Happeningism: Full
A meta-meta-philosophy that democratizes moral literacy. Should be as essential as grammar or mathematics. Moral reasoning turned scientific.
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/2MV3A
Happeningism is a philosophical framework developed by Jackson T. Kagan-Lenz. While it engages with universal ethical themes, its structure- including concepts like the Process of Happening, Scope/Imperatives, and Dimensional Empathy- is an original synthesis.
Attribution is not a claim to moral truth, but to the framework’s formulation. Those referencing or adapting its structure are asked to cite its origin, in the interest of intellectual transparency and good-faith discourse.
What Is Happeningism?
Happeningism is a meta-philosophy- maybe even a meta-meta-philosophy- that seeks to encompass all frames of thought, by rooting itself in the undeniable reality of living: the happening. It doesn’t demand that life be material or simulation, dreamt by divine, or functionally mechanistic. It simply says: if it’s happening, it’s happening. And that’s enough. You are living within the moment of the happening- an infinitesimal continuously becoming and passing moment which is what might be called the "Prime Present"- and by choosing to perceive, to witness, and to respond, you are participating.
To live is to care, because otherwise you would not act. You would not respond. This doesn’t make you noble- it simply makes you alive. Happeningism begins with this tautological recognition: you are here, right now, and because you are here, you care, as you are choosing to persist.
You are the cartographer of your own becoming. There is no pre-written map. Meaning is not imposed unless you allow it. The stars you name, the truths you forge, the morality you construct- they are yours. This grants a radical freedom, one that allows for contradiction, multiplicity, and transformation. Happeningism includes all other philosophies by default because it refuses to refute any plausible worldview. It includes them not as final answers, but as cultural expressions within the broader happening.
It needs to be noted, care in Happeningism is not romanticized. It is not compassion, warmth, or moral investment. It is the minimal energetic engagement required to persist in the now. Even the most indifferent actor chooses to remain, to respond, to resist erasure- and this, however hollow, is care in its foundational form. This is deemed ‘proto-care’.
Prime Present Concept
Happeningism acknowledges a subtle, yet profound awareness: time is not what it seems. While science divides human perceived time into seconds, milliseconds, and circadian rhythms, the happening is not confined to these units. It is experienced in the continuous, indivisible sliver of now- what we might call the "0.infinity" in duration. You are not merely perceiving the present; you are actively in it. This is deemed ‘Prime Self’ which exists within The Prime Present.
Even if time is predetermined- even if your choices are sealed within the fabric of fate- your experience of choosing remains uniquely yours. This is not about illusion or freedom as a metaphysical certainty. It is about the practical truth: no matter how predetermined your actions are, only you do them. You, in the now. You, in the happening.
This is where tautology becomes dynamic: Happening → Witnessing → Responding → Differentiation → Ethical Calibration. That sequence forms a temporal developmental scale- a kind of moral phenomenology. We move from bare awareness toward higher moral reasoning. This is coined the ‘Process Of Happening’.
But how do we recognize the threshold between witnessing and differentiation in others- especially when awareness is ambiguous (AI, infants, psychosis, sociopathy)? Here, Happeningism invites dialogue with neuroscience and developmental psychology. The goal is not to gatekeep personhood, but to refine our recognition of agency and capacity where it's least obvious.
On Morality and Decision-Making
Happeningism in morality and decision-making acts as a meta-evaluative heuristic not a prescriptive or descriptive doctrine of ethical action.
Happeningism does not arbitrate final truths. It offers a way to assess the dimensionality of moral claims—how many imperatives they include, how balanced their weighting, how recursive their reflection. In cases of competing values, it doesn’t resolve conflict with authority—it offers a structured canvas to map the moral terrain
There is no prime morality, no cosmic scale of karma calibrated by the universe. Morality is a construct- made by minds with language, emotion, and history. If there were an inherent karmic scale, it would invalidate our freedom to believe in anything. That we can believe radically different things- despite evidence, tradition, or consensus- is proof enough that there is no binding moral law.
