Perception

It seems that the world is getting more and more divided these days with reactions to differences of opinion getting increasingly emotional.  For instance it's hardly an exaggeration to say that there is coming to be a real hatred between left and right now. This is being stoked up by the media for its own ends, but also by many of the intelligentsia who find that their assumptions of intellectual and moral superiority are currently being challenged. What all this really comes down to is profound differences in perception.

How we perceive the world determines the deepest feelings and opinions we have about it. Unfortunately most of us nowadays perceive it in terms of itself. We see it more or less just as it appears to be to the senses and the rational, unsupported mind. I mean by that the mind unsupported by deeper insight into the nature of things. Spiritual intuition in other words, though there is also scripture and revelation for those who will accept them.  Thus we don't perceive it so much as misperceive it. In many cases this is an act of will and the desire of the ego for personal freedom. This, of course, means it is more a matter of sin than ignorance.

Life has two aspects. If it didn't we could never know it. We can call these two aspects the vertical and the horizontal, the spiritual and the material and so on. They are both important but they are not equally important for the latter must always be seen in terms of the former - even if the former is incomplete without the latter of which it is a crucial part. But it is not primary so much as complementary. The trouble is we have things completely back to front today. Either we deny the vertical altogether or else we see it in terms of the horizontal. The spiritual, if it is acknowledged at all, is seen as an aspect of the material. This has so many consequences that I cannot list them all here but one of them is New Age spirituality in which the individual pursues personal enlightenment for his own ends, and another, believe it or not and many won't, is the current feminisation (metaphysically speaking) of the world with all that that entails including the focus on equality and most things that comes under the banner of liberalism. The feminine relates to the material/objective pole of existence and it has now assumed pre-eminence with the masculine/spiritual/vertical correspondingly demoted. It may seem strange to relate feminism and materialism but they are intimately connected. One might argue over whether the feminisation of the world is a cause or consequence of the denial of the transcendent and the absolute but the fact remains that the two are part of the same process.

So we live in a horizontal world in which the vertical has lost meaning and significance. But since all meaning and significance come precisely from the vertical to say that we live in a horizontal world means that we live in a world without meaning or significance which should be obvious to anyone. But people need meaning in their lives and if they can't find it where it naturally is, because they have cut themselves off from that, they will look for it elsewhere. It isn't anywhere else so they will have to project their need for it into something that doesn't have it, not on its own anyway. This could be art, politics, sex or even religion of a despiritualised sort, but whatever it is will become their (false) religion and they will react to challenges to it as though something sacred was being threatened. This, incidentally, might explain the current hysteria of the left towards things like Brexit or the election of Donald Trump. The left is entirely a horizontal system. It totally denies transcendence and the absolute and, by consequence, the masculine as linked to these. But such fundamental things cannot just vanish from consciousness so they come back in another form.  For when you deny the vertical it does not simply disappear but the meaning it has for the psyche becomes squeezed into the horizontal, and realities pertaining to that limited level begin to assume a pseudo-religious significance in the minds of the victims of this pathology.

I call it that because the current hysteria of the left now that it no longer gets its way is an inevitable result of its basic mental imbalance. Since it denies the absolute and vertical pole it has to project that aspect of reality onto the horizontal. Thus it absolutises the relative. Man's religious impulse must have an outlet and for the God denying left that is necessarily projected horizontally since there is nowhere else for it to go. So today its religion is being rejected and its fears and insecurities are being exposed. But there is more. As I said above, we live in an increasingly feminised world nowadays (a consequence of the denial of the transcendent and absolute), and Trump is almost caricaturely masculine in his behaviour which horrifies the left. But this is their fault. If they hadn't rejected traditional and natural masculine authority then an exaggerated and deformed version of it would not have arisen in reaction. Trump must be seen as the direct result of a feminised left rebelling against tradition which is why they hate and fear him so. He is not tradition (not by any means) but he is a consequence of tradition being denied. Extremes often breed extreme reactions against them and so they have here.

Well, all that is by the way. The basic problem of our time is faulty perception and the denial of the vertical pole. Call it the transcendent, the absolute, God, all this is the same. We desperately need to rediscover this pole of reality which, in fact, is the source and ground of all that we know on the horizontal level. We need to rediscover it and give it its primary place in the scheme of things. This is the only thing that can heal the divisions of today but for that to happen great sections of humanity, including most of the intelligentsia, will have to admit that they and the false philosophies they have built up were wrong. They will have to concede that their understanding of life was completely mistaken and their work aided the forces of ignorance and darkness. Whether they will be able to do this is questionable but if they don't then it is very possible that events will force them to.