Postmodernist here, individualism and collectivism are intertwined

[Romanov]

This is only my take, it’s not absolute truth. 

I’ve heard Leo and many others say that collectivism always wins, it’s at the top of spiral dynamics, etc. The thing is that you can’t have a collective without individuals or an individual without the collective; they are two sides of the same coin. Even if an individual was stranded on an island by themselves, they would rely on the food sources there. Collective can also include the environment. Liberals usually stand for collectivism but if their individual rights got threatened-they would quickly become conservative. Having the right to abortion is a very individual right, “my body, my choice.” Even if globalization was to fully triumph and we all became one nation…if we end up finding other civilizations out in the galaxy…then we could end up being nationalistic as the entire human race among different alien civilizations. I don’t think individualism can be separated out from collectivism anymore than a wave can be separated from the ocean. 

Spiritually speaking, one can say the collective represents universal consciousness and individualism represents ego. But like Leo has mentioned in many of his videos, the ego is is there to help with navigation and survival. This universal consciousness would not experience itself or get to know itself very effectively if there is no ego to help you survive. The other issue I see is that since universal consciousness is nondual in nature, people will pit nonduality against duality. And non duality vs. duality is yet another duality! How can we know what selflessness is without knowing selfishness? 

I’ve also heard people say that progress always wins and that the liberals of yesterday are the conservatives of today. However, I don’t think either side wins…because I see them as complimentary to one another. Progress needs a foundation in order for progress to happen. I think the reason that we are so politically gridlocked is that both parties are compromised, in other words there are two parties within each party…causing both to be constipated with hardly much bipartisan support on many issues. 

The majority of atheists are liberal but to me atheism aligns more with conservatism because it’s very individualistic and skeptical, no worship of gods and generally prioritizes feelings over facts. Since there is no worship of gods, it makes sense to also not worship the government. And Christianity in the other hand, I view as very liberal given Jesus’ teachings. The GOP’s ideology goes against the teachings of Jesus, they would never get behind Jesus if Jesus could be president. As former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev has said, “Jesus was the first socialist. The first to seek a better life for mankind.”

Politically I’m centrist and I feel like both sides misunderstand centrism. They’ll use an example such as, “If one side wants to abolish slavery and the other doesn’t, the centrist will say to just have less slaves.” Centrism to me is where both sides have valid points in the entire political landscape, not on every single individual issue. That’s the misunderstanding. They see centrists as cowards but whose to say both sides can also cowards for succumbing to an extremist view over the other and not having the courage to listen beyond their echo chambers. Or people will vote for something only because their side does as this sort of unwavering loyalty. I support Ukraine and many conservatives won’t support Ukraine for the simple reason that the left does which makes no sense. Or people will sometimes say that sometimes extreme measures are needed for change and centrism defeats that purpose. I can’t agree because I don’t mind being extreme when it comes to certain issues. One does not have to be extreme across the board on every issue, it could just be on a few issues instead. 

Conservatism and liberalism to me are a lot like driving while following the speed limit. 
 

 

Edited August 12, 2022 by Romanov

[Ulax]

2 minutes ago, Romanov said:

This is only my take, it’s not absolute truth. 

I’ve heard Leo and many others say that collectivism always wins, it’s at the top of spiral dynamics, etc. The thing is that you can’t have a collective without individuals or an individual without the collective; they are two sides of the same coin. Even if an individual was stranded on an island by themselves, they would rely on the food sources there. Collective can also include the environment. Liberals usually stand for collectivism but if their individual rights got threatened-they would quickly become conservative. Having the right to abortion is a very individual right, “my body, my choice.” Even if globalization was to fully triumph and we all became one nation…if we end up finding other civilizations out in the galaxy…then we could end up being nationalistic as the entire human race among different alien civilizations. I don’t think individualism can be separated out from collectivism anymore than a wave can be separated from the ocean. 

I think people tend to be referring to atomism when they refer to individualism in the context of individualism v collectivism.

Atomism being the idea we should be treated as individual units, and where one ends up is a result of individual choices. I.e. pulling yourself up by your bootstraps idea.

[Romanov]

13 minutes ago, Ulax said:

I think people tend to be referring to atomism when they refer to individualism in the context of individualism v collectivism.

Atomism being the idea we should be treated as individual units, and where one ends up is a result of individual choices. I.e. pulling yourself up by your bootstraps idea.

