21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T W E N T Y - O N E L E V E L S

in Western thought is deeply associated with death and with a divisive split between male and female. In order to become a ‘subject’, certain desires must be repressed and rationalised. What is more, Western thought has conceived this in purely masculine terms (Freud and Lacan). Women, in this view, only become subjects by being man-like. Any attempt at equality therefore is fated, as the ‘equality’ can only be constructed within a mindset that already privileges the masculine.

How to escape from this dilemma? Let us first just summarise what such an escape might mean. It means a fully equal place to the feminine in both men and women. It means life over death. It means discerning genuine pleasure over substitute and superficial pleasures. It means the freedom to let go of any number of things and to allow creativity to flourish. Ultimately, it is the interplay of form (creativity) and formlessness (letting go). However, as we’ll see, there is a point at which the flow and counterflow meet each other — where there will always be paradox.

True freedom, for the economy of ascendancy — for spirit — only comes about after bodily death. There is therefore an implicit embrace of death underlying all of Western culture’s aspirations. Therefore, in order to find freedom via our alternative economy of descendancy we must set up a symbolic that challenges this world view — something that will ‘bring to rest the ceaselessly shifting signifiers’ — the ever-receding horizon of substitute pleasures by fulfilling genuine pleasure. In Martin Luther King’s words, we must find something to love

110