Happiness Explained and the Axiomatological Alternative as Dual Symmetry
Within the framework of Axiomatology, the concept of happiness frequently arises—both in corporate settings and in the context of interpersonal relationships. This article explores the structural flaws behind the conventional pursuit of “personal happiness” and why it remains, in most cases, an unachievable or misleading goal. We then propose an alternative Axiomatological paradigm based on the principle of dual symmetry, encapsulated in the moral thesis: “You Walk Before Me.” This formulation reflects a metaphysical and ethical reorientation, replacing self-centric striving with a structured value hierarchy rooted in sacrifice, fidelity, and ontological responsibility.
Happiness Defined
The most common cliché surrounding the definition of happiness—whether in therapeutic interventions or individual introspection—is that it cannot be clearly defined. Not only is there no viable consensus on a universal definition, but even at the subjective level, “happiness” proves elusive. It resists any fixed formulation because there is no singular trait, state, or condition that reliably represents it at any given moment. Even within the life of a single individual, the very definition of happiness tends to shift, expand, or dissolve depending on mood, stage of life, or context.
Conventional “Delusional” Imagination
When people—especially those with less lived experience—are asked what they want from life, the response is often some version of:
“I just want to feel happy!”
“I want to feel fulfilled.”
“I want to love and be loved.”
At first glance, these statements might seem profound. But in truth, they are just placeholders—proxies for deeper longings that require probing. When asked to clarify what happiness actually looks like, the response often takes the form of brief, idealized cinematic scenes:
A horseback ride on the beach at sunset with a beautiful companion.
Stargazing in perfect stillness on a quiet hill.
Opening the doors to a balcony overlooking the Champs-Élysées in Paris, wind gently lifting the curtains.
These mental snapshots—like Live Photos captured in imagination—are seductive. But they are also, in most cases, delusional. Not because they are logistically impossible (many of these experiences can be actualized), but because the deeper illusion lies in the emotional projection. People project an imagined future internal state of harmony, contentment, and fulfillment into a particular external scenario. The assumption is: “If I reach this scene, I will feel whole.”
That assumption is almost always false.
Subjective Prehension Exclusion Problem
The primary reason why such imagined happiness scenarios are inherently delusional lies in what Axiomatology refers to as the Subjective Prehension Exclusion Problem. When someone imagines a future occasion of joy or fulfillment, they are constructing it based on a highly selective and narrow subset of all the prehensions that would actually compose that moment.
Specifically, the imagination typically draws from only two subcategories of physical prehensions:
The direct physical environment — including imagined “vibes,” sensory inputs (smells, sounds, tactile elements), and picturesque surroundings.
Aspects of one’s physical body — particularly one’s projected future state, age, health, external beauty, and perceived energy levels.
In terms of conceptual input, these mental constructions are not usually products of genuine creative imagination. They are instead recombinations of previous episodic memories—live-edited clips from one’s own experience, stylized and stripped of their historical context. In other words, they are curated nostalgia dressed up as future possibility.
But here lies the problem: the imagined occasion ignores the vast majority of prehensions that would actually flow intothat future node during the Self Fusion process. What is consciously envisioned is only a sliver of the totality—leaving out:
The moral prehensions carried from past actions (including sins of omission),
The conceptual weight of unresolved semantic and episodic memory traces,
The physical or psychological constraints inherited from previous nodes (such as fatigue, unresolved trauma, shame, or entropy).
The imagined scene assumes a future moment can be clean and self-contained. But no occasion exists in isolation. Each is the summation of a nexus of prior occasions—many of which are unpredictable in content but guaranteed to grow in volume over time. And the probability that all these unaccounted-for prehensions would align perfectly to enhance the imagined future occasion? Statistically and ontologically—vanishingly small.
This is why most “dream scenarios” collapse under the weight of reality: not because the beach doesn’t exist, but because the self that arrives at the beach is not the idealized fragment projected in the fantasy—it is a composite being dragged forward by the full inertia of its past.