Hm, interesting. Never heard of atomism before. I don’t think atomism is something I fully agree with because while individual choices play a role where one ends up, so does the collective. If the system is rigged against you, you’re at a disadvantage for example. Or the collective can also help the individual by protecting basic rights. We have a Bill of Rights here, I don’t think there’s one in Afghanistan 

[Razard86]

On 8/12/2022 at 8:29 AM, Romanov said:

This is only my take, it’s not absolute truth. 

I’ve heard Leo and many others say that collectivism always wins, it’s at the top of spiral dynamics, etc. The thing is that you can’t have a collective without individuals or an individual without the collective; they are two sides of the same coin. Even if an individual was stranded on an island by themselves, they would rely on the food sources there. Collective can also include the environment. Liberals usually stand for collectivism but if their individual rights got threatened-they would quickly become conservative. Having the right to abortion is a very individual right, “my body, my choice.” Even if globalization was to fully triumph and we all became one nation…if we end up finding other civilizations out in the galaxy…then we could end up being nationalistic as the entire human race among different alien civilizations. I don’t think individualism can be separated out from collectivism anymore than a wave can be separated from the ocean. 

Spiritually speaking, one can say the collective represents universal consciousness and individualism represents ego. But like Leo has mentioned in many of his videos, the ego is is there to help with navigation and survival. This universal consciousness would not experience itself or get to know itself very effectively if there is no ego to help you survive. The other issue I see is that since universal consciousness is nondual in nature, people will pit nonduality against duality. And non duality vs. duality is yet another duality! How can we know what selflessness is without knowing selfishness? 

I’ve also heard people say that progress always wins and that the liberals of yesterday are the conservatives of today. However, I don’t think either side wins…because I see them as complimentary to one another. Progress needs a foundation in order for progress to happen. I think the reason that we are so politically gridlocked is that both parties are compromised, in other words there are two parties within each party…causing both to be constipated with hardly much bipartisan support on many issues. 

The majority of atheists are liberal but to me atheism aligns more with conservatism because it’s very individualistic and skeptical, no worship of gods and generally prioritizes feelings over facts. Since there is no worship of gods, it makes sense to also not worship the government. And Christianity in the other hand, I view as very liberal given Jesus’ teachings. The GOP’s ideology goes against the teachings of Jesus, they would never get behind Jesus if Jesus could be president. As former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev has said, “Jesus was the first socialist. The first to seek a better life for mankind.”

Politically I’m centrist and I feel like both sides misunderstand centrism. They’ll use an example such as, “If one side wants to abolish slavery and the other doesn’t, the centrist will say to just have less slaves.” Centrism to me is where both sides have valid points in the entire political landscape, not on every single individual issue. That’s the misunderstanding. They see centrists as cowards but whose to say both sides can also cowards for succumbing to an extremist view over the other and not having the courage to listen beyond their echo chambers. Or people will vote for something only because their side does as this sort of unwavering loyalty. I support Ukraine and many conservatives won’t support Ukraine for the simple reason that the left does which makes no sense. Or people will sometimes say that sometimes extreme measures are needed for change and centrism defeats that purpose. I can’t agree because I don’t mind being extreme when it comes to certain issues. One does not have to be extreme across the board on every issue, it could just be on a few issues instead. 

Conservatism and liberalism to me are a lot like driving while following the speed limit. 
 

 

Let me ask you a question. Does your lungs need rights? Does your kidneys need rights? How do you think your body would fare if your lungs said you know what I am not getting the respect I deserve so screw this!!! How would you feel if more calories went to your liver than your brain? Calories only enter your body because each part of the body plays apart in getting it there the same way money is only earned because of the collective effort of all that live in society.

What about your intestines? What if every organ looked down on your intestines because they deal with feces? What if they mocked them so they went on strike? Your body would have died LONG AGO that's what. Humans only issue is their increased intelligence, their sentience. They are suffering their raised consciousness.

If your organs acted like humans do the body would be destroyed so what do you think we are doing right now?

Notice that how a billionaire and millionaire act in an economy is VERY similar to how a cancer cell acts in your body. A cancer cell take up all the resources and calories and provides nothing. Should your body wait for the cancer cell to trickle down the calories? 

Humanity thinks it is separate, and its sad because the pandemic showed the average day person how much power they have. Did they realize it? Nope STILL ASLEEP. A king/queen cannot rule with no people. And the quickest way to take a kingdom out is to attack the farmers. The farmers/ranchers/ water technicians are the most important people in a country because they supply the food. Next is the carpenters/plumbers/sanitation because they provide shelter, and waste disposal, and lastly the clothing vendors so we have something to wear. But when a country gets rich....you overvalue the entertainers especially since you need them because you are oh so depressed. 

