Life is an exceedingly dynamic process and when some of the cells take it upon themselves to separate from the body, yet feed off it, it's cancer. Which is a quite normal aspect of life.
We are all both centered around ourselves and part of something, or somethings, bigger. Nodes in the network.
The problem is that while there are lots of useful insights around, there isn't a conceptual framework tying them together.
A large part of it is our cultural focus on a monist idealism. The narrative effect that is useful for getting groups of people all going the same direction, but invariably falls apart, even when it goes on for millennia, like the Catholic Church.
The reality is much more effectively explained in terms of yin and yang. Energy and form. Expansion and consolidation, Youth and age. Liberal and conservative. Desire and judgement. The heart and the head.
Even the trinity was a throwback to this primal dichotomy, of the two sides of the whole coin.
Even the concept of political polarization is an implicit recognization of the two sides of the larger whole.
Yet because it does go to the core of our monotheistic paradigm, it will take a massive breakdown of the system, before there will be any effort to seriously look in the mirror.
That reality is cyclical, circular and feedback driven, while our linear, goal oriented, go forth and multiply, go west young man paradigm has truly reached the edge of the petri dish and we need to turn around and get used to the fact that we are stuck on this planet and better make learn how it works, not how we want it to.
One point that's been going around my thinking lately is that while we have this implicit cultural assumption of good and bad as some cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, they are the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of sentience.
From which all the higher order social and cultural constructs evolve. Like love, honor, trust, respect, responsibility, etc, as well as the negatives. So when we assume good to be aspirational, rather then elemental, conflicts do become a race to the bottom, of us versus them, since all nuance and subjectivity is suspect as weakness and indecision.
So when we try to construct our understanding of how society should function, according to our preferences and ideals, the overall effect is like trying to understand computer programming by playing video games. Any understanding is swept away by the emotions.
So the fact we have this political situation, where both sides are getting increasingly, childishly emotional and making little effort to do anymore than game the system for their side..
I'm thinking four years of Russiagate, then it's announced we have the freest and fairest election in history and all is good!
So that large numbers of people are becoming disillusioned, does create the conditions to accept a new start is necessary.
If the powers that be want to generate severe cognitive dissonence in much of the population, on the assumption we have no alternative, let them burn their own house down.
We will be drawing up the plans for a new one.
