apologies for my prolonged absence
I've been dealing over the last few weeks with my somewhat Shaky current health
It seems probable that I can use arrest if I had the opportunity
And I knew how I [should] probably be having a rest right now
But be that as it may I have prepared this letter presumptuously to the world
Or at least to that corner of it with which I can communicate here at the dawn of the new year in these perilous times
Although I usually speak extemporaneously
That takes a level of capacity that I cannot quite currently manifest, so I'm going to read instead
It's also a careful argument. [I] hope and it required the editing for which only the written word can suffice
Dear World
On January sixteenth, I'm going to talk with Sam Harris on his podcast
Waking up with Sam Harris Dr.. Harris is one of the so-called new atheists of which there are four
like the other three Christopher hitchens
Dan Dennett and Richard Dawkins who by the way. I always wanted particularly to debate Dr.. Harris is a smart guy
And I'm certainly not complaining that [I] will encounter him instead of Darkens
So I'm preparing my arguments carefully although. I have been doing so for years the specific ideas. I'm going to share with you today
We're obsessing me from the moment. I woke up
Somewhat fitfully this morning
So I dictated them to my son and then edited them with his help
The central problem of human beings isn't religion as the new atheists insist
[it's] tribalism
We know this in part because Chimps are closest biological can go to war
And they're not religious
Although they are tribal
Tribalism also has a central problem, and it's not competition
Despite the tendency of competition to produce at least temporary early winners and losers
The problem of tribalism is cooperation
Because cooperation is what allows us to exist is bounded groups group by definition is a collective
Cooperatively aiming at something it can't be aimed at nothing because nothing cannot unite
It only divides
Thus attacks on collective purpose because of its tendency to Produce tribalism merely divide
The politics of identity which emerged when the central purpose is criticized to destructively?
Inevitably produce the situation described in the story of the tower of babel
Everyone fragments into primitive tribes and speaks their own mutually in comprehensible language
One alternative to fragmentation is of course union under a banner a collective ideal cause or purpose
The problem with uniting under a banner as the postmodernists to push identity politics rightly point out is that to value something?
means simultaneously
to Devalue other things
And thus to value is an exclusionary process
But the alternative is valueless pneus which is equivalent to nihilism
Denialism does not produce freedom from exclusion
It just makes everyone excluded and that's an intolerable state direction. 'less uncertain chaotic and Angst-ridden
When such uncertainty reaches a critical level
the counter Response appears
first the unconscious
and then the collectively express demand for a leader possessed by the spirit of totalitarian certainty
Who promises above all to restore order?
The Society without a unifying principle oscillates on Lord between Nihilism and totalitarianism
Human beings have been wrestling with this problem since the beginning of civilization
In our capacity to form large groups for all its advantages also started to pose a new threat
that of the hyper domination of the state
Collective or purpose, but without the state. There's just fragmentation into smaller groups
the group itself cannot be done away with
Because for better or worse human beings are social animals not loners like Sharks are tigers
We're team players
But being on one team means not being on others
this means that any given team sidelines
Marginalizes and alienates those who cannot play their game as well as conflicting with other teams
In the west starting in the middle east thousands of years ago a new idea began to Emerge
Evolved is not too strong a word
In the collective imagination you might following darkens consider this a mean although. This is far, too weak a word
This idea whose development can be traced back through egypt to mesopotamia before disappearing into unwritten history
Is that of the divine individual?
This eons old work of the imagination
is a dramatic
presentation of an emergent idea
Which is the solution to how to organize social being without falling prey to nihilistic divisive pneus or deceitful?
totalitarian certainty
the group must unite
but under the banner of the individual
The [individual] is the source of the new wisdom that updates the antiquated
nihilistic or totalitarian D'être tests and Glory of the past
for better or for worse
That idea reaches its apogee and Christianity
The Divine individual is Masculine because the feminine is not individual
The Divine Feminine is instead mother and child
However, it is a hallmark of Christian supposition that the redemption of both men and women comes through the masculine
And that's because the masculine is the individual
the Central realization
[Express] dramatically and symbolically is that the subordination of the group to the ideal of the divine individual?
Is the answer to the Paradox of Nihilism and totalitarianism?
The divine individual is the man that every man admires
and a man who all women want their men to be
The divine individual is the ideal from which deviations are punished by the group with contempt and disgrace
And finality to which is rewarded by the group with attention and honor
The divine individual is not the winner of any individual game
But the player who plays fairly and is therefore continually invited to play the divine individual is the builder
Maintainer an expander of the state he who boldly goes where no man has gone before
And someone who eternally watches over the windows and the children
His power of Direct and honest communication is that which identifies?
discusses and then resolves the continuum urgent problems of human existence
It is for this reason that he is regarded as the savior of the world
The primary image for women is not the divine individual because of the heavy burden they bear for reproduction
It is instead the divine mother and child
[this] is not to say that man is the divine individual and woman is not although such confusion is understandable
given the complexity of the problem
Man like women have the divine mother and child as an element of their personality
In man however, it's in the background, so to speak
as the divine individuals in the background of the psyche for women
men by Necessity play less primary Role in the care of Children
This frees them to act as individuals in a manner that up to now has been nearly impossible for women
Identification with these images is belief in the belief is not the statement of agreement with a set of facts
But the willingness to act something out to become something to stake your life on something
for men and women alike this means voluntary adoption of responsibility
responsibility for oneself Family and State
It's in that responsibility and not in rights that meaning itself resides
the meaning that makes life bearable
Societies that refused to honor both of these elements therefore doom their inhabitants to purposelessness unhappiness sterility
And the out for mention dangers of nihilistic to visit pneus and deceitful oppressive totalitarian certainty
The meaning and responsibility is the necessary meaning in life
Which can serve as a counterbalance to its terrible fragility and tenuous?
people must unite under the banner not of their group and not of nothingness, but of the individual
This is a brilliant and intrinsically paradoxical solution to the problems of nihilistic nothingness
and too rigid group identity alike
[it's] the consciousness of the individual which transforms the Chaos of potential [into] habitable cosmos
as the greatest origin stories repeatedly insist
It is that same consciousness which stands up rebellious and revelatory?