It's like oxygen...its the most valuable resource on the planet, far more valuable than money, yet you take it for granted because it is ALWAYS there. So the building blocks of society that keep it going are overlooked yet it you took this all away then there would be no country. 

The human body doesn't have these problems, NO part of the human body has its OWN agenda, each part is COMPLETELY self less.

[Oeaohoo]

On 12/08/2022 at 1:29 PM, Romanov said:

This is only my take, it’s not absolute truth.

…and this is absolute truth, not just my own take. 

On 12/08/2022 at 1:29 PM, Romanov said:

I’ve heard Leo and many others say that collectivism always wins, it’s at the top of spiral dynamics, etc. The thing is that you can’t have a collective without individuals or an individual without the collective; they are two sides of the same coin.

Collectivism always wins but in the same sense that death comes to everybody. The decline of a society is always characterised by the abdication of authority by the ruling class. To fill the void left by this, there is an “uprising” of the ruled class, who are collectivistic mass men by conditioning and generally even by nature, into positions of power. These people then impose a collectivistic order emphasising the well-being of the masses and feminine values - as Gustave Le Bon showed, the crowd is feminine - like safety and conformity. This order is fundamentally illegitimate, having been established by the ruled class whose nature is to serve and obey, and so sooner or later it inevitably collapses. The dawn of collectivism, then, is like the night falling on a human civilisation.

On 12/08/2022 at 1:29 PM, Romanov said:

I’ve also heard people say that progress always wins and that the liberals of yesterday are the conservatives of today. However, I don’t think either side wins…because I see them as complimentary to one another. Progress needs a foundation in order for progress to happen.

This is largely explained by the fact that, despite all of its claims to universalism, the postmodern mindset is very parochial. It’s scope is very much confined to Western history, and since given the myopia of the modern mentality the “pagan” and Christian traditions of Europe can only be conceived in terms of primitive superstition and barbarism, history for it really begins at around the time of the Renaissance. From the Renaissance onwards, it is true that “progress” - conceived in terms of the destruction of all social bonds and a convergence towards the universal hegemony of atomised globalism - has achieved one victory after another: from the triumph of the nation conceived in abstract terms over the organic institutions of the medieval world; through to the so-called enlightenment, the French and American revolutions and constitutionalism; through to the revolutions of 1848 and the establishment of the hallowed Liberal Democracy; through to the emancipation of the slave and the related triumphs of universal suffrage and Bolshevism; and finally to global Socialism and the fetishisation of the worker, the slave and even the pariah.

In fact, most people today do not even know about these things: for them, history begins in 1945. The victory of “progress” is then construed in terms of the allied powers winning what Eisenhower righteously called the “crusade in Europe” against Italian Fascism and German Nazism, with a gradual extension of the term “fascism” to refer to all traditional European statecraft. The sacred landmarks of the pilgrimage of progress are in this case: the Civil Rights movement and “desegregation”, “women’s liberation” and “gay rights”; the gradual raising of “living standards” and “quality of life”, ironically accomplished through a combination of international slavery, mistreatment of the animal and plant kingdoms on a totally unprecedented scale, and the perfection of automised mechanistic industry; the democratisation of knowledge itself through the internet and mass media; now finally culminating in the mashing up of all mankind into one caramel-coloured mocha paste of transgendered delight. Thus, we see the scope of history ever-narrowing because the triumph of tolerance is increasingly unable to tolerate anything other than itself.

Now… If you make the effort to transcend this parochial postmodern historical framing, it becomes quite clear that progress has not always triumphed: what was once a monumental empire can at any moment be made into a mound of mud; what was once a dazzling dynasty can devolve into depraved decadence or despotic despondency; what was once the crowning accomplishment of human civilisation can be assailed by crusaders or curtailed by corruption, collapsing from conquest to servility and from assertiveness to senility. In fact, to quote the historian Spengler, it is precisely progress which always loses:

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Man was, and is, too shallow and cowardly to endure the fact of the mortality of everything living. He wraps it up in rose-coloured progress-optimism, he heaps upon it the flowers of literature, he crawls behind the shelter of ideals so as not to see anything. But impermanence, the birth and the passing, is the form of all that is actual -- from the stars, whose destiny is for us incalculable, right down to the ephemeral concourses on our planet. The life of the individual -- whether this be animal or plant or man -- is as perishable as that of peoples of Cultures. Every creation is foredoomed to decay, every thought, every discovery, every deed to oblivion. Here, there, and everywhere we are sensible of grandly fated courses of history that have vanished. Ruins of the "have-been" works of dead Cultures lie all about us. The hybris of Prometheus, who thrust his hand into the heavens in order to make the divine powers subject to man, carries with it his fall. What, then, becomes of the chatter about "undying achievements"?