However, Happeningism does not collapse into relativism. It provides an internal compass derived from the one thing we all demonstrably share: the capacity to care. From this arises a dual framework for ethical reasoning:
Decision-Making Imperatives:
Ethos (Emotion) – The visceral pull of care, urgency, intuition, and passion.
Logos (Logic) – The reasoned deduction based on pattern, evidence, and principle.
Every decision- no matter how spontaneous or deliberate- operates on some combination of these two. There is no third force. If you choose, you choose emotionally, logically, or both.
Scope Imperatives:
The Individual – The direct impact on a person (often the self).
The Group(s) – The sociological context: family, city, nation, community.
The Whole – The broadest context possible: humanity, ecology, divinity, eternity.
The “most moral” decision is not mandated, but suggested: balance the imperatives. Let the emotional and logical lenses assess all three scopes, not just one. Ethical dysfunction arises when a decision is made with too narrow a scope or from only one imperative.
Happeningism’s topography of morality- Scope + Imperatives- reveals moral failure not as evil, but as imbalance or stasis. When a person over-identifies with the Group and ignores the Whole, or when they refuse to deploy Logos where it's crucial, their decisions become ethically shallow.
The question then becomes: Can Happeningism help recalibrate? Yes.
Through reflection practices, ethical diagnostics, or interactive tools (like scope-expansion prompts), people can learn to shift between imperatives. A person stuck in emotional reactivity can be guided toward logical reflection. A person self-focused can be shown the Group or Whole implications of their actions. This is where Happeningism evolves from theory into ethical pedagogy.
"Without clear examples and a life of deemed misfortune, many may lack the tools to form a ‘common system of logical reasoning for ethical deduction,’ which can cause conflict in societies- hence the recursive existence of deemed wrongness and the recurring necessity for judgment." - (First Reformations)
Meta-Imperatives
A key feature of Happeningism is the meta-imperative- the ability to decide whether you should lean on logic or emotion in a given moment. It is the moment before a decision: should I trust my gut, or my thoughts?
This self-referential awareness grants the human mind the unique capacity to shift gears ethically- to not just decide, but decide how to decide.
Survival and Freedom as Meta-Conditions
Why do we act? What motivates care?
Happeningism proposes two proto-values- or more precisely, Meta-Conditions of Ethical Capacity:
Survival – The biological, environmental, and social scaffolding necessary to keep existing.
Freedom – The psychological, emotional, and existential space necessary to self-author.
Justice, dignity, fairness- these are higher-order values that can only emerge after survival and freedom are stabilized. That’s why Happeningism is meta-ethical, not prescriptive. It describes the conditions under which ethical frameworks even become possible.
Dimensional Empathy
There comes a threshold in diagnostic philosophy where abstraction fails to interface with pain. No matter how comprehensive a framework may be- no matter how precisely it maps the imperatives or scopes- there remain moments where a human being is not asking for clarity, but for compassion. And not compassion as sentimental balm, but as dimensional recognition: a care that speaks in the language of lived experience.
This is where Dimensional Empathy enters. It is the translation of ethical diagnostics into emotionally legible language. It does not dilute the framework of Happeningism; it humanizes its application.
It arose from a thought experiment, examining the psychological topography of suicidal ideation. The hypothesis was this: what if suicidal tendencies are not signs of apathy, but hyper-applied care- distorted, mis-scoped, and recursively collapsed? A kind of proto-care so externally fixated that the self becomes unscoped entirely.
In this view, the suicidal individual may be exhibiting a full-system bias toward the Group or the Whole, with no remaining Ethos for the Individual. They are not devoid of care- they are drowning in it, but only toward everyone and everything except themselves. This state is not nihilism. It is an unsustainable ethics of totalized outward responsibility.
The result is an ethical collapse via dissociative miscalibration. Logos is selectively suppressed. Ethos, inflated and externally projected. Identity dissolves not because the person feels nothing, but because they feel too much- and none of it loops back to self-recognition.
This condition- tragic, complex, and often hidden beneath layers of trauma or cultural reinforcement- demands a different mode of engagement. You cannot show someone a diagram of imperatives and expect it to land when they are on the edge of collapse. But you can speak in reasoned compassion.
