Rackspace.

Moore’s life’s work has focused on the market dynamics surrounding disruptive innovations. His first book, Crossing the Chasm, focuses on the challenges start-up companies face transitioning from early adopting to mainstream customers. It has sold more than a million copies, and its third edition has been revised such that the majority of its examples and case studies reference companies come to prominence from the past decade. Moore’s most recent work, Escape Velocity, addresses the challenge large enterprises face when they seek to add a new line of business to their established portfolio. It has been the basis of much of his recent consulting.

Irish by heritage, Moore has yet to meet a microphone he didn’t like and gives between 50 and 80 speeches a year. One theme that has received a lot of attention recently is the transition in enterprise IT investment focus from Systems of Record to Systems of Engagement. This is driving the deployment of a new cloud infrastructure to complement the legacy client-server stack, creating massive markets for a next generation of tech industry leaders.

Moore has a bachelors in American literature from Stanford University and a PhD in English literature from the University of Washington. After teaching English for four years at Olivet College, he came back to the Bay Area with his wife and family and began a career in high tech as a training specialist. Over time he transitioned first into sales and then into marketing, finally finding his niche in marketing consulting, working first at Regis McKenna Inc, then with the three firms he helped found: The Chasm Group, Chasm Institute, and TCG Advisors. Today he is chairman emeritus of all three.

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Reviews

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first part of The Infinite Staircase is, in effect, a contemporary riff on the Great Chain of Being. It seeks to explain via the metaphor of the staircase how all reality is indeed structured as a hierarchy. Unlike the Great Chain of Being, however, both the top and bottom of this staircase are shrouded in mystery — hence the infinite staircase. Fortunately, however, the middle parts are clearly in view, and that is where our story takes place. Telling this tale will take up the first two-thirds of this book. In so doing, it will set the stage for the remaining third. There we will address the question, If this is indeed what the world is actually like, what does that mean for how we should act? What, to bring things back to my perennial concern, should be our strategy for living?

The Infinite Staircase is a radical and persuasive Theory of Everything, referencing the peaks of human thought from quantum mechanics to Romantic poetry in order to explain the origins and the meaning of life. Author Geoffrey A. Moore, known for his best-selling Business books, carefully leads the reader up his metaphorical stairway, ably explaining high-level theories in understandable language, and what this adds up to in the end feels nothing short of revolutionary. Although my e-ARC was only a couple hundred pages, I worked through this slowly, entranced by Moore’s facts and connections, and while I don’t feel that I 100% absorbed everything that I read, I’m left with the awe-filled sense that I’ve been shown a peek behind the curtain that shrouds our reality; this engaged me on every level and it has my highest recommendation. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

