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

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created. It is hardly possible to overestimate the psychological and social significance of idolatry in the course of history, that great illusion that hobbles activity and independence.’

Ideals then can easily be hardened into fixed ways of looking at the world that can ultimately just become useless. Grand notions of compassion, freedom, equality, justice and love don’t help unless they can cope with the mundane, workaday concerns of real lives.

Instead, it is maintaining a conversation, an interaction with ourselves, our communities and ultimately with all of nature that prevents ideals from becoming ideology. Ideals might work, we could say, as long as they can be dynamic rather than static — it’s back to the notion of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’. Hence hospitality — or conviviality — is a good way of seeing the outworking of compassion and fairness in society. Love is affectionate kindness as well as passion. (Again our ‘economy of ascendancy’ and ‘economy of descendancy’ are useful here. Love, in particular, is portrayed in heroic, aspirational terms by both religion and society at large. It is ascendant, spirit-led, erotic. It is all passion — whether that is the passion of God for humanity or the passion of young lovers. The economy of descendancy, by contrast, can seek to make love manifest in the particulars of everyday life.)

But it is difficult to escape from idealism and to find ways of grounding ideals in real life and real relationships. Much of the rest of this work takes up this concern. One ideal to be considered is that of intrinsic value.

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