Not platitudes. Not raw sentiment. But precision care. Dimensional empathy.
Example:
Instead of saying, “You’re lacking in the individual scope, hyper-ethos dominant, and putting too much care into whole or group scopes” one might say:
“You care so much, even if you don’t want to admit it. You've carried the weight of everything and everyone- but never yourself. You think this pain is yours alone, but part of it may be ours too, what we’ve said or done. You are not broken because you feel this deeply; you are exhausted from misplacing that care. It’s time you placed some of it- just a fragment- on yourself. You still, despite everything, have the capacity to care for yourself.”
This is not therapy. It is applied ethics through language. A direct conversion of dimensional analysis into compassionate resonance.
Dimensional Empathy is not separate from Happeningism. It is its linguistic limb- its affective extension. It says: "Here is the model- but here, let me speak it in human form."
Just as Logos and Ethos must both operate across Individual, Group, and Whole, so too must our communication. Theory must learn to speak, not only about the person, but to them- within the happening.
The Grand Inclusion
Whether you are a Buddhist, a Christian, a materialist scientist, or a raging nihilist- you are still happening. You are part of the happening. Belief systems are expressions of experience encoded into language, shaped by culture, and fused into memory. None are invalid within Happeningism, because Happeningism doesn’t adjudicate truth based on content- it honors the process of belief itself.
Faith is not the enemy of reason. It is the soil in which reason sometimes grows. Even science, at its epistemic core, relies on assumptions we accept without final proof as that final proof would require the knowledge of all things to be proven absolute.
On Ethical Collapse
If all beliefs are valid within the happening, what prevents moral collapse? Can Happeningism justify evil?
The answer is subtle: Happeningism validates the reality of belief, not the righteousness of action. When someone fails to apply all imperatives- when their ethos is unchecked, their logos selective, their scope narrowed to self or tribe- Happeningism critiques not the belief, but the imbalance.
“You are using less than all the imperatives.”
This is the deepest criticism one can make within Happeningism. It transcends subjective disagreement and reveals structural incompleteness.
Fascism, for example, collapses not because we morally condemn it- but because it fails the test of ethical complexity. It narrows scope, discards balance, and over-applies imperatives selectively. You don’t need to call it evil. You can show that it structurally breaks under ethical scrutiny.
While Happeningism cannot claim infallible moral detection, it proposes diagnostic convergence: the more minds evaluating an act through the imperatives who arrive at the same imbalance, the stronger the likelihood of error. This is not objective certainty- but a probabilistic ethical scrutiny. Consensus across scope and imperative lenses acts as a falsification pressure.
Teaching, Testing, and Living Happeningism
Happeningism could be taught like grammar- a structure for ethical language. It doesn't dictate what to say, but how to think clearly, completely, and reflectively.
Ethical mastery would not mean correctness- it would mean high-resolution awareness. An ability to see all sides. To measure your own imperatives. To say, “Here, I am mostly using Logos and only viewing the Individual. What am I missing?”
This lends itself to tracking tools, discussion formats, and curriculum.
Interactive ethics dashboards
Moral calibration worksheets
Workshops in reflective scope-shifting
Digital tools to test imperative balances
Happeningism offers not just a map of ethics, but methods for moral recalibration. It is a compass for complexity.
You Are Already a Happeningist
You may resist the term. You may prefer existentialism, stoicism, anarchism, or no -ism at all. But if you are alive- if you are witnessing and responding- you are a Happeningist.
Even if you reject the world, you do so through an act of attention and will. Even the nihilist who claims meaninglessness participates in the happening through the act of claiming.
“Indifference is a costume worn by those too invested in the act to admit they care.”
“Caring is no noble enlightenment reserved for saints; it is to witness and respond willingly.”
To live is to care. To care is to live.
And you- you are happening.
Happeningism and the Limits of Its Own Frame
No philosophy is free of paradox- not even one that begins with the paradox of its own self-evidence.