Naivety Regarding the Positive Content of Additional Prehensions
A widespread and systematically overlooked problem with imagined “happiness scenarios” is the asymmetry in how we selectively construct them. Specifically, such projections tend to exclude an entire class of likely negative prehensions while leaving the door wide open for idealized positive ones. This form of cognitive bias is not just psychologically common—it is structurally maladaptive. Over time, this asymmetry increases the probability that negative prehensions will become activated during the actual Self Fusion process.
Obviously, when it comes to the failure of realizing the dreamed states we construct in imagination, there are countless reasons why those visions may collapse. External variables—political, geopolitical, economic, or environmental—can easily intervene. A thunderstorm may ruin a wedding. A sudden regulation shift may derail a business plan. But some causes are so far removed from individual agency that even the most controlling personality is helpless before them. A sudden earthquake. A miraculous flood. A geopolitical collapse. In such cases, the intrusion of tragic circumstance is beyond foresight and irreducibly “natural.” Yet, as we’ll explore later, even these events can be anticipated in the metaphysical sense, as expressions of the tragic that should be morally prepared for in advance.
The crucial distinction is this: while external forces can sabotage a scenario, the internal contamination of imagined occasions arises not from contingency but from past choices. Moral decisions shape the field of future becoming. They act as a kind of via regia toward or away from specific nexuses of experience.". To illustrate this, we turn to a clear example involving lying and adultery.
Let us illustrate with a concrete example.
A woman in her mid-thirties imagines a moment of future bliss: she’s walking hand-in-hand with a slightly older partner along a pristine beach, the sky painted in golden hues of sunset, the air thick with the feeling of love and completion. She envisions deep inner fulfillment, an overwhelming gratitude for life, and what feels like a peak moment of existential serenity.
But in reality—should such an occasion ever occur—it would inevitably be flooded with prehensions inherited from a vast web of previous occasions, many of which may be painfully negative. Unless the person is almost entirely unconscious or has mastered an extreme form of repression, these would be felt, even if only subliminally.
Examples of such prehensions might include:
Ongoing grief over losing her entire net worth in a recent divorce settlement;
The latent guilt and emotional residue from an extramarital affair that became public;
The unresolved pain of her father’s terminal lung cancer diagnosis;
A difficult custody arrangement heavily favoring the children’s father, who has taken full responsibility for raising them;
A gnawing self-doubt about whether the choices that led here were ethically or even pragmatically justified;
Anxiety about her new partner’s declining health, and the socioeconomic implications of caring for an aging spouse;
Social ostracization, as people increasingly adopt narratives that label her with semantically loaded terms: “bad mother,” “manipulative liar,” “unfaithful,” “cheating wife.”
And that list—while already psychologically intense—is only a fraction of the probable prehensions that would inevitably flow into the occasion if she remains even marginally self-aware.
The underlying principle is simple but profound:
There is no such thing as a truly isolated future occasion composed solely of idealized prehensions.
Any such imagined scenario is based on a deliberate exclusion of massive and often unpredictable—but nonetheless likely—negative prehensions.
This is not just a flaw in personal planning. It’s a structural weakness in the logic of desire itself, particularly when that desire is decoupled from responsibility, historical continuity, and moral coherence. It reveals the naivety of projecting one's future affective state based on sanitized fragments of physical or environmental detail, while ignoring the cascading wave of psychological, moral, and existential data that always travels with us.
Asymmetry of the Imagined Dream and the Reality of Negative Constraints
In many cases, idealized dream-states are constructed from a highly imbalanced set of positive projections, bordering on utopian fantasy. These states are often accompanied by an implicit denial of basic existential constraints, such as:
– Time is a limited resource.
– Other people’s thoughts and actions are uncontrollable.
– Life is fundamentally tragic and unfair.
Each of these negated constraints undermines the coherence of the imagined scenario. The asymmetry arises not only from what is idealized but also from what is systematically excluded—namely, the temporal, interpersonal, and metaphysical friction that characterizes actual lived experience.
Time is a Limited Resource
Dreamlike states often involve projections of oneself developed across multiple domains: physical, financial, relational, emotional, spiritual, religious, professional, intellectual. The imagined self becomes a perfected mosaic. However, the flaw is rarely in the ambition itself—it lies in the failure to map these ambitions onto the causal, temporal, and historical structure of reality.