I’ve been sitting with this for a few days, not really certain how deeply I should try to explain Moore’s ideas (it really does take a book of this length to go through them), so I’m just going to put one of his summing-ups behind a spoiler tag for anyone who’s interested in a deeper dive (and to serve as a reminder for myself): In discussing the metaphysics of entropy, we hypothesized that Earth has an interest in maximizing complexity as a means of shedding the sun’s energy. Such an imperative does account for a staircase in which higher and higher orders of complexity emerge, each characterized by greater entropy-generating capabilities. Biological life represents a major step up in this regard, with humanity achieving the highest step to date. In this context, all that we value about ourselves, including our most profound emotions and dearest accomplishments, are indeed just epiphenomena. This is the materialist point of view, and it is perfectly sound as far as it goes. The materialist account of reality falters with the emergence of consciousness. Yes, consciousness is a tool for creating more entropy, but that is not its only function. It is also a mechanism for sensing and managing homeostasis, the tendency of all living things to seek a lifesustaining equilibrium. In the realm of animal behavior, homeostasis results in what we called the Darwinian mean, a pragmatically determined equilibrium between risk and reward based on balancing desire with fear, one that maximizes an organism’s chances of survival and reproduction. In the realm of human behavior, homeostasis is more closely aligned with the Aristotelian mean, a psychologically determined equilibrium among a variety of conflicting feelings that maximizes our organism’s sense of well-being. Reliable access to well-being is the kind of spiritual support we are looking for. Aristotle’s strategy for securing it was through a conscious commitment to the virtue of temperance. That can work for personalities that are already in balance and have spiritual energy to expend, but it does not work for those that are disaffected, wounded, or in need. The latter need an influx of energy from outside themselves, something the Aristotelian mean does not provide for. Religion, by contrast, does so handsomely, which helps account for why it displaced philosophy at the core of the Western cultural tradition. But can a secular tradition supply a comparable spiritual support from Being? We have reliable evidence that mindfulness and meditation, as well as other related practices, do confer a state of well-being. Earlier, we associated this state with joyfulness, but now we need to be more precise. We experience joy in two modes. One is as a sharp pang that can completely overwhelm us, the other a serene centeredness that suffuses quietly into our consciousness. The former is not a repeatable experience. Its epiphanies are good for shaking us up, waking us up, and taking us up to a higher plane. They make us aware of feelings we did not know we could have. But they pass, often quite quickly, and they leave us not only breathless but also at a bit of a loss. By contrast, the quieter mode of joy that suffuses into our consciousness is indeed a repeatable experience, one that becomes increasingly accessible through the practices we have been referencing. This is the joy that provides spiritual support, the one that underlies spiritual homeostasis. Where, then, does such joy come from? It is important to note that it does not come from the practices themselves. What they deliver instead is an awareness that this quieter mode of joy was there all along. Once we are sufficiently aware of it, we can access the experience between practices. It can become abiding. This is the point at which being becomes Being. Note that we are not at the bottom of our staircase. There, being truly is just being. It is with the emergence of consciousness that being becomes Being. In other words, in the systems hierarchy worldview, Being emerges out of being halfway up the staircase.This is a departure from the traditional understanding of transcendentalism, which aligns it with idealism. In that context, Being is positioned as a divine field from which reality emanates. Such a narrative may be compelling, but there is no way to verify it. By contrast, working within the systems hierarchy model, we are aligning transcendentalism with pragmatism. Our focus, therefore, must be on verifiable outcomes in the here and now. In that context, Being is verifiable only with the advent of consciousness. It could exist prior to consciousness, it could even be the foundation out of which the Big Bang emerged, but we have no way of verifying that. What we can verify is that Being provides spiritual support for consciousness and thus for everything above it — values, culture, language, narrative, analytics, theory. This means, among other things, that it is available to support and authorize ethics. That is what makes Being a bridge between metaphysics and ethics. More succinctly: The Infinite Staircase starts at the beginning of time with the first step centering on physics and the Big Bang and an explanation of entropy (which most people define as the universe’s trend towards greater disorder but which Moore more precisely defines as the universe’s attempt to lock up the heat/energy resulting from the Big Bang in ever-increasingly complex systems; the most complex system that we know of being humans ourselves). The steps climb through chemistry (how the first elements and atoms were created) and biology (with a convincing explanation for how life arose on Earth and evolved into us), and as the steps proceed, Moore stresses that each higher step emerges naturally out of the one below it without ever requiring some deity or other organising principle imposing order from the top down. The steps which Moore covers are:

11. Theory
10. Analytics
9. Narrative
8. Language
7. Culture
6. Values
5. Consciousness
4. Desire
3. Biology
2. Chemistry
1. Physics

It may seem surprising to claim that values emerge prior to culture and language. In fact, however, they grow naturally out of the interaction of any conscious being with its social group. The former brings intentions driven by desires and fears; the latter provides boundaries and direction for sanctioned behaviors. Values, in other words, are socially constructed. Without social interactions, there can be no values, only desires and fears.

The staircase metaphor is really useful for explaining how we got here and how we live (with the philosophers and academics occupying the highest, most complex steps on that staircase with their theories and analyses), but it doesn’t give the complete picture on how to live. And this is where Moore asks for what I think of as a leap of faith. Anyone can understand that the 4th step, desire, underpins our selfish and greedy behaviours. And I can be convinced that its counterbalance, kindness, is common to all mammals (and therefore a part of our genetic makeup); that higher facets of ethics (fairness, morality, justice) are products of the culture that we’re raised in (and therefore a part of our “memetic” makeup):

Just as a genome replicates a set of strategies for living that is biologically maintained and transmitted from generation to generation via genes, so a culture replicates a set of strategies for living that is socially maintained and transmitted from generation to generation via memes. Upon this analogy rests the transformation of evolution from the realm of genetics to the realm of ideas. It is the “missing link” that joins matter to mind.