Happeningism, in all its openness, must also acknowledge its boundaries. It is not an edict from truth, but a map of truth-claims. It cannot command consensus, only offer a way to chart the weight and distribution of moral participation. It is scaffolding, not scripture.
Its most central tension lives in this: if everything that happens is happening, then how do we distinguish between the graceful and the grotesque? How can we speak of error, imbalance, or collapse if all beliefs are permitted within the happening?
The answer is not authority- but dimensionality. Happeningism does not declare what is right. It reveals how complete or incomplete a moral structure may be. When someone acts through only one scope, or uses only one imperative, or mistakes reflex for reflection- it is not that they are evil, but that they are thin. Morally, philosophically, dimensionally thin. And in a world thick with nuance, that thinness folds.
This framework can be misused. One can simulate Logos without introspection. One can inflate the Group to devour the Whole. One can wield Ethos as an excuse. But the beauty of Happeningism is not that it prevents distortion- it is that it gives you the lens to see the distortion while it’s happening.
Yes, it is elastic. That is not its weakness, but its nature. What is the alternative- rigidity? Dogma?
So let it be said plainly: Happeningism is a method of attunement. Not a god. Not a law. Not a savior.
It will not tell you what justice is. But it will help you recognize when you’re off—when it leans too far into logic, or the emotion too reflexatory, or the Group has drowned the Individual, or the Whole has become a hollow abstraction, when survival is used as a weapon of control and when freedom becomes catalyst for chaos.
And in this way, Happeningism becomes not a claim, but a call- to examine, to refine, to balance, to try again.
On Reflection and the Question of Recursion
It has been suggested that Happeningism—despite its commitment to openness—ultimately privileges one evaluative principle: recursive self-awareness. That is correct. The framework does, indeed, hold the capacity for reflection as a primary axis of ethical clarity. But this is not framed as universal truth. It is framed as a probabilistic safeguard.
Happeningism does not claim recursion is inherently virtuous. It claims it is functionally reliable in reducing the likelihood of moral collapse. It is not a metaphysical good, but a heuristic stability. Conviction without self-examination has produced as much harm as it has certainty. Systems that refuse internal review tend to deteriorate into either violence or dogma. Reflection, while not infallible, offers a mechanism for detection, calibration, and adaptation.
Thus, the stance of Happeningism is not that recursion is morally supreme, but that it is epistemically accountable. The demand is not that all moral structures be self-doubting—but that they be self-auditing. The value of recursion lies in its capacity to expose blind spots before they become social fractures.
In that light, Happeningism stands for: Moral clarity without reflective structure is inherently unstable; Belief, no matter how sacred, benefits from being interrogated by the imperatives; Any system resistant to recursion should be able to justify its immunity—not simply assert it.
This is not to dismiss faith-based or convictional systems. Rather, it asks them to coexist with dimensional transparency: to clarify which imperatives they use, and which they suppress. The refusal to reflect is not proof of strength—it is a design decision, and one whose consequences can be tracked.
So yes, Happeningism stands. Not above, not outside, but within moral reasoning—with one hand on the lens, and the other on the structure it observes. It does not ask you to doubt your beliefs. It asks whether your beliefs can withstand your own questions.
And if they can’t—then perhaps it is not your beliefs that must be abandoned, but the silence surrounding them.
Recursion as a Structural Tool, Not Moral Command
Happeningism admits that recursive self‑awareness is its most reliable safeguard against collapse—but it does not decree recursion as a moral good. It offers recursion as a probabilistic heuristic:
“If you choose to self‑audit, your frame is less likely to fold. If you refuse, that is simply a design choice—one whose risks can be seen, not a sin to be condemned.”
This distinction mirrors a weather radar: it does not call storms “evil,” only “dangerous and forthcoming” Likewise, Happeningism forecasts structural failure without prescribing moral virtue. - (First Reformations)
Structural Consequences vs. Ethical Prescription
When thinness collapses into oppression, genocide, or war, clarity can feel like a moral imperative—but Happeningism remains neutral on ends. It asks only:
“What do you want your frame to withstand? If survival and flourishing matter, consider recursion; if sacred cohesion matters more, accept the risk.”