To break down the pathological and too rigid order of that cosmos when it has become old
Infirm Willfully blind and corrupt
It is that consciousness. Which is the image of [God] dwells within every embodied human form
the fact of its existence
Is the reason that the law of the land itself?
Must be bound by ultimate respect for the individual regardless of his or her sins and crimes
It is that consciousness not the objective
Material substrate of being which should be regarded as the ultimate reality
There's no self-evident reason why Dead matter should be given ontological primacy over living spirit
Although doing so has produced a massive increase in human technological power
Is left that power in the hands of an increasingly disenchanted [populace]?
And that presents a mortal danger
Such power must be wielded by those who have truly and voluntarily accepted the responsibility of being
less [to] [Prove] Fatal
The west has long being the civilized embodiment of the idea of the divine individual
Who does exactly that?
That's what the voluntary lifting of the cross of suffering symbolically represents
For all its faults which are manifold the west has therefore served as a shining beacon of hope
To those destined to inhabit places too chaotic or too rigid for the human spirit to tolerate
About the west is in grave danger of losing its way the negative consequences of this can hardly be overstated
a close reading of 20th century history indicates as nothing else can
the horrors that accompany
loss of Faith in the idea
of the individual
It is only the individual after all who suffers
The group does not suffer
Only those who compose it
That's the reality of the individual must be regarded as primary
of suffering
Is to be regarded seriously?
Without such regard there can be no motivation to reduce suffering and therefore no respite
instead the production of individuals suffering can and has
And will be again rationalized it justified for its supposed benefits for the future
and the group
Effective birth control has emerged as one of the consequences of our powerful technological materialism
This has been accompanied by the rise of [state] sufficiently
Civilized so that women who inhabit them can walk the streets unaccompanied Din safety
We do not yet know how to balance the opportunities that's provided for expanded female individuality
With the eternal necessity for a woman to serve as the mother of the divine individual
Dividing our civilization into polarized ideological camps of female group identity and male group identity is certainly not the answer
We have to be honest male and female alike about what we really want as individuals
And talk it out
We [don't] beyond dispute. The [Society's] whom emancipate their women are more productive and peaceful and that the relationship is causal
Thus it's not a matter of if but how
But such amounts of emancipation places a dual burden on the now more autonomous woman who is required to balance?
manifesting the potential of our individual spirit
With the necessity of desire to Bear and rear the next generation of mankind
to live with [free] women
And gain the advantages of their freedom and sophistication
Man must therefore bring their shadows psychic identification with the divine mother and child into the light
without losing their divine individuality in the process
They must consciously
voluntarily deliberately and strategically
Accept their responsibility for the relationship between Autonomous female companionship
support love and the responsibility of producing out next generation
This means rejecting among other things the misbegotten idea of casual sexual gratification
Sex is either the impulsive Short-term gratification of a domineering biological instinct
Or the Union of two conscious spirits taking responsibility for what they are doing
The former is simply not commensurate with the demands of an advanced civilization
Which requires the adoption of responsibility above all for its preservation?
maintenance and expansion
It is for this reason
That the sexualized interactions between young men and women in universities for example
Are increasingly and inevitably falling under the Harsh and tyrannical?
regulation of the State
In the west we are as well
Shuttering are great cathedrals
those marvelous
monumental embodiments of the idea of the Divine individual which our civilization is based
This is no mirror practical material matter
It's a symbolic and mediation process whose importance cannot be overstated
Without that central idea we will dissolve and be lost
It is time for each of us to consciously realize what the great symbolic stories of the past insist upon
That we are all sons and daughters of the divine logos consciousness itself
bearers of its light
And that we must act in accordance with that great central fact last all hell break loose
This means above all to tell the truth and to care for one another
Starting at the level of the individual and proceeding from that out to the broader reaches of society itself
The alternative as the same stories have always insisted
Is the more permanent instantiation of the horror?
That we already saw a manifest in multiple forms in the last bloody terrible century
We need to wake up individual man and woman alike [now]. We need to do it now
[each] of us must take the world on our shoulders
Insofar as we're capable of that
and adopt individual responsibility
For the horrors and suffering its existence entails
In that we will find the meaning without which life is merely the suffering that breeds first
resentment and then the desire for vengeance and destruction
We need to take responsibility instead of incessantly insisting on our right?
We need to become adults instead of age and children
We need to tell the truth
We need justice and compassion conjoined not judgment and pity which [Crushin] Devour
So in the coming year plan to make yourself a better person
fix what you can and would fix
Start now
There's something right in front of you, too
Demanding repair calling out to your conscience if you would only attend to it for your corrective efforts however
primitive they may yet be
start small
As you master the process you can safely and competently expand your reach
You will then be able to fix bigger things instead of making them worse in the arrogance of your ignorance
if you do this
There will be less pointless and unnecessary suffering
In the world for all its shortcomings and faults will be a better place
Until we can imagine better than that that's meaning and purpose enough
Happy New Year, and best wishes to you all