Lastly, I have just been reading an Egyptian hermetic text from the 3rd Century A.D., Asclepius, in which, after stating that when mankind ceases to honour the gods they will swiftly depart from us, the author laments: 

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After us, no one will have that simple love, the love of wisdom, that consists only in knowing the divinity through frequent contemplation and sacred reverence… The people who will come after us will be deceived by cunning sophistry and estranged from the true, pure, and sacred love of wisdom.

Did progress win in this case?

On 12/08/2022 at 1:29 PM, Romanov said:

And Christianity in the other hand, I view as very liberal given Jesus’ teachings. As former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev has said, “Jesus was the first socialist. The first to seek a better life for mankind.”

It is rather that socialism is an inverted and profane parody of Christianity. Like John Michael Greer points out in his essay, The Religion of Progress:

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Every part of that myth has a precise equivalent in the Lutheran faith in which Engels was raised. Primitive communism is Eden; the invention of private property is the Fall; the stages of society thereafter are the different dispensations of sacred history; Marx is Jesus, the First International his apostles and disciples, the international Communist movement the Church, proletarian revolution the Second Coming, socialism the Millennium, and communism the New Jerusalem which descends from heaven in the last two chapters of the Book of Revelations.

Let us not forget that Marx himself was descended from a line of Rabbis going back hundreds of years… In any case, the key difference is that Christ’s kingdom is “not of this world”; the Marxist end-state, especially given Marx’s extreme materialism, would be entirely of this world alone. This is what it means to lament that modern ideologies seek to “immanentise the eschaton”. Do you think that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, would have wanted to live under “fully automated luxury communism”? 

[Leo Gura]

On 8/12/2022 at 5:29 AM, Romanov said:

I’ve heard Leo and many others say that collectivism always wins, it’s at the top of spiral dynamics

I've never said such a silly thing.

You are misunderstanding SD. Collectivism is not at the top. There is no top.

[AtheisticNonduality]

@Oeaohoo While I'm inclined to agree, how does (seemingly paradoxically) criticizing "a convergence towards the universal hegemony of atomised globalism" solve the collectivity-individuality duality? I understand how a more hierarchical "feudal" society has more definition in its image, and yet what is the most important positive aspect we're supposed to be organizing ourselves around, instead of just moving away from hegemonic postmodern? What is non-hegemony and a pre-Fall pre-modern state supposed to appear like once the deterioration of this cycle is complete? Also some of your comments could be misinterpreted as racist, xenophobic, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, classist, antisemitic, etc. Care to contextualize that better?

[Oeaohoo]

43 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

While I'm inclined to agree, how does (seemingly paradoxically) criticizing "a convergence towards the universal hegemony of atomised globalism" solve the collectivity-individuality duality?

I’m not sure that it does. The questioner here went from discussing the question of individualism-collectivism to the question of progress. I suppose they are related in his mind because the same people who might say that collectivism is superior to individualism would believe in progress, on the basis that over the course of history we have supposedly shifted from limited tribal identities to more universal and all-encompassing ones.

I say supposedly… I know that you have read Jung: doesn’t he speak about how it is in fact individualism which is the discovery of so-called “civilised” man?

43 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

I understand how a more hierarchical "feudal" society has more definition in its image, and yet what is the most important positive aspect we're supposed to be organizing ourselves around, instead of just moving away from hegemonic postmodern? What is non-hegemony and a pre-Fall pre-modern state supposed to appear like once the deterioration of this cycle is complete?

The positive aspect that we would organise ourselves around is obviously God, ideally conceived non-theistically in terms of pure formless transcendence. Feudalism, for example, was somewhat inferior in that it was oriented towards a relatively dualistic and theistic-personal conception of God. As far as life as it is lived, this would be manifested as the orientation of all aspects of existence towards the goal of ultimate liberation.

48 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Also some of your comments could be misinterpreted as racist, xenophobic, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, classist, antisemitic, etc. Care to contextualize that better?

I would view most of these things through the distinction that you introduced to me: fundamental vs. significant. Gender, sex and race are very fundamental realities but they are of little ultimate significance. What significance they do have is more in terms of determining the nature and content of the path that one takes in this life, not in the ultimate destination of that path. For example, the spiritual path of a woman is likely to emphasise some form of devotion or love - whether to children, a lover, a guru or a deity - whereas the path of a man is likely to emphasise truth and self-overcoming, notwithstanding certain exceptions which are nonetheless part of the overall order.

