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

explanations, interpretation, and solutions is offered. What is missing here is the soul, evoked by an archetypal imagination in which the passions and the imagination combine in an alchemy that generates our humanity.’

Thomas Moore — The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life

As Moore suggests, this lack of soulfulness and the ambiguity is made manifest by peculiarities in our culture. On the surface, everything is very ordered, clean, tidy and efficient, but underneath all is not so well. On occasion, ‘chaos’ breaks out. There are substitute gratifications such as material wealth and power. There is an obsession with the image of death, but a denial of death itself. There is an obsession with the image of the body, but a denial of the body itself. There is an obsessional belief in individual freedom, but that freedom is protected with the threat of extreme violence. There is an obsession with sport, an obsession with celebrity, a compulsion toward status, a compulsion toward fixing trivial problems whilst global concerns are ignored or denied. There are outpourings of emotion over relatively inconsequential matters whilst war, famine and pollution continue to wreak havoc. There is a strange ‘shadow life’ of internet trolls, paedophiles, misogynists, racists, homophobics and religious fundamentalists, whilst outwardly society claims to be equal and tolerant. All of this, I suggest, is a clinging to things — both materially, emotionally and subjectively. Clinging onto ‘stuff’. Fear of old age and death. Fear of not looking attractive. Fear of our own bodies. Fear that other lifestyles and other views will force us to re-evaluate our own lives.

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