All chapters, including derivative essays called Applied Biofoundationalism, are linked at the end.
I listened to this song while writing. Enjoy.
A recap of the previous four chapters:
Part I, Moral Foundations Utility Theory & Hypermoralization: provides an overview of the series and deconstructs hypermoralization.
Part II, The Moral Genotype: the genetic nature of morality. Illustrated with brain-scan research and natural temperamental distributions
Part III, Verbal Intelligence & Factual Sediment: political narratives are post-hoc conceived to promote values based on the proponent’s temperamental morality. Facts curated as convenient, and ignored as expedient, to support instinctive conclusions.
Part IV, Masculine Because You Have To, Feminine Because You Get To: societal values shift due to different utility in different environments. Includes research on male/female moral and political divergences.
Outline
I. Father Physics
II. Scaled Human Coordination
III. Ideologues and History’s Patterns
IV. Power Acts, Beauty Is
V. Moral Foundations: A Biofoundational Revision
VI. Prison. Ocean. Home. Forest.
VII. Concluding
Note: some light physics concepts are referenced that are explained in War Is How a Nation Eats. If anything I cite is unclear, please reference this essay.
These thermodynamic concepts are important and will be increasingly incorporated into Biofoundationalism, with application. Biology has greater application at the individual level; physics is critical to the society-wide analysis in the series.
Terms:
A dyad is a pair of oppositional but interdependent forces, each defined in reference to the other. E.g. day is undefined without night; left has no orientation without right; feminine has no point of reference without masculine.
‘Chaos’ and ‘entropy’ have close but not identical meanings: entropy is the formal thermodynamic measure; chaos is a lived correlate. I use them interchangeably.
I. Father Physics
Politics is the visible behavior of biology constrained by physics. Successful societies persist by balancing the order that forms civilization with the freedom that makes them worth inhabiting.
Physics authors laws, biology issues templates within them, and their human-readable submission appears in how we organize at scale. Everything obeys the dictates of physics. An immutable constitution all earthly inhabitants abide by. The same competition between entropy and emergent order sculpting stars also births nations. Thermodynamic edicts compelling atoms to form molecules also guides man to form countries. This is meant quite literally.
Under gravity, diffuse matter coalesces into stars even as the universe’s overall entropy climbs.
Electromagnetic interactions drive atoms into molecules by lowering energy and releasing heat, trading exported entropy for localized structure.
Human societies fractally embody these phenomena. By organizing into complex institutions and coordinating into increasingly intricate patterns, we establish localized structures and resist the winds of chaos.
Star, molecule, and nation: different scales of self-organizing systems that trade energy flows for stability and order. All are dissipative structures, differing only by degree.
Why would this apply to us? A better question: why would it not?
The second law of thermodynamics demands that entropy increases in isolated systems. Yet all of life is an open system and localized reversal of entropy, creating islands of order amidst seas of chaos. This applies to the wolf and its pack, bird and its flock, fish and its school, ant and its colony, and man and his society. There are no exceptions. Why would there be?
We are not outside this process. We are of it. We embody and enact axioms of physics in all we do. Biology’s submission to it is encoded in neurological moral-genotypes producing our political stances. People don’t have beliefs so much as beliefs have people. Because we don’t have our temperaments, our temperaments have us. There’s an implicit presumption of human exceptionalism — believing we’re immune to biological influence, assumptions of 100% free will — in political and philosophical thinking. It’s a mythical precept that needs to be confronted and dealt with honestly.
The marrow of how any species propagates and survives is subject to the same laws and lifecycles. There are no exemptions, only temporary delusions… then corrections.
II. Scaled Human Coordination
Retire the word ‘politics’: it’s a tarnished, tribalistic priming device that distracts and prompts seeing The Other as enemy rather than evolved complement. A pornographic term that titillates without inseminating. Stimulating to stare at but leaves you sweaty and sterile. It generates emotional heat while synthesizing nothing.
