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

9. Ascendancy Dominates

‘I know the untameable spirit of man; bent it cannot be - but it can be broken.’

Seneca the Younger — Thyestes

Society’s state is essentially a state of denial. Society aspires to some form of progress — evolution, ongoing economic growth, eventual conquest of all of nature — in order to maintain our species forever with ever-receding horizons of achievement. Both science and religion unwittingly conspire in promoting these kinds of aspiration, which is essentially pure spirit — the ‘economy of ascendancy’. Both have equally lost sight of our origins in the Earth and the celebration of our physical existence. Both lack soul — the ‘economy of descendancy’. A good and happy life is always just out of reach — might not in fact ever be realised until we die.

Western philosophy has traditionally been largely dominated by metaphysics and epistemology — theories about existence and knowledge over and above theories about relationship. This is a further pattern of the economy of ascendancy.

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