Take, for instance, the dream of pivoting to an entirely new career path, or achieving a dramatic promotion. These goals may sound feasible, but the sheer quantity of time such transformation would demand—often years of continuous, focused work—is vastly underestimated. The same applies to:
Building a new, meaningful romantic relationship from scratch
Restructuring one’s family life
Recovering spiritual or emotional balance
Healing psychological trauma or guilt
Developing advanced physical fitness or beauty
Achieving mastery in a new field or craft
What the dreamer fails to appreciate is that each of these endeavors is not only time-intensive, but also path-dependent—meaning their success relies on specific, preexisting conditions accumulated over previous occasions. And even with those conditions met, most transformations require far more time, repetition, and resilience than one initially estimates.
To achieve even a fraction of the imagined progress in all these areas simultaneously would require:
Near-miraculous discipline
Psychometric industriousness in the top 0.01%
Almost no interruptions, setbacks, or emotional derailments
Minimal sleep and no wasted energy
In short: many lifetimes' worth of hours compressed into one human lifespan.
Thus, these imagined realities are not just ambitious—they are structurally disconnected from temporal causality and real-world limitations. Even if one were to be extraordinarily lucky, setbacks, delays, and failures would compound and slow the process far beyond expectation.
These delusional projections are not merely unrealistic—they often represent false ontologies of time and self. They ignore that the future Self cannot simply be “switched into” without carrying forward the full complexity of past occasions and the brutal arithmetic of temporal constraints. Axiomatologically speaking, such projections have almost no resonance with real, morally integrated nodes and represent, instead, a form of psychological entropy masked as hope.
Others’ Thoughts and Feelings
Often, these imagined "dream-states" include an overly optimistic perception of how others will feel and behave. This is typically accompanied by a carefree attitude — a belief that “everything will be fine.” In reality, things are usually categorically darker and more complicated.
For example, a woman divorcing her husband due to an affair in which she committed adultery may envision a dream state where her conservative ex-husband has somehow transformed into a postmodern, extremely agreeable man who believes that “supporting extended family arrangements shows one’s psychological maturity.” In her imagination, child custody works flawlessly, and everyone in the extended family has accepted her new spouse — a man 25 years her senior.
What she fails to realize is that the thoughts, values, and emotional reactions of others are not programmable variables. People typically behave according to their psychological structure and past behavioral patterns. Hoping for a highly intelligent, industrious, disciplined, conservative ex-husband to simply roll over, agree to flexible custody terms, and suddenly become a champion of postmodern family dynamics is, to put it mildly, a fantasy lightyears removed from probable reality.
What is far more likely is a prolonged, possibly pathological custody battle lasting a decade or more, resulting in severe damage to the children — damage that, in many cases, could have been avoided. Even the anticipated social roles tend to invert: the woman’s self-perception as the misunderstood heroine who escaped a "toxic, narcissistic, abusive husband" is gradually and irreversibly replaced in the public eye by a different narrative — that of an ungrateful, cheating, manipulative wife who destroyed a sustainable and functional family and is now desperately trying to shift the blame onto others, including a husband who demonstrably neither lied nor cheated.
The sad reality is that one would need to be God to reconfigure the thoughts, emotional responses, and deeply rooted value hierarchies of others to such an extent.
Similarly, people often underestimate the magnitude and persistence of the damage caused by the negative emotional nexus created by those unjustly hurt. It’s not just some vague idea of karma. The ex-wife of the "new love of your life," for example — a woman who feels deeply betrayed — cannot reasonably be expected to sit quietly and accept the new arrangement. If there is cosmological, axiomatic truth in the injustice of the harm done, then the weight and reach of that ressentiment are nearly unlimited. And as stated above — tragically — these effects are not only profound but often entirely unpredictable.
Life is unfair and tragic
Axiomatology affirms this statement to a considerable degree: life, in its essence, often feels profoundly unfair, and it is most certainly tragic. Not only is life filled with suffering, but a significant portion of that suffering is unjust.
A powerful quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov captures this unfairness and the deep moral tension of existence, especially through the problem of innocent suffering. In the chapter titled Rebellion, Ivan Karamazov offers a monologue cataloging horrific examples of suffering children, and ultimately declares to his brother Alyosha:
“I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I’d rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. So I hasten to return my entrance ticket. And if I’m an honest man, I’m bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.”