A recalibration: rather than the theatrical shadowplay of parties and sectarian ideologies, the correct framing is scaled human coordination. Biofoundationalism frames human coordination systemically through poles of physical law and two elemental forces:
Human coordination that seeks order: produced by the masculine/authoritarian/conservative/tyrannical
Masculine order exists as a spectrum between competent and tyrannical:
The tyrannical masculine confuses control for strength, crushing liberty and life’s color. He turns the societal container into a prison.
The competent masculine understands strength as duty and safeguards liberty. He turns the container into a sanctuary alongside the feminine.
Human coordination that seeks freedom: produced by the feminine/libertarian/liberal/chaotic
Feminine freedom exists as a spectrum between meaningful and chaotic:
The meaningful feminine gestates liberty through concert and compromise with the competent masculine, transforming space into home. She fills the container with beauty, purpose, and dignity.
The chaotic feminine with no masculine counterweight overdoses on freedom and entropy. Rootless and vulnerable, she mistakes formlessness for liberation and dissolves the container, leaving her swimming in an ocean.
Every political stance falls within this spectrum, because nothing exists outside the laws of physics. Understanding the political as scaled human coordination, poles between order and chaos, diffuses manipulative political storytelling and provides a useful, clear bottom-up frame aligned with reality.
The primordial dyad isn’t conservative/liberal or masculine/feminine, but the cosmic tension between order and chaos. Structure and flow. The genesis dyad. We’re always abiding by it, even in ways we’re unaware of.
III. Dyadic Interplay
The omnipresent relationship between order and chaos is both oppositional and symphonic: the supreme dyad through which all other dyads flow. It manifests in every dimension of existence with different veneers.
Jazz requires both musical arrangements (scales, time signatures, harmonic progressions) and improvisational latitude. Order provides the chords; chaos sings the melodies. Too mechanical and you have a dry metronome. Too much freestyle and you have noise. Beauty and boundaries live in the conversation between constraint and creativity.
A symphony depends on scores, orchestration, and a conductor’s authority for its backbone. But within that skeleton, musicians bring interpretive nuance: phrasing, dynamics, timing. Order writes the score, chaos breathes life into it: elevating it beyond robotic reproduction. Too much adherence is clinical and cold; too much freedom is distortion.
Human civilization thrives through these same principles. Through action, the masculine converts entropy into order at great energetic cost. While the feminine, through essence, enacts the chaotic flows making change and growth possible. Both need each other to survive and propagate.
These systemic forces strongly cluster along sex but aren’t exclusive to it. There are varying degrees of masculine and feminine orientation within us, contingent on setting and need. The fierce mother protecting her children channels masculine order. The male artist absorbed in creation, living in his own head, embodies feminine chaos.
Artistry, and life, thrive in the tension between discipline and deviation.
IV. Ideologues and History’s Patterns
Ideologues evangelize their preferred version of scaled human coordination as always the sweet spot, independent of context or circumstance. They’re inflexible. Absolutist. Asserting moral answers are fixed, not fluid, and they’ve managed to find all the right ones.
A reliable heuristic: someone whose message always consists of “more order!” (conservative) or “more freedoms!” (liberal) — as if either is an unalloyed good no matter the setting — is a dogmatic doctrinaire chanting religiously. They’ve mistaken a context-dependent optimum for a universal rule. All they’re doing is showing you their temperament.
People unwittingly reveal neurological information about themselves when sharing political stances. Radical liberal beliefs translate to “my anterior cingulate cortex is active!”. Staunch conservatism says, “my amygdala is large!” and “my insula evokes strong disgust responses!”. Everything is a biomarker, little bits of innocuous info provide a lens into who we are.
Don’t get distracted by political rants littered with conveniently curated facts. All ideologies are moral narrations that at best indoctrinate and at worst deceive. They tell top-down tales of “good vs bad” rather than work toward bottom-up structural comprehension.
Reject this: worse than useless, it makes you see half your nation as adversaries.
Anything that explains one element of a dyad as “one half dumb evil, other half smart noble” should be aggressively mocked as juvenile. It’s painfully uninteresting, tedious, and childish. An adult assessment sees itself in context. Nature doesn’t do coincidences at scale and symbols persisting across cycles communicate something we should heed, even if we personally dislike them.