But, beyond society as a whole rolling along on the strength of cooperative values, what should prompt an individual to choose against his own selfish desires? Here, Moore explains transcendentalism (he has practised Transcendental Meditation for decades), and whether one accesses it through meditation, mindfulness, or epiphany, Moore insists that there is a verifiable and universally accessible “goodness” outside of ourselves that supports consciousness, and thereby, every step above it. (This is the leap of faith, and I leapt. Doesn’t everyone feel that there’s something more ineffable to life than what can be accounted for by pragmatic materialism?) Things then get super interesting, with Moore concluding that since humans are the storytelling animal, most of our conversations and entertainments attempt to dissect what a “good” life looks like. I relate a newspaper article I read about a man saving ducklings from a sewer grate, you talk about the jerk who cut you off in traffic, we have no problem agreeing on what good looks like. We read books and watch movies together to see how characters react under pressure, hoping that their stories end with just desserts. We can discuss some intractable political situation, and even though we can’t hope to solve the issue, I’m left inspired by the empathy you displayed for all sides. And in the end, that’s what Moore says it’s all about: Every human being is a character in the ongoing story of the human race, every one of those characters will eventually die, and all that any of us can hope for is to be an example of what good looks like, to be remembered for that, and to inspire others to do good in the world after we’re gone.

Historically, ethics have been situated in religious narratives entailing obedience to a divine creator. What we have sought to demonstrate in this book is that they are equally compatible with a strategy for living unfolding in a secular universe. In either case, we are carried forward by the narratives we embrace. They provide the foundation for our strategies for living. We are storytelling animals living out our stories as best we can. That is the common thread that unites us all.

I feel like I’ve really oversimplified everything here, I certainly can’t do justice to the level of interdisciplinary scholarship Moore demonstrates (quoting everything from Plato to Flashdance) in a reasonably bite-sized review, but I can say that I do hope this book finds a wide audience; totally worth the read.

[Ryan Boissonneault · Rating 3 out of 5]

While you can’t fault an author for trying to work out their own personal philosophical views, those views don't always turn out to be as profound as the author might have initially believed them to be. Unfortunately, I think this might be the case with The Infinite Staircase. I’ll explain why shortly, but let’s first explore the main claims of the book.

The principal claim, I suppose, is that your picture of how the world works (metaphysics) influences the moral principles that govern your behavior (ethics), and so before you consider what it means to be a good person, you had better give your metaphysical views some thought. I think this is a reasonable proposition.

With that in mind, Moore spends the first two-thirds of the book reviewing his own secular metaphysical view, which he calls the “infinite staircase.” Essentially, Moore is claiming that we can describe reality at different levels, and that each level contains emergent properties that are not reducible to the levels below it.

At the lowest levels, we can describe reality in materialistic terms via physics, chemistry, and biology (what Moore refers to as the “metaphysics of entropy”). The next levels of description account for mind, consciousness, values, and culture, and the highest levels account for language, narrative, analytics, and theory. Because each level has emergent properties, you can’t account for, say, consciousness strictly in terms of the levels below it (via the natural sciences).

There are two points of criticism the reader may consider at this point. One is that there is nothing particularly novel about Moore’s infinite staircase theory. The two foundations on which his theory critically depends—entropy and emergentism—have long been established, and this won’t be any major revelation for those grounded in the basic sciences.

Second, his reliance on emergentism as an explanation feels shallow. To say that consciousness “emerges” out of physics is really to say you have no idea how it happens. Moore never tells us whether emergentism is a descriptive limitation (consciousness does reduce to physics; we just don’t have the capacity to understand how it does so) or an ontological reality (consciousness does not reduce to physics, period). But we must remember, while emergentism appears to be true in principle, it doesn’t explain anything; it would be like saying that oxygen “emerges” out of plants and feeling satisfied with the answer without getting into the details of photosynthesis.