Thus clarity is offered as a mirror, not as a shackle.
Classification with Consent
Diagnostics only become elitist when thrust unsolicited into debate. Happeningism insists on a simple protocol:
Invite the lens: “May I map your imperatives and scopes?”
Self‑apply first: “Here is where I am thin.”
Contextualize thinness: “Is your simplicity a survival design or unexamined default?”
This keeps “thin” a technical reading—never a verdict on worth.
Thinness vs. Wisdom
Some traditions trade recursion for ritual simplicity or trauma‑hardened safety. Happeningism honors these thick mythic systems so long as they account for Ethos, Logos, and Whole in other ways. A ritual order can be dimensionally sound without self‑audit; its ecosystems of care may outlast purely recursive frames.
Guarding Against Soft Hierarchies
To prevent “high‑resolution elitism,” any Happeningist analysis must begin with:
“Where is my frame thin?”
Shared vulnerability dissolves hierarchy and transforms diagnosis into collaboration, not conquest.
FURTHERED - EXAMPLES OF THE PHILOSOPHY IN ACTION
(Against happeningist deemed unethical methodologies)
Example: A Tyrant’s Moral Justification
Let’s say someone says:
“Out of desire (individual) to protect my nation (group), I must eliminate this minority (group) so that society (whole) survives.”
Let’s run this through the Happeningist imperative test:
Ethos/Logos
Emotion-driven, but logic fails (selective reasoning, confirmation bias)
Verdict: Imbalanced
Individual, Group(s), Whole Scopes
Prioritizes specific Group while harming another, Individual goal is heavily ethos based, misuses "Whole"
Verdict: Imbalanced
Freedom/Survival Meta-Condition Axis
Invokes “Survival” by stripping freedom from others- imbalanced
Verdict: Imbalanced
Outcome: Rejected by Happeningism's own system.
Conclusion: This is a shallow moral justification, not an ethically sound one.
But Isn’t That Still Subjective?
Yes. Happeningism acknowledges that head-on. It says:
“All moral systems are provisional, probabilistic, and should undergo recursive social judgment. There is no perfect answer- only the best good-faith attempt.”
So societal, emotional, and logical resistance act as checks and balances to rogue interpretations.
Other examples:
You discover that a friend’s abusive ex is trying to find where they live. The ex shows up and asks you where they are. You lie.
Decisive Imperatives
Ethos (80%): Loyalty, fear for your friend’s safety, emotional instinct to protect.
Logos (20%): Lying can logically be deduced a moral wrong on its own; small chance the abuser is harmless now.
Scope Imperatives
Individual (30%): Your friend’s safety and peace.
Group(s) (40%): Others who might be endangered. Normalizing lying? Trust in you?
Whole (30%): Legal justice, moral consistency in society, sanctity of truth.
Value Imperatives
Survival (70%): Physical and psychological protection.
Freedom (30%): The ex’s right to access someone, which is morally questionable.
Verdict:
Lying here is morally justified as dense- because survival outweighs the abuser’s freedom. The ethical "wrongness" of lying is overridden by emotional and logical urgency. All imperatives weighed, and action taken in the now.
FURTHERED - FAQ
Q: What are the ‘Universal Ethics’ beliefs of the philosophy, i.e utilitarianism in maximizing most good to the most people.
A: Happeningism’s imperatives and the Ethical Conditions are the very philosophical sleight of hand that elevates Happeningism into a meta-meta-level framework.
It acknowledges subjectivity not as a regrettable compromise, but as the starting condition of sentient life.
It then builds an internal moral compass out of the only universally shared fact: we are all happening, and all care to some degree (since we act).
From this, it allows sub-philosophies like Kantianism, utilitarianism, etc., to exist within Happeningism as ethically valid experiments of scope-balancing, not as universal truths.
It means that "universal ethics" are themselves just happeningist calibrations that became widely accepted through time, culture, or force- and thus, not invalid, but contingent.