Ivan refuses to accept a metaphysical system where divine harmony is built on the suffering of even one innocent child. This is not just a rhetorical device—it is a metaphysical objection to the cost of meaning, and it is an objection that remains woven into the very fabric of life itself. Most people never fully integrate this reality into their lived experience.
In the Book of Job, we encounter another example of life’s unrelenting brutality. After Job is afflicted with painful sores, sits in ashes, and scrapes himself with a shard of pottery, his wife challenges him:
“Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.” (Job 2:9, ESV)
This is a pivotal moment. Job’s wife is not simply speaking out of cruelty—she’s articulating the deepest nihilistic impulse that emerges when meaning collapses under the weight of unjust suffering. She is essentially saying: if integrity doesn’t protect you from this, then what is the point?
The key idea is this: it is highly probable that one will, at some point, find themselves in a state far worse than they expected—regarding their own health, the lives or deaths of loved ones, the collapse of relationships, betrayals by friends, the suffering or estrangement of children—and most tragically, having to hear those children explain their estrangement with reasons that strike a painful chord of truth somewhere deep in one’s soul.
Replacement of Deep Dream with Instant Gratification
Once one realizes that the original dream of “personal happiness” is nearly impossible to attain—at least in the idealized form imagined, and especially when carrying the “baggage” from the nexus of previous occasions that they themselves have generated—there is often a shift toward seeking any form of immediate pleasure. This typically manifests as a pursuit of instant gratification: hedonistic pleasures, constant variety, changes in environment, superficial and short-lived relationships, indulgence, consumerism, vanity, and exaggerated external displays of meaning or success.
This pattern is not only unsustainable but ultimately leads to deeper disappointment. The short-term satisfaction such escapism provides should not be underestimated. However, it is usually accompanied by an escalating need for stronger doses of pleasure. What satisfied a month ago must now be outdone with something more intense, more luxurious, more pleasurable. And inevitably, the supply of novelty runs out. There simply isn’t enough new potential in the world to continuously transmute into satisfying hedonistic experiences.
Over time, the person begins to feel that they are no longer mastering life, but rather enslaved by the very mechanisms of their pursuit of happiness. And they are right.
The long-term consequence of instant gratification is that even variety itself becomes hollow. New activities or pleasures may be attempted, but a grim certainty begins to precede them: nothing will truly work anymore. The anticipation of meaning collapses before the act itself. As many have described it: nothing feels meaningful anymore.
Axiomatology’s Answer — “You Walk Before Me”
Fully grasping Axiomatology’s position on the question of “happiness” requires a deeper understanding of process theory in general, and the Self Fusion process in particular. Most crucially, it demands familiarity with the concepts of SIVH(Structured Internal Value Hierarchies) and the Will of God (WOG) as two key subcategories of moral prehensions active in every occasion.
Axiomatology categorically rejects the optimization of life for happiness. Instead, happiness is treated as a possible—but never necessary—byproduct of certain occasions. The essential task is to “unhook” oneself from the compulsive need for happiness as a goal altogether, recognizing the physiological and psychological unsustainability of that state.
There is, in fact, no stable or lasting state called “happiness”. What can be realistically aimed for is this:
a sufficient absence of constraints that block the realization of one’s potential in alignment with one’s internal value hierarchy (SIVH) and the Will of God (WOG).
Importantly, this does not presuppose belief in a theistic deity—Christian, Islamic, or otherwise. Within Axiomatology, the Will of God is not dogma but a moral attractor field—a lure toward what one deeply senses to be morally right and cosmologically sustainable.
“You Walk Before Me” is the name Axiomatology gives to a paradigm of moral orientation that replaces the self-centric logic of happiness. It suggests that someone or something morally superior—an ideal, a duty, a value hierarchy—leads, and the self follows. This reverses the modern logic of personal gratification and instead frames meaning as a response to alignment, not a pursuit of pleasure.
The Dichotomy Between Happiness and Vertically Higher Values
Understanding the Dichotomy Between Happiness and Vertical Meaning
One of the most liberating insights for those working within the framework of Axiomatology—though initially counterintuitive—is the recognition that vertical alignment with something truly meaningful excludes the pursuit of personal happiness as conventionally understood. This is not a tragic realization—it is profoundly freeing.