What you’re left with is the rather banal observation that reality can be described at different levels. Perhaps this will come as a revelation for some, but for others it will all seem rather obvious, especially to those that understand the limits of reductionism and the importance of the humanities. Yes, we know that you can’t explain the causes of World War II in terms of particle physics—even if ontologically it could be reduced to that level—and that history as a discipline is necessary to get to the appropriate level of explanation. I just don’t think this is a particularly novel insight, or that it warrants the pages devoted to the topic.

Moore’s coverage of ethics is a little better. Here he correctly points out that values arise at a pre-linguistic level, shared universally among all mammals. He reverses the arrow of causation between morality and religion, noting that it is not religion that makes us moral but that our inherent moral nature manifests itself in religion (along with various other narratives). Our job, in a secular age, is to use language and narrative to modulate our inherently good nature based on the universal mammalian proclivity for sympathy, empathy, and maternal/paternal love.

But even here the reader may point out another flaw in his theory. Moore is claiming that values arise after the emergence of consciousness but before the emergence of language and narrative; but if that’s the case, then perhaps one does not need to flesh out their metaphysical views to be a good person. In fact, it seems that language and theory are the reasons for unethical behavior in the first place. We are taught to act evil, to consider others as outsiders, and to prioritize our own individual selfish needs. If Moore is correct, and values arise pre-linguistically, it seems that what we need is not his infinite staircase theory (grounded in language) but rather pre-linguistic methods to reconnect with our inherently peaceful and tolerant nature; essentially, meditation and mindfulness training.

Overall, Moore is trying to provide a linear, ultimate description of reality (metaphysics) as a foundation for ethics, but he fails on several grounds. First, his metaphysics relies on emergentism, which is essentially a non-explanation. To say consciousness arises out of physics, chemistry, and biology but to not elaborate on what or how this can happen is simply to state the obvious fact that we can describe reality in different ways. This isn’t a metaphysical view so much as a recognition of ignorance as to the ultimate nature of reality and the nature of consciousness.

Moore also never quite takes his own theory seriously enough to fully consider the limitations of language, limitations he points out but then ignores as he builds up his staircase. At best, language and theory should adopt a more modulatory role, but what Moore really wants to say (but never does) is that non-linguistic methods such as meditation are the more direct route to ethical behavior.

Moore even claims in chapter 4 that any viable metaphysical theory must be precise, yet his own theory lacks that precision as outlined above. He seems to be saying simultaneously that reality is too complex to capture via language (as emergentism suggests), but also that his infinite staircase theory has precisely captured reality via language. He also tells us that values arise prior to language and theory but that to be ethical we need to over-rely on language and theory as starting points.

In Chapter 9, Moore writes, “If all you took away from your engagement with ethics was Be kind, you would not be too far off the mark.” This is true because all ethical systems operate on some version of the Golden Rule (treat others the way you would want to be treated) or some version of the harm principle (avoid causing unnecessary harm), based on our biological nature as mammals. This is why stripping away language, bias, and preconceptions via meditation often leads to an increase in empathy and compassion. And if this is the case, as Moore seems to think it is, then why is a 200-page linguistic description of reality necessary for one to be moral when all that seems to be required is the injunction to be kind and to connect with your pre-linguistic values?

[Benjamin Quartey · Rating 3 out of 5]

[5.5/10].
I’d rate this book higher if he changed the premise of the book. He did not accomplish what he stated his goal for the book was.

[Portia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt, in the beginning that this book was two paygrades over my head, but I
persisted and I’m glad I did. As an 89 year old woman I am approaching that time where I have to evaluate where I’ve been and what may happen next.
The book helped..I recommend it as a way to understand..

[Fred Cheyunski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ascend for Enlightenment and Integrity - Having read most of Moore’s business books (e.g., see my review of his "Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers") and remembering his early background in the liberal arts, I was intrigued to see this title and eager to get the book when it came out.

As in his other work, the author serves as an integrator, but in this one conveying a secular means of understanding the world around us and our place in it as human beings. His intent is to provide an up to date means of acting effectively and wisely as individuals within a disrupted environment.