Biofoundationalism is a framework recognizing natural law and its human elements. It reads society like a biologist reads an ecosystem: not through judgmental eyes of good/evil or right/wrong, but of symbiosis and competition. Growth and decay. Adaptation and extinction. It maps environments and trade-offs; it doesn’t decree virtues.
This contrasts with the partisan ideologue’s model, which selectively curates factoids to craft top-down narratives advancing a moral belief wearing political drag. A framework doesn’t assert moral superiority, whereas a political belief does by its nature. Biofoundationalism does not take sides or moralize.
We have more in common with political allies than we think. And more to be grateful for regarding political adversaries than led to believe. We’re counterweights in a shared mechanism. Opposing notes in the same chord. Right has no orientation without Left, and vice versa. A symphony cannot be all one note. A polity cannot be all one moral foundation.
A dyad decays without its opposite. Political frictions you resent are tensions that define you. The adversary you hate is the complement that completes you. Each part of a human collective that evolved countervailing parts to engineer a more resilient whole.
None of us are self-contained moral savants. We’re engineered to have complementary traits enhancing the group. We evolved within collectives, not as individuals. The person you think is destroying the country thinks the same of you; in a way, both are right.
You’re both wrong in absolute terms, but right in the aggregate, as offsets of each other. When one element of a dyad consumes the other, it kills it. Dyadic complements are conflicting in a way both sides require, giving each something to push against. A dyad is undefined, unoriented, and corrosive without a countervailing force. Pure order and pure chaos are both death. Extremes are insidious; balance is a blessing.
V. Power Acts, Beauty Is
Feminine beauty and meaning both decorate the world and magnetize masculine power and protection into motion. It motivates men to act and achieve. Through this dyadic choreography, the conservative builds scaffolding so the liberal can paint murals on its walls.
The human coordination of order toils to gain footing allowing the human coordination of freedom to take root. Conservatives unknowingly strive to create conditions where liberals prosper.
What is order if not infrastructure for comfort? What is structure if not the sinew of safety? What is discipline if not the precondition of delight? What is duty if not in service of freedom? What is the masculine if not protecting the feminine?
The former traits are things you must do; the latter are things you get to enjoy if the former is done competently. Masculine because you have to, feminine because you get to.
The masculine embodies obligations because he must; the feminine embodies options because she may.
What is a soldier if not the guardian of the artist?
Masculine action is galvanized by feminine beauty. Not just physical beauty, but one of ideals: poetry, harmony, transcendence. The soldier both defends the artist and what she represents: the possibility that life might mean something beyond mere survival. Order's highest achievement is creating chambers where its presence is invisible. Strength assembles rooms; beauty gives them reasons.
Adept masculinity forges systems of control to create zones where control becomes unnecessary. Building a fortress so secure that those within forget walls exist: the ultimate act of love disguised as dominance. Masculinity's order works toward femininity’s liberty. Feminine values provide a lattice that makes life worth living; masculine values allow them to exist at all.
Power operates through threat of impact; it must move to be felt, it acts. Whereas beauty is inert; its utility is illuminated by its sheer essence, organizing the world through feminine inspiration; it does not have to move to be felt, it is.
While one’s value derives from productive output, the other is a coveted prize in and of itself. The entire point of competent masculine gardening is to grow meaningful feminine roses. Why do you want roses? Just because. They’re a goal in and of themselves. Power must act to be valuable; beauty simply is valuable.
Similarly, male accomplishment informs male worth (becoming), whereas women are valuable simply by being. One force proves itself through motion, the other generates gravity by existing.
This dynamic is found from bedroom to body politic. Conservatism's utility lies in what it defends and protects while liberalism's appeal requires no marketing campaign. Its rewards are self-evident in their attractiveness. Sames as roses.
Conservative values are worth something because of what they do. Liberal values are cherished for what they are.
Shockingly, you don't have to convince people to desire the increasing rights and privileges that accompany safety and wealth! When people don’t need to bear heavy burdens, they choose not to. This scales to the national level.
A societal predilection for liberalism naturally develops as abundance and stability permit. This pattern goes back centuries across civilizations and cultures. It’s neither good nor bad, it simply is.