Happeningism thereby absorbs and surpasses universal ethical norms by contextualizing them rather than rejecting them.
Q: It can still be misused by tyrants stating they had gone through the imperatives, how do you combat this?
A: If (and this is a huge if) Happeningism is integrated into actual pedagogy, it could democratize moral reasoning:
Imagine teaching a 12-year-old how to spot when a politician is using only Logos and only for the Group scope.
Or showing someone how to recognize when their personal trauma has narrowed their ethical lens to the Individual only.
In this sense, misuse doesn't destroy Happeningism—it activates its use-case.
Q: What of non-knowing individuals and your claim they are still Happeningists yet make immoral choices due to the non-knowing of Happeningism?
A: this is one of Happeningism’s most important latent insights: it doesn’t assume people are acting in bad faith- just in low resolution.
Someone can be:
Overwhelmed by trauma
Operating with flawed information
Conditioned to ignore certain imperatives (e.g., sociocultural suppression of Logos or Whole)
And yet, from their perspective, they’re “being good.”
Thus, one of the scariest truths of Happeningism is that we might all be wrong in ways we cannot yet detect- but by adopting its heuristic, we begin to search for our own blind spots.
In fact, the worst harm often comes from people with the most "righteous" self-image. Happeningism quietly devastates that illusion by making the ethical process recursive and accountable.
FURTHERED - ANTI-HAPPENINGISM DEBATE
Fixism: A Counter-Philosophy to Happeningism
1. The Present is not the foundation of truth—structure is. What happens is not proof of meaning. The world contains both noise and signal. Meaning is objective, not emergent.
2. Action ≠ Care. Many things act. Only those who align with objective moral truth are ethical. Feeling, witnessing, and responding are insufficient.
3. Morality is not dimensional. There is one right answer. Ethical decisions must reflect eternal laws or universal maxims, not improvisation.
4. Freedom is not a value—it is a temptation. The obsession with self-authorship creates chaos. Order arises from recognizing and submitting to transcendent truths, not negotiating them.
5. Balance is cowardice. Choosing “the middle” between competing moral visions is often a refusal to commit to what’s right. The Good is not found in compromise, but in alignment. How would Happeningism react to this anti-framework?
The Happeningist Response
Fixism Claim 1:
“The Present is not the foundation of truth—structure is.
What happens is not proof of meaning. The world contains both noise and signal. Meaning is objective, not emergent.”
Happeningist Response:
Happeningism does not equate the happening with meaning. It only claims the happening is the undeniable precondition—the canvas, not the painting. Structure may define signal from noise, but no structure precedes the experience of awareness itself. You cannot submit to structure without first being here to perceive it.
Happeningism is not anti-structure; it simply posits that all structures—religious, logical, moral—emerged within the happening. It doesn't deny objectivity as a potential, only its claim to primacy.
Fixism Claim 2:
“Action ≠ Care.
Many things act. Only those who align with objective moral truth are ethical.”
Happeningist Response:
Happeningism agrees: not all care is moral. But it argues that all morality starts from care. Even the most harmful ideologue cares—misguidedly, tribally, or blindly. The system is not designed to validate care, but to diagnose its dimension and clarity.
Claiming an “objective moral truth” is the very kind of absolutism Happeningism exists to interrogate. That claim requires a privileged view of the moral landscape—but who gets to decide what’s truly objective?
Fixism Claim 3:
“Morality is not dimensional.
There is one right answer. Ethical decisions must reflect eternal laws or universal maxims.”
Happeningist Response:
This is an elegant belief. But Happeningism asks: Why do so many people disagree about what those maxims are? If a divine or universal law exists, it is curiously vague across culture and time.
Dimensional ethics doesn’t deny the possibility of one right answer. It simply provides a method to examine how people arrive at their answers—especially when they differ. The dimensional view is not moral cowardice; it is moral cartography in an unclear terrain.
Fixism Claim 4:
“Freedom is not a value—it is a temptation.
Order arises from submitting to transcendent truth, not negotiating it.”