Contents include a Preface, 10 chapters in two Parts and a Conclusion. Namely, there is Part One: Metaphysics; (1) The Purpose of Metaphysics - The Infinite Staircase; (2) The Metaphysics of Entropy: What Is Entropy? Stair 1: Physics: Entropy and the Aftermath of the Big Bang, Stair 2: Chemistry: The Emergence of Emergence, Stair 3: Biology: ". . . Then a Miracle Occurs;" (3) The Metaphysics of Darwinism: What Is Darwinism? Stair 4: Desire: The Darwinian Mean, Stair 5: Consciousness: A Darwinian Theory of Forms, Stair 6: Values: A Darwinian Social Contract, Stair 7: Culture: The Transformation of Evolution: From Genes to Memes; (4) The Metaphysics of Memes - What Are Memes? Stair 8: Language: The Fabric and Fabricator of Memes, Stair 9: Narrative: Inventing Strategies for Living, Stair 10: Analytics: Testing and Refining Strategies for Living, Stair 11: Theory: One Meme to Rule Them All; and (5) Being: A Bridge to Ethics. Then comes Part Two: (6) Making the Turn; (7) Understanding Goodness; (8) Honoring the Ego; (9) Doing Good; and (10) Being Mortal. After the Conclusion follow Acknowledgments, an extensive Bibliography (divided by chapter) and an Index.

As typical with Moore’s books a standout aspect for me are his framework and diagrams (see pg. 8, then later as on pgs. 144 and 158 where different aspects come together). The “Infinite Staircase” is his schema for depicting what is knowable from the physical sciences, social sciences, and the humanities as a basis for considered action (e.g., see my reviews of related books such as Nurse’s “What is Life?” Gopnik’s “The Carpenter and the Gardner,” and Denham’s “Northrop Frye and Critical Method”). Those from any one area can be at odds with the core thesis of this book that, the fundamental basis of reality does not reside on any one stair but rather in the staircase itself.

Drawbacks include some aspects like his discussion of “Being” or his work to forge physical basis for “Goodness.” This book is more of a philosophical work, but it seems there could have been a more direct connection with consciousness and Eastern thought. It seems Moore is using principles from say the Buddhist tradition with its links between “mindfulness” and “right action” (e.g., see Kornfield’s “The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology” and my review of Kolts’s “Compassionate-Mind Guide”).

Even with its contortions in some places, it is worth ascending Moore’s “Infinite Staircase” for further enlightenment and integrity in our activities.

[Ethan Galowitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting read that does an amazing job to go fairly deep across a wide swath of complex topics. While Moore goes into some detail, he not only does a good job to make things accessible to a novice on each topic, he avoids lengthy tangents that would make the book unnecessarily long.

I found myself consistently wondering how Moore became so expert in areas such as physics and philosophy given my understanding of his background as a business author (crossing the chasm). The research required to understand and put these topics together (plus his own unique insights) must have been tremendous.

Excellent book. I highly recommend to anyone interested in science, philosophy/ethics, and who wants to better understand the universe and their place in it.

[Milos Mirosavljevic · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit I expected more. I found the book's first part especially interesting, where Moore discusses how physics "morphs" into chemistry and how the latter "morphs" into biology. The second part of the book was tedious at moments (discussing various aspects of language for instance).

I also liked the part where author argued how to connect with ethics and purpose in life without the religion.

[Ragnhild Malnati]

Considering the big questions in life

Its amazing to me how wide ranging the content of this short book is! A very well written, thought provoking summary of the human condition. Like any good philosophical treatise, it plants one's feet more securely on the ground while opening wider vistas for future actions.

[Kenny Xie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moore does a really good job of providing a general framework of the universe with a basic understanding of science through the human perspective. I found it really interesting how he was able classify the known universe in a hierarchy model of a staircase.

[JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good thought about how humans develop longer. Our consciousness is different. Our ego values things and strives for pleasure. This is fundamentally different from other minds. We can’t be enlightened like a deer that just focuses on the now.

[Richard Pütz · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best from Geoffrey Moore. At some point in all our lives, we come to fully understand that philosophy is never divorced from the work-a-day world. It is what we do as humans.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellently written and a clear foundation for how we can look at our lives. I liked his secular perspective and for me, a timely read as I head into retirement. Perfect.