2.1. Compassion

When something or someone gets in our way, physically or emotionally, an automatic reaction is anger. This has its roots in evolution.

However, from a Causalistic viewpoint, you and everyone else are doing the exact and only actions possible given the entirety of circumstance. Sometimes the result is horrid, and sometimes profoundly beautiful, but everywhere and in every instance it is the only outcome of reality.

When the above belief becomes true for an individual, the world changes as compassion is cultivated on the basis of reason, for others and themself.

(See Section 3.3)

2.2. You Did It

Though we renounce the illusion of free will, this does not include renouncing culpability for wrongdoings. For when a wrong is committed, it is still us who brought it to fruition, even when we are unavoidably forced into that action by all of history’s previous causes.

In this Causalistic framework, all of the consequential moral justifications for punishment still apply. Punishment is due to the instrument of the wrong and serves as an example (a deterring cause) dissuading others from similar activity.

2.3. Beliefs vs. Facts

It is easy to lose the critical distinction between matters of belief and matters of fact. When matters of belief are confused for those of fact, great turmoil can occur. This is a tragic confusion as differences in belief are not only natural, but absolutely necessary for collective human flourishing. Without this capacity for difference life itself can be corrupted. Differences of belief, within reason, should be honored and not tarnished and mistaken as fact. Differences of fact is an oxymoron.

The 'debate' between Causalism and free will is often relegated to the dungeon of facts. 

Here, we elevate it to the realm of beliefs.

2.4. Eternal Chains

At any point in human history, no matter how far back, you have many, many ancestors who were living lives as emotionally rich and complex as your own. A small but crucial change in any of your ancestors' lives could have prevented your existence. Today, you affect eternity in more ways than you could possibly fathom.

We are vital threads within the grand, unbroken tapestry of life and humanity.

2.5. You Are Incomprehensible

Life is an incomprehensible gift. 

'Incomprehensible' is not used here poetically. It is literal. 

Here is an intimate story of the beginning of your own existence:

Out of about 300 million sperm that occur in an average ejaculation into a vagina, only about three million, around one percent, enter the uterus. After swimming upstream to the fallopian tubes, penetrating natural acids, and fighting through the cervix, they reach a "divergence in the wood" where only one of the two fallopian paths lead to an egg. Still yet! White blood cell cilia divert hundreds of thousands, allowing only about 500 sperm to reach the egg, which still is protected by an outer shell. Yet, your sperm cell made it through, fertilizing the egg first and starting your individual life. 

At less than ten seconds old, you were already 1/300,000,000 — having survived a 99.99999997% chance of non-being.

Now think about the odds for the ten years prior that led to this critical point of your being. Before you were even born, your odds of existence were literally incomprehensible. To put this in less seminally microscopic terms, think of something you truly cherish: a friendship, an opportunity, a partner. The odds of you two finding each other in this time and this place are on another gigantic magnitude of probabilistic incomprehensibility.

There are countless paths of potentiality at any juncture, but out of the many, there only ever is one actuality, no matter how improbable. E pluribus unum. We live in the barely probable actuality which we casually call reality. We can either shrug this off or view it as an unfathomable marvel worthy of being honored.

These probabilities date back to our thousands of ancestors' long struggles and strife. Many of their paths may have been much more challenging than the cozy existence we enjoy today. Despite their hardship, they are irrevocably and fundamentally part of bringing you to today.

We didn't 'choose' our genes, the age in which we were born, our level of intellect, our appearances, our geography, or any of the other absolutely fundamental attributes that shape our existence. 

When contemplating this incomprehensibility, we may begin to see that our life, with all its genuine difficulty, is an incomprehensible gift. What is the natural response to receiving a genuine gift? Within the Causalistic lens, opportunities to give thanks begin to emerge constantly.

Fortunately, we cannot comprehend, and often forget, the profundity of these improbabilities — otherwise, one may be permanently stuck in paralyzing awe.

If you feel gratitude for any gift or gifts, perhaps dwell on such feelings and express them. You may cause more goodness and gratitude in the world. At the very least, such contemplations are an endless source of mesmerization.

2.6. Causalism and Science

Benjamin Libet found in 1983 that when 'making a decision,' the brain's reasoning or decision-making area illuminates well before the awareness area illuminates. This indicates that our decisions are biologically made before we are conscious of them. 

For those who will cite quantum theory's postulates about particle indeterminism as the basis for not being able to believe in the very human (non-particle) Causalism stated above, we would recommend lightening up and not jumping to find reasons for 'wrongness' as a method for avoiding improving one's soul.

While Causalism is adamantly not unscientific, all scientific considerations, including those listed above, fall far outside of relevance here.  We are concerned with matters of belief (Section 2.3), not empirical facts. 

Individuals, neighbors, friends, and humanity risk war when facts are mistakenly crossed with belief. Misunderstanding the crucial subtlety in this distinction has allowed contention between religion and science to persist.

2.7. No Pride, No Envy

Following the logical chains of causes (Outlined in Section 1.2), it no longer makes sense to be prideful of one's accomplishments. Anything one has done was all that was possible. Achievements are to be experienced, not mistakenly claimed as property of one’s own. 