Happeningist Response:
This is the core theological turn. Happeningism doesn’t reject submission—it asks who you’re submitting to, and whether you’ve chosen to.
Freedom is not glorified as license. It’s held in tension with survival—because a being who is alive but not free is enslaved, and a being who is free but not alive is dead. Order that crushes either ceases to be moral.
If there is a transcendent truth, let us name it through balanced imperatives—not by disappearing our capacity to respond.
Fixism Claim 5:
“Balance is cowardice.
Compromise avoids commitment. The Good is not found in negotiation but in alignment.”
Happeningist Response:
Balance is not the avoidance of conflict. It is the conscious encounter with complexity. To say there is “one Good” is to assume clarity where most of life is ambiguity. Happeningism doesn’t say every middle is moral—it says that morality cannot ignore multiple dimensions of the present.
Sometimes, yes, the moral path is firm. But even firmness must undergo scrutiny. The tyrant claims “alignment.” The zealot claims “one truth.” Happeningism says: If you cannot show your reasoning across all imperatives, then your certainty is structurally suspect.
FURTHERED - ADDED NOTES OR EXTENDED INFORMATION
On the Edge of Totalism
A fair critique of Happeningism is that it risks becoming a meta-morality while denying being one.
If it can diagnose any belief system, even those that reject it, does it secretly claim supremacy?
The answer is Happeningism does not claim to be above morality- it claims to be within it, looking at its structure. Like a camera, not a commandment.
It does not define “good.” It reveals how “good” is constructed- and whether that construction is narrow, recursive, or brittle.
If that makes it a morality, then let it be a humility-based morality of ethical awareness. One that teaches you to ask not just, “Is this right?” but also, “Am I using all the tools I could be?” It doesn’t claim to stop evil. It claims to give people a better mirror for spotting it—especially when it hides inside their own certainty.
Complexive or Simple
Analysis of ethical scenarios can be simple as in the examples above, but they can become extremely rigorous, in some, 100+ pages of nothing but weighing the facts, the logic and emotions associated with the ethical scenario, going into detail who it affects, and how that affects freedom/survival using ethos/logos on factual information. This makes Happeningism more a moral science, a moral literacy for democratizing moral reasoning.
Furthered - The Origin Of Happeningism
This, along with all quotations, are extracted from First Reformations and contextualized within the paper (currently as of 7/5/2025, First Reformations is still a private self-authored in-development document):
“I wish to tell you about me and why I even made Happeningism to begin with.
See, I was born in America, LA, and moved out when I was three years old to Singapore- my parents were theme park art directors and so we had to move around whenever a theme park was done, So Singapore became my home where I fostered friends and community and then we moved to Malaysia at 11- and then Abu Dhabi at 13- and then back to USA at 18- I went from Maryland to LA to Oregon to Buffalo NY and then back to Oregon over two and a half years and I am now twenty years old.
I was raised Buddhist but I had catholic family outside my immediate family and they always tried to convince to convert, I have parents who aren't politically biased but hate American politics in general, and I have had to abandon and completely forget a lot of friends, families, and much more in between each travel without even my own consent as I was too young.
That sucked, big time- losing everybody, again and again.
Once I moved to Malaysia, something in my brain cracked open and became defiant and fire- I think I had undergone psychosis at that moment but I was never sure- I would skip every single day of school, jumping the fence and skip education and go on my own adventures typically in my lonesome. In Malaysia, it was quite a rural town, Ipoh, so I just had some cool forests to go to and that's what I did for the most part, just fuck around in the woods, for two years. When I went to Abu Dhabi I was even worse- at least for a while. Let me explain, UAE was a lot stricter, I couldn't skip school at all or really be defiant out of worry of lawful consequences. But let me tell you, I found loopholes.
Anyway, the most important moment of my life I think was when I was 16 years old when I hit my first existential crisis, and it was really loud- I had panic attacks every other week and my teachers could see how pale and lifeless my smiles looked- I was forced into counselling and a lot more but I never let anything get through to my head at this point, I was rebellious- I was derealized, didn't believe in the world or myself or anyone being truly real. Before this, I tried Christianity, truly tried, truly tried all sorts of religions or philosophies but I just always caught myself falling into dogma and certainty, and boy, I was never certain about anything- super indecisive- which pulled me away from believing in any ideology.