The deeper truth is this: happiness and vertical meaning are not merely difficult to achieve simultaneously—they often stand at opposite ends of a continuum. They represent two fundamentally different trajectories of being.
Aiming for personal happiness typically necessitates a SIVH (Structured Internal Value Hierarchy) that places freedom—especially personal or hedonistic freedom—at or near the top. But this value orientation carries a hidden cost: it steadily erodes the potential available for future occasions by requiring suppression of internal contradictionbetween one’s SIVH and the Will of God (WOG)—that is, the deep moral sense of what is right and sustainable in the universe.
Over time, this suppression becomes increasingly apparent. One may notice that their choices, though aligned with their current value structure, clash with their deeper moral intuition—the Initial Aim, in Whitehead’s terms, or the WOG in Axiomatology.
The consequence is cumulative: living this contradiction gradually generates emptiness, existential dissonance, and a sense of meaninglessness. The pursuit of freedom devolves into a multiplicity of aims that ultimately fractures identity. What was once framed as liberation eventually feels like isolation—mentally, spiritually, and often physically.
In contrast, Axiomatology offers a model where meaning is not felt, but built. And happiness, if it appears at all, is not a goal, but a consequence of alignment between SIVH and WOG, held together by moral coherence.
Constant State of Being Toward Something Higher
Just as Dasein is always oriented toward death as a mode of Being in Heidegger's framework, Axiomatology envisions the human condition as a constant state of being directed toward the maximization of potential in each new occasion. This potential is meant to be activated and structured according to a Structured Internal Value Hierarchy (SIVH) that is aligned with the Will of God (WOG)—understood as the innate moral lure toward what is right, sustainable, and cosmologically coherent.
We have previously detailed the methods by which maximal potential can be made available for each Self Fusion process. Much of this depends on elevated access to consciousness—especially self-awareness—and the disciplined use of that access to generate occasions (nodes) that encapsulate the highest possible entropy organized within moral structure. This act of fusing chaos into coherent value is at the heart of what Axiomatology calls participation in co-creation.
The mechanisms of this process—and how consciousness, self-awareness, and moral orientation interact within Self Fusion—have been thoroughly explained in earlier sections of this article.
“You Walk Before Me” Explained
The powerful state that emerges from radical self-sacrifice may initially seem absurd or even unpleasant. Yet in truth, it is precisely the opposite. This mode of being does not mean simply moving from one personal goal to the next. It represents a fundamental shift in one’s ontological posture—a reorientation from egoic striving to structured moral participation. It means living in the full knowledge that your life is not your own, and that your path is to be walked for others.
In Axiomatology, this way of living becomes possible when one aligns their Structured Internal Value Hierarchy (SIVH) with values that are vertically higher than the self—family, the education of the next generation, the reduction of suffering, the preservation of national existence, or service to moral truth. When these values sit at the top of the SIVH—not just abstractly, but manifested through behavior—something profound happens.
A new internal power emerges: a calm, creative confidence rooted in ontological certainty. The sense is not “I hope things will be okay,” but rather, “things already are okay—because I have already won.” This is a metaphysical echo of Christian assurance: not that the path is easy, but that it has already been walked—and won—on your behalf.
Yet unlike cheap grace, this does not permit passivity. The one who lives in this assurance is not a spectator. They actively reenact the journey of Christ—not simply sitting back because “someone else already won,” but walking it again, daily, with full responsibility.
Importantly, this posture does not negate material pursuits—business, financial success, growth, or profit. These are not inherently egoic. They become sacred when enacted within a moral framework aligned with monotheistic duty: the Will of God (WOG), the Initial Aim. That is, success is not abandoned—but redeemed.
The Feeling of Being Led and Protected
Those who embody this mode of being often describe a deeply spiritual sensation: that God walks before them—clearing the path—and also walks behind them—guarding their back. This dual image of forward guidance and rear protection is powerfully illustrated in two passages from Isaiah:
Isaiah 45:2 (ESV):
“I will go before you and level the exalted places, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron.”