When we extend this logic outwards to others, it makes jealousy similarly nonsensical. All of us are locked into experiencing our own paths. We don’t cause the path and we don’t own the path. Causalism helps us remember this freeing truth.

The problems here surround esteem. Specifically, how illusions created externally can create and destroy it. Focused reflection (Section 1.5.) turns esteem and its sources inwards and upwards. 

Here we see all forms of envious comparison revealed in their true form: illogical murderers of happiness and wellbeing.

2.8. No-Separate-Self

All existence is completely and literally interconnected. This is a natural and straightforward conclusion of Causalism. There is no separate self -- just one sphere of interplay. 

This logic becomes illuminated as it moves from intellectual to emotional realm. It is one thing to think of your connectedness to all of humanity and the universe – and another to feel it. 

Some practices call this being struck by awe or bliss or living in the body of Christ or Nirvana.

2.9. Reconsidering Reality

The mind body problem has kept philosophers arguing for centuries.

The problem arises when we distinguish a body that is purely physical and a mind that is purely spiritual. How do the two connect and what implications does an understanding of the situation have for us? While seemingly abstract at first glance, the implications are tremendous and present in our daily lives, shared humanity, and our views of ourselves and reality.

Due to our immediate and rich processing of sensory inputs (sight, sound, touch, etc.) it is easy to grasp and think in the context of a physical universe. This is the body part of the mind body problem. It is much harder to make sense of the spiritual part of our nature, for it is less definitive and invisible. This is the mind part of the mind body problem. 

The mind-body distinction is directly connected to whether the universe is to be thought of as primarily material in nature (body) or spiritual in nature (mind). When it comes to the origins of the universe, materialists (body) cite the big bang and the spiritualists (mind) claim creation by an intelligent deity.

This division has held humanity in its grasps for centuries.

Let us now zoom out to consider a reframing of this problem. Causalism, which is an exercise in abandoning one’s belief in free will, is a lens or mode with which we can view the world. This lens and mode is the exact opposite to free will that the vast majority use by default. Free will and Causalism are intellectually irreconcilable beliefs. They are exactly opposite. Any reconciliation between them creates immediate contradiction. However, we can reasonably understand the differences between how reality shifts when we use one lens or the other.

Might we do the same with the mind body problem? Instead of viewing each side of the debate as stone cold fact, treat them as alternative beliefs through which we view all of reality? Perhaps we can use both the mind and body lenses.

For example, we can accept that causes have physical and spiritual components. For example, telling someone you love them has great spiritual implications, but it also requires the firing of many synapses in your brain, contraction of vocal chords, and airwaves to carry the vibrations to your lover’s ear. Other less spiritual events, like a tree falling in a remote unexplored forest may have many physical causes (loose roots from rain and heavy winds) but not as many immediate spiritual implications - at least not for humans. However, there still is the fact that the causes that led to this event actually happened. The metaphysical existence of the causes alone can be abstracted from any of the literal or physical details of the cause itself. Even the most material of causes still have the solely spiritual attribute that they exist. 

In this view we can see how any cause can have both physical (body) and spiritual (mind) properties. In this abstracted view of a cause, it now also exists not only in time and space but also outside of them. The cause can be treated as something that belongs outside of its material manifestations in reality. Beyond its physics, its existence alone allows it to be a real and specific spiritual thing.

By making room for the spiritual reality of causes, completely outside of their physical attributes, we open up a new plane of reality. The plane of non-material things having a legitimate spiritual existence. This plane seems to be where the most important and intimate elements of humanity exist. When we love another, express our feelings, or notice a familiar idiosyncrasy of a close friend, these matters have little to no weight in the physical world. Of course they have physical roots, origins, and attributes – but the parts of them that matter most belong within the spiritual dimension, the world of the mind. 

By expanding our view of causes beyond just physical properties but vitally important spiritual realities - we start to see the fertile fields from which emotional meaning grows. We may realize the distinctions between mind and body are nuanced and only with both does harmonization become a reality.

2.10. Sum of All Causes

Every event in the known universe has a cause. 

For example, a tree falls and kills a girl's cat, which makes her cry:

The wind (the first environmental but invisible cause) blew the tree over. The force of the tree falling (physical and visible cause) killed the cat. The cat being dead (resultant cause) and the girl seeing the dead cat (observational cause) call up emotions (psychological cause) that lead her to cry (behavioral cause). This is a crude example, but the same can go for microbial functions in one's liver or how two people fall in love. 

These causes are different and can be viewed as pure phenomena. We do not have to know any details or interior aspects of how they work or where they are. We only need the basic idea that they are occurring and are linked together inextricably.

This creates a metaphysical dimension around the known universe of 'causes.' An invisible, abstracted layer, outside of our comprehension of time and space, dictating all that occurs.

2.11. Freedom

Once one becomes accustomed to living in the mode of Causalism, the choppy surface waters of life can calm. We begin seeing others and difficult situations 'from above' -- with more understanding and nuance. Anger does not come as quickly or in the same way. In some instances, frustration seems not only unproductive, but illogical.

Renewing the confines of the two commitments can be an endless exhilaration that yields unparalleled freedom.