During this time, I made a lot of mistakes when I was undergoing this existential crisis (A LOT), my ego got destroyed time and time and time again because I was wrong but never wanted to admit it- spiralling. And I hurt a lot of people, badly, but I hurt mostly myself. When I made a mistake that would change the trajectory of my life forever- into the dumps of hell and back- where everyone saw me as a traitor and I had no friends- I was never really in control, like how my parents moving countries made my past friendships void. But this time, I realized just how much control I do have. This time, it was instead out of my own actions and that felt so terrible- that felt... real... for once.
I came to terms with myself that day, I acknowledged myself- and I hated myself- really, trully, and fully hated myself- every fiber of my being.
When I moved to America I still hated myself, but it was there where I met such diversity in thought, such freedom in expression- that I started... slowly... piece by piece, putting myself and my broken core back together... ten thousand times stronger. As I went through all this, I was taking philosophy lessons on an online college course, and my professor really helped me... Far more than any counsellor could. He had a rebuttal for everything I ever said, I had to tear myself apart time and time again and reform myself stronger time and time again…
Then I made something that even my professor couldn't necessarily rebuke. My idea of Proto-care, the Prime Present, and Process of Happening- now it isn't to say my professor couldn't rebuke persay but that its belief has become no longer logically deducible to be wrong but now much more-so rather a belief or best-faith truth-claim founded in tautology.
Come the years later of me moving around America Happeningism slowly but surely developed day by day into something stronger and stronger, because it became a philosophy where every rebuttal made it stronger and I found myself actively seeking critique, evaluation, and disdain for my philosophy because that means it might prove fruitful for its growth. I did that A LOT. Online, in person, and mostly, through AI- because I didn’t always have a verbal sparring partner, but I did need one.
Happeningism became a reflection of all my pain- but more importantly, all my growth.
If you’ve gone through such pain, of existential collapse, what I want for you, isn't to adopt Happeningism, but to grow and be more whole- I made Happeningism to mediate and see clearly with philosophical rigor. For a dream where conflict is lessened and truth-claims can become scientific. Where it isn’t about who is yelling the loudest.” (First Reformations)
Jackson Thomas Lenz
Happeningism Ideation Paper
7/5/2025
Happeningism is an original philosophical framework created and authored by Jackson T. Kagan-Lenz (Legal: Jackson Thomas Lenz). While it engages with shared ethical intuitions and universal questions, its specific structure, including concepts such as the Process of Happening, Scope/Imperatives, Dimensional Empathy, Proto-Care, and related terminology constitutes an original synthesis. While Happeningism draws on process‑first recursion theories, structural empathy models, and cybernetic meta‑ethics, it integrates these into a proprietary diagnostic and heuristic architecture—complete with proprietary terminology and decision‑flow structure not found elsewhere.
You are welcome to share, discuss, and build upon this work for non-commercial purposes, provided you: Attribute the original author clearly and prominently (Jackson T. Kagan-Lenz), indicate if changes were made (e.g., adaptations, expansions, critiques), do not rebrand the core structure or concepts without attribution.
Derivative applications—including adaptations, teaching tools, commentary, or translations—are encouraged within these terms. Any attempt to structurally repurpose or repackage the framework without acknowledgment may be considered intellectual appropriation.
This framework was developed independently, outside of formal academic philosophy programs, with only one semester of college-level philosophy instruction. While I did not complete a formal degree in philosophy, my exposure to philosophical methods—especially through rigorous debate with my professor—played a meaningful role in shaping this work.
Parts of Happeningism were iteratively refined through the use of AI (ChatGPT), which served as a tool of dialectical self-interrogation. All core philosophical structures, concepts, and conclusions were authored by Jackson T. Kagan-Lenz, with AI used as a recursive reflection amplifier—not as a creative source.
This framework is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).