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

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seems to be on to find particles which facilitate these forces — to render them material. Subjectivity and with it emotion, spirituality, desire and passion, have often therefore been rendered non-existent. It will be seen in later chapters the immense damage this has done, not least to women and to the feminine aspect of reality. However, it will also be seen how non-material things — in the pursuit of ideals — have been covertly rendered into qualities of being. For instance, happiness has become something that we might possess or earn, as if it were a physical thing. This is ethics changed to metaphysics, in a relentless materialisation of the world.

In Greek mythology, first there was chaos and then one of the earliest gods to be born was Eros. Eros is able to bring order out of chaos. Eros is the creative attraction of opposites and the order that can result. To be erotic is to love and affirm life! This brings us to another aspect of the something and nothing question, the contrast between creation from nothing (‘creatio ex nihilo’) as opposed to order out of chaos. If order out of chaos were to be adopted then this gives us ‘becoming’ rather than ‘beginning’.

Chaos created the couple Erebos (darkness) and Nyx (night) who in turn birthed Hypnos, the god of sleep. Together with Pasithea, goddess of relaxation and hallucination, Hypnos fathered the three lords of the dream kingdom — Morpheus, Phobetor and Phantasos, who ruled over the changeable, fearful and fantastical regions of life. Hypnosis’ court is guarded by Aergia — literally, inactivity — goddess of sloth. From this it can be noted that chaos (rather

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