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

‘A sensual spirituality, then, is a political spirituality: it is about sharing the joys of the earth, of Creation. It is not — cannot be — about owning or accumulating power, immortality, control or rewards. It is sharing the pleasures of the earth by way of justice.’

Matthew Fox — Whee! We, Wee All the Way Home.

The Pernicious Dichotomies

Polarities, or pairs of opposing views, were considered in the early chapters of this work and Chapter 5 mentioned Lawrence Cahoone’s three ‘pernicious dichotomies’. These are — subject and object, the split between the individual and the individual’s relationships with others and the split between human culture and the natural realm.

The subject object split was examined in some detail. The way that it is important is not so much that objective things are treated seriously and subjective things are dismissed — although this is bad enough. The real problem is that subjective things like pleasure, ethics and aesthetics become objectified. Even our primary concern with grace is vulnerable to this.

The subject/object split leads us into troubled waters. A better way to look at things, as discussed in the opening chapters of this work, is through form and formlessness. There might be a boundary set up here too however. We might be inclined to put both subjectivity and values into the form side of the equation. Indeed, could anything at all be put into the formlessness side? What this work has been

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