A similar line of argument could be developed as regards questions of race and sexual orientation. For example, there are marked differences between the Christian religion as it manifests in Greek and Russian Orthodoxy, Ethiopian Orthodoxy, and Western European Catholicism and Protestantism. These differences are obviously a manifestation of underlying racial differences, which ultimately serve to make explicit the many facets of the Christian faith and the potential variations of its symbology. They do not change the fact, which is the only one of any ultimate significance, that all Christians seek salvation and redemption in Christ.

Nevertheless, it is not generally possible to simply bypass fundamental realities. The postmodern attempt - and remember that it is only in the postmodern era that the terms racism, sexism and so on have taken on a unilaterally negative meaning - to deny these fundamental realities is more or less akin to the Marxist attempt to “immanentise the eschaton” which I have described above: it is the ultimate dissolution of all limited forms which is characteristic of a transcendent experience, but conceived in material and not spiritual terms.

In short, true universalism does not deny difference but integrates it into a transcendent unity. As Guénon says, “in the principial order all multiplicity is synthetically comprehended in unity itself.”

I also won’t deny that a certain part of me seeks to take revenge on a world with which I have so little in common. Blaspheming the sacred idols of today is a way to do that. I accept that this is rather childish and futile but I trust that I will grow out of it soon enough. Maybe it is a sort of left-hand path… By alienating myself from this world I am reminded of it’s unreality. You’ve read Nietzsche, after all: his later works demonstrate a similar tendency in this regard.

[AtheisticNonduality]

11 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

doesn’t he speak about how it is in fact individualism which is the discovery of so-called “civilised” man?

It seems his individualism was related to how crowds allow the shadow to run wild without self-examination.

His anti-communist beliefs were definitely based on this.

He had a unique understanding of the human mind-workings, so he saw himself above the others in a sense, which caused him to possibly denigrate collectivism. Of course his experience showed him how other people project their shadows to enemy crowds, while becoming complacent in the crowd they become subsumed in and which they assimilate all their contents to. The deceptions of the crowd become the obscurities of the shadow individually, so the only way for the individual to unravel itself is introspectively and not by becoming a victim of rabble-rousing and group ideologies.

But then, none of that refutes the fact that gaining a view of reality with more scope, with a greater collection of information and perspectives, is more in line with the highest Truth. Of course this should integrate both individualistic freedom and self-definition as well as collective well-being concerns, though instinctually I'm biased toward being an individual, since I too don't like or find little in common with the world; yet the development, which I might characterize as upward into a luminous bliss and heavenliness, is important: it's found first in exceptional individuals, secondly it has to happen in the exterior world in the form of developments or even the defamed progress and all that's going on.

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The positive aspect that we would organise ourselves around is obviously God, ideally conceived non-theistically in terms of pure formless transcendence. Feudalism, for example, was somewhat inferior in that it was oriented towards a relatively dualistic and theistic-personal conception of God. As far as life as it is lived, this would be manifested as the orientation of all aspects of existence towards the goal of ultimate liberation.

The problem is that this has to occur in a complex rather than a simple grouping of structures. If we imagine God as a pure bright white light, a singularity, then of course that is infinitely, in a way, simple because of its unfathomably unified nature of its singular principle, but it's requiring of a structure in the human experiencer that is complex infinitely (simplicity is formlessness; complexity is the capability of that formlessness to embed itself in an infinite amount of forms spatially and temporally since it is, not restricted to a single form, compatible with them all in the rays of light that can rain down from a sunlike divinity).

So "pure formless transcendence" or an escape from the dream is difficult. I've been exploring the dream-dreamlessness duality, where there's a world of infinite light and Everythingness and awake colors permeated by an eternal and permanent deep dreamlessness that both transcends and is unified with it. How would a society "organise around . . . God" if it's to be entirely transcendent, entirely dreamless.

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Nevertheless, it is not generally possible to simply bypass fundamental realities. The postmodern attempt - and remember that it is only in the postmodern era that the terms racism, sexism and so on have taken on a unilaterally negative meaning - to deny these fundamental realities is more or less akin to the Marxist attempt to “immanentise the eschaton” which I have described above: it is the ultimate dissolution of all limited forms which is characteristic of a transcendent experience, but conceived in material and not spiritual terms.

The shift from material to immaterial, with hoping that can be possible, will have to deal with the nature of deep dreamless sleep, possibly when technological focuses on consciousness delve into exploration of what is outside conventional grounds of ