It is key to assert that universal justice is neither a transcendental value nor a clear concept, on the one hand, and then to affirm it and fight for it as effectively transcendental nevertheless. This requires a genealogical approach. Where does the notion of universal justice come from? Two levels down, we find its origins with the Abrahamic religious complex: it was born with the Jews. Of course the notion of justice is older than that - surely any culture at all has some kind of sense of a cosmic order, a way things should be - but it was the Jews who (lets say approximately 4000 years ago, or perhaps fewer) introduced a non-cyclical temporality into this concept. The current state of things is not just, and is also not simply an unjust phase in a cycle that will inevitably lead to justice before cycling back into injustice - universal justice will emerge decisively and once and for all at some kind of caesura breaking with the established order of things.
This notion of eschatological justice was passed on to Christianity and Islam with an intensified universalism - universal justice for all, not just for a chosen tribe - and, through Christianity, was intensified even further as it was ejected into atheist secular multiculturalism with the rise of science, technological advance and capitalism (through American Transcendentalism, whose legacy this website aims to preserve and extend). At this point its messianic aspect was effaced and it was characterized in terms of gradual progress and promethean effort rather than the coming of God.
Upon being shorn of Christian dogma and prohibitions, the notion emerged for the first time as justice-in-itself, truly universal - the right of any human being to freely enjoy in whatever mode makes sense to them. One interesting thing about the pure concept of universal justice is that it has gaps that it can't consistently address from the inside. Secular multiculturalism cannot consistently affirm religious and sexual freedom - issues like discriminatory hiring based on religious convictions (not hiring homosexuals for example) and pederasty (priests, Milo Yannoupolos) seem to provide cases where the concept can't smoothly be applied and some kind of decision is required. There's also of course the question of including other sentient beings like animals and plants, and then of which ones and so on.
The point is that universal justice - what I will now simply call Ark Work - is one of several versions of righteousness circulating in the world. It hasn't been able to simply leave its "less evolved" counterparts behind. Christianity and Islam are alive and well, and both represent alternative visions of justice - involving, say, restrictions of women's health (for the former), and the violent conquest of the globe (for certain sects in the latter). These latter two are actually tied to much clearer visions of justice because they are ultimately messianic. The secular left is in on insecure footing in part because it does not have a messianic vision - but it can and should, and this is what The Ark Work in part needs to provide: a detailed vision of the Sovereign Hierarchico-Emancipatory Individuation Municipality of AESTHETHICA.
Parts of this vision can be extracted from the visions of heaven offered by the great medieval theologians (e.g. Aquinas and Duns Scotus) and by the living tradition of Jewish Kabbalah. The key feature are perfect cognition of God, and a (resurrected) embodied life that, even in heaven, still requires problem-solving, discipline and creativity. Whatever other features it involves, or however exactly this vision is described, it can then be unpacked and articulated with greater rigor in terms of dynamic systems theory and other branches of mathematics and science (especially studies of the nature of cognition, learning and problem-solving).
Along these lines, it is also important to grasp the fundamental ways in which science is transforming human nature - we are merging with the machines we have created, discovering that we cannot clearly distinguish between matter, life and mind, and mastering our own genetic code. A great deal of what would have required a messiah in the imaginations of eschatological thinkers from the Abrahamic complex seems more easily attainable at the hands of science (by scientific tools we already have at our disposable, or can realistically hope to aquire within the decade). This point is so unassailably true that is it hardly worth unpacking, but it is nevertheless something that is shocking and unthinkable to most people. I will nevertheless pass on to the next point, one which I struggle with: isn't a messiah still needed for some aspects of the apocalyptic revelation? Surely it is not possible on the basis of purely promethean methods.
Here it is interesting to point out a disagreement between Nick Land and John Greer I recently learned about. The latter doesn't believe in a future that is not a post-human cyber-world with new values that we cannot yet imagine. Rather, he imagines that humanity is on the verge of a massive decline into a new dark age, during which scientific progress will end, crumbling along with the institutions upon which it depends. What he shares with Land is a cybernetic / systems basis for his prediction - he notes that discovering and crossing into a new singularity is a very, very rare and unlikely phenomenon. Perhaps we could have hoped for this in the 70s, before the ecological catastrophe became inevitable, but now it is too late. The most we can hope for is a an ecologically sustainable and stable druidic relationship with nature, built out of the wreckage of the catastrophe. This outcome is both more likely (because we're beyond the point of no return) and safer and more reliable than acceleration beyond capitalism (because - even if we crossed into the basin of a new virtual singularity, it would be very unlikely and difficult for us to stay there). NB I am actually not sure any of this is what Greer actually says - I am making up a position that is something along the lines of what I take his position to be based on an hour or two of glancing around on his blog.
In that case, it would require messianic force - something extremely unlikely and powerful - to push us into the S.H.E.I.M. I don't see that this messianic figure is inevitably going to come - it would require the efforts of the arts, searching around in ANANON to find her - but we can at least give her a name as a place holder: Ololon