The morality of honor (actions, earned) complements and eventually allows an ethic of care (dignity, deserved) to emerge.
Masculine production (kinetic, extrinsic, empirical) earns the right to demand feminine dignity (inert, intrinsic, rational). Good conservatism creates liberalism.
The capable do not wish for equality, the powerful do not desire fairness. However, they cultivate environments that produce these ideals via their triumphs.
This interaction is slowly taken for granted as prosperity makes the masculine contribution less visible, less obviously critical. Inhabitants on the 80th floor of a skyscraper who begin to treat pillars they never see as optional. This is when decadence takes root.
To swim left is inevitable as one succeeds. To swim too far left is to erode under the weight of your own victories. To never swim left is to stagnate. As with all things, the dosage determines the poison.
As prosperity rises so do freedoms. As you increase freedom you necessarily weaken rules. As rules are undermined, structure diminishes in parallel. Each constraint removed in freedom's name is another beam extracted from order's framework. As order declines, entropy must rise...
When freedom is viewed as a drug you can never overdose on, when we forget it requires a container to give it shape, it ceases to be liberty and metastasizes into chaos. It eventually destroys the circumstances allowing it to exist. Then the cycle resets.
Order is exclusively established through maintenance and effort (action), whereas chaos is what happens purely from action’s absence. Power acts, beauty is.
VI. Moral Foundations: A Revision
This brings us to a small-but-substantial correction of morality categorization. Jon Haidt’s Moral Foundations is a masterful diagnostic tool. However, once we understand these two forces exist between the poles of order and chaos, we see one of Haidt’s descriptions is half wrong. Operating from an incorrect angle with its designation of liberty. Here are the original moral foundations:
Haidt's miscategorization of liberty as conservative morality stems from conflating two distinct phenomena: the defense of freedoms (conservative) versus the expansion of freedoms (liberal).
You cannot assess either side of a dyad in isolation; they’re critically mutualistic and defined by their obverse.
Conservatives protect current boundaries; liberals seek to extend them. Both serve liberty, but through opposing mechanisms. The conservative says “this far and no further”; the liberal asks “why not further if you can?”. Both push in distinctly different directions.
Traditional political framing succumbs to a textbook-style misinterpretation of conservatism and liberty, overlooking the dyadic function it performs in conjunction with its liberal counterpart. The Lib, whether liberal or libertarian, promotes a moral filter that’s technically and fundamentally chaos-increasing in its emphasis of freedom. These values are necessarily feminine, as they’re categorically not agents of order. This morality advances coordination stage left on the spectrum between masculine order and feminine chaos, making it a component of liberal morality.
Here are the moral foundations updated to reflect this Biofoundationalist axis. In doing so, we restore balance between the two poles. Haidt thought conservatives incorporated more moral foundations than liberals (3.5 vs 2.5), when both naturally reside in parity when properly understood.
VII. Prison. Ocean. Home. Forest.
The masculine/conservative pull toward order and the feminine/liberal drift toward chaos create distinct societal conditions, depending on their proportions and competence. Scaled Human Coordination has four archetypal spaces:
Prison
Order without beauty. Walls without windows. Arrangement without purpose. Stultifying and draconian. Incompetent masculine tyranny occupies a landscape cloaked in conflict, poverty, and misery.
Home
Liberty’s dwelling. A balance between order’s skeleton and freedom’s fat. Limitations that enable flourishing. The competent masculine and meaningful feminine turn a country’s Pizza Hut into a Pizza Home.
Forest
The masculine gradually abandons his duties as society enters the woodlands. Feminine demands for more encounter little resistance. She screams, he doesn’t say ‘no’. Resource distribution without accumulation. Load-bearing borders degrade. Survivable, but the gardens overflow with weeds.
Ocean
Freedom without form. Disarray and no direction. An absent masculine. A chaotic feminine indulgently disconnected from reality. She perceives hierarchies as oppressive, rules as mean, and is naive to the savages lurking beyond walls she takes for granted. The only boundary she draws is around those who dare to draw boundaries. Swimming in an ocean, drowns in hedonism. Anomie.
