I hold to one-ness, to boundary intensifying connection. I reject the primacy of ego and materialism and the loneliness and fear of death to which they condemn.
Humanity is in a blind alley. We are here because we have followed two whopping lies.
Here’s the first (courtesy of Sigmund Freud).
You are not me.
You-Me. Yes to that – there is boundary – it is the edge between us that allows us to experience each other. It’s the little word not that causes all the problems. You are not me. Distinction, separation, contrast. The birth of Freud’s concept of ego.
And this nott-iness is perculiarly modern and western. After all the Hindu – Namaste means something like “I bow to the divine in you”. Our culture – European and American – is also rooted in “community”. Together, we are one. Do our achievements in the west not stand on the foundations of all of the tribes, families, villages, congregations, parliaments, colleges, schools, classes of the past? The individuals who we remember – the Shakespeares, Napoleons, Eliots, Einsteins, Washingtons, Elizabeth Reginas – were they not the flowering and expressions of their age. They did not appear singular and without context.
And here’s the second great lie (thanks to Marx and Engels)
All is matter.
Dialectic materialism. There is no such thing as spirit; no concept of purpose or any “other”. Without a yardstick against which to measure moral compass what is there? Self-referential humanism and its close cousin narcissism.
From these two ideas – “ego” and the exclusive worship of “matter” has sprung the western “triumph” of atheism, the advance of capitalism and the fragmentation of society.
I hold to one-ness, to boundary intensifying connection. I reject the primacy of ego and materialism and the loneliness and fear of death to which they condemn.
When my body dissolves, then the molecules will become part of new patterns. So too will my other essence. My soul. The fragment of spirit that animates this collection of atoms. As Rupert Brooke puts it.. “a pulse in the eternal mind, no less”.
Or perhaps
Let us go gentle into that good light,
Old age should turn to brave the close of day;
Courage guag’d against the flighting of its wight