This verse is a prophetic promise to Cyrus the Great, who would be used by God to liberate Israel from Babylon. Despite being a pagan king, Cyrus is called God's “anointed” (Hebrew: mashiach) because he fulfills divine purpose. God promises not merely assistance, but total orchestration—removing obstacles, flattening mountains of resistance, breaking through bronze gates, and cutting iron bars. Symbolically, it expresses divine intervention not just in military conquest, but in the moral and spiritual movements of history.
Isaiah 52:12 (ESV):
“For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.”
This passage addresses the return from exile—not with panic, but with dignity. God leads the way forward and secures the rear, ensuring no one is left behind. The Hebrew term translated as “rear guard” also means gatherer—a powerful image of divine care for every part of one’s journey.
Together, these verses form a metaphysical image of total guidance:
“Making the way” – God prepares the terrain, flattens obstacles, and leads from the front.
“Getting the back” – God protects from pursuit, shame, and unforeseen danger.
In Axiomatological terms, this is not mere allegory. It reflects a spiritual symmetry: the one who walks before others, placing higher values above the self, is also led by a higher power that walks before them. They participate in a structure where agency and surrender coexist, where freedom is born not from indulgence, but from alignment with vertical meaning.
Conclusion
“You walk before me” becomes a sacred sentence in this model—not just a comfort, but a cosmic alignment. It means that every step you take toward the good—especially when it costs you—is accompanied by an invisible architecture of protection, guidance, and meaning.
It is the ultimate paradox: the more one sacrifices, the more one is safeguarded. The more one loses the ego, the more one is carried forward by something immeasurably greater.
The Key Idea: Simultaneous Divine Symmetry — Prayer and Command in One
Although this section has drawn once again from biblical narratives—narratives that contain, according to Axiomatology, dense deposits of consciousness stored from outside spacetime—the key point is not theological in the narrow sense. Rather, it concerns the structural symmetry that occurs when self-sacrifice, vertical moral alignment, and metaphysical participation converge in one’s mode of being.
This state of being not only enables a life of deep meaning and ontological coherence—it elevates one’s potential to a categorically different level. When such an individual enters into conflict, opposition, or hardship, the outcome is often determined before the first move is made. Why? Because when a person acts from values aligned with the universal good, while the opposing force is motivated by egoic desire or self-interest, the power differential is not merely quantitative—it is ontological.
One should always fear the enemy who fights for something you believe is right, but fail to embody. Such a person fights not only with moral clarity, but with metaphysical momentum. They bring with them an alignment of occasion, value, and cosmos. And if that alignment is deep enough, they do not fight alone—they fight with what Axiomatology calls the simultaneous symmetry of divine reinforcement: the moment when the individual calls out to a transcendent order and acts as its vessel.
This is not merely metaphor. It is structural participation. When one brings their craving for personal gratification to the battlefield—be it in conflict, career, or relationships—and another brings their entire being under the discipline of moral duty, the battle is not between two wills. It is between self-referential desire and cosmic structure.
That, in the language of Axiomatology, is true happiness—the generation of maximal potential not for self-serving aims, but for selfless participation in the unfolding of higher-order values.
And it is at this point that the deepest metaphysical phrase arises:
“You walk before me.”
This phrase signifies a double symmetry—both a prayer and a command.
It is a prayer to God, or to the Absolute, expressing the desire to be led, to walk in the path of moral coherence and cosmic participation.
It is a command to the self, issued from the highest part of one’s being, summoning forth moral agency and alignment: walk the path, and do not turn away.
The beauty and power of this phrase lies in its ontological layering. It is not merely a sentiment. It encodes a structure of metaphysical participation:
It expresses alignment with a universal order.
It initiates transcendence over selfish motives.
It triggers access to higher potential in the Self Fusion process.
It binds the subject not to a feeling, but to a trajectory of moral becoming.
In this structure, the command and the prayer are indistinguishable—because the one who issues the prayer is already fused with the one who must act.
That is happiness according to Axiomatology: not the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of suffering, but the structuring of chaos into moralized coherence—occasion by occasion, node by node, each one shaped by the asymmetrical resonance of a life aimed upward.
You walk before me—because I walk for something greater than myself.
