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

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notions of spirituality.

Perhaps we want to believe in some kind of real ‘transcendence’ — something more than just transcendence of value, as spoken of above. In doing so, we may fail to see that this is just one more way of conveniently carving up reality. Jean Paul Sartre describes people like this as ‘the serious’ — that is, they take seriously the reality of transcendent values. A constant theme of this work is the tendency to try to make so many things transcendent. We will return to this several times as the argument progresses and seek to rediscover the immanence of value that has been marginalised or overlooked.

There is a quality of discernment that can be brought to questions and situations that respects all of the notions mentioned above. Perhaps the best way to describe it is to contrast a dualist or polemic approach with a dialectic. Or, to put it more simply — ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’. A restriction of knowledge is recognised and the two oppositions are weighed against one another. The result is not necessarily a mixture of both sides, nor necessarily a ‘third way’, or even a synthesis, as all these options suggest some kind of final outcome. The discernment is instead a ‘conversation’ between the various options — and this conversation may continue indefinitely.

We turn now however to consider the main theme of this chapter — the essential oneness of reality. I’ve started out describing some of the ways we split up the world because arguably all these matters might be resolved if the universe

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