Most political arguments are disagreements about which space we occupy, because basically everyone will say they seek the Home. However, no one’s individual temperament is calibrated to produce the Home on its own.
Meaningful liberty doesn’t blossom in the wild but within walled gardens. Defense of that garden requires a perimeter and rules. Conversely, you are not ‘liberated’ when swimming in an ocean, you are lost. You’re not ‘free’ when wandering a horizonless plane without shelter or safety. Liberty knows its limits; anarchy knows none. Structure yields the kind of freedom that’s worth having.
Order grants freedom substantive autonomy, the type that anyone cares to have: do you aspire to roam “sovereignly” in a forest by yourself, or a home in society? The latter demands boundaries; the former demands nothing.
A secure, functioning society means optimizing the tradeoff between masculine order and feminine chaos and their forms of scaled human coordination. Enough order to exist safely, enough freedom to exist meaningfully. A gardener who can’t tell the difference between weed and rose soon learns one is a result of careful intention and preservation, and the other grows rampantly in the absence of these efforts. One exists through vigilance; the other thrives on neglect.
When these two moral poles sit in rough equilibrium, order and freedom breed liberty, and a life worth living. The beating heart where constraint enables rather than strangles. One of the crowning feats of civilization is building spaces where boundaries feel like horizons.
Pure order is death by crystallization. Pure chaos is death by dissolution. The ideal is found in the middle. Somewhere between prison and ocean, order and chaos, sits a home with a pool.
VIII. Concluding
Tides recurring across timelines exist beyond our control. Patterns echoing throughout history operate outside man’s agency. The actors change, the nature of man endures. Cyclical forces that lifted Caesar beckon Trump. Entropic decay that dissolved the Dutch Golden Age does so to modern Detroit. History doesn’t repeat, but it most certainly rhymes. Physics makes the rules, biology iterates within them, patterns follow suit.
Protests in the streets, legislation being championed, art put on display: all these communicate vital signs of where we sit on the spectrum from prison to ocean and which direction we're headed in the historical cycle. They’re symptoms, not causes.
The pathology isn’t that some loudly demand free everything and no rules while others yearn for a civilizational bootcamp. These contrasting temperaments provide productive countervailing push/pull against each other. It turns toxic when the dynamic tension between them is destroyed. When one side overwhelms, decay begins.
As with all ideologies, they are wrong in isolation and right in offsetting aggregate.
As countervailing elements within a collective, they’re healthy. When critical thresholds mutate into militant factions, radically promoting either tyrannic prisons or entropic oceans — each viewing the other as existentially evil rather than systemically essential — society loses the ability to self-regulate. Something is going to break.
The cancer lies in imbalance. The cure is remembering that opposites don’t destroy, they define. Your antithesis isn’t your enemy, but an anchoring counterpressure. When that balance breaks, societies snap toward prison or drown in ocean. When it holds, they build homes.
Thank you for reading.
Continued: Biofoundationalism VI: Order Acts, Chaos Is
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Biofoundationalism Chapters:
Biofoundationalism I: Moral Foundations Utility Theory & Hypermoralization
Biofoundationalism III: Verbal Intelligence & Factual Sediment
Biofoundationalism IV: Masculine Because You Have To, Feminine Because You Get To
I want the forest, literally and figuratively. I love and always have loved the outdoors and the forest is deeply indifferent and doesn’t care about us. It’s hard for the state or civilization to reach it.
What a profound and necessary message, especially given the contemporary Zeitgeist of the USA, the West in general. In terms of personal application, I don't particularly need any encouragement to shun ideology and doctrine, walked away from those traps before my 16th winter...but I came away with a win otherwise. I can now reframe my writing, lol, usually born in the ocean of the chaotic feminine, ideally disciplined by editorial constraints into an appropriate container for the call to freedom to flourish within. Eventually, I mean. Editing seems to be the never-ending story for me sometimes. I puzzled over your dyad of honor/dignity at first glance--the dependence of personal dignity upon one's upholding of personal honor seemed obvious, but I couldn't understand the oppositional nature of the relationship until you elaborated on it in terms of Acting and Being. Looking forward very much to the next two sections. I hope you publish these essays as a book someday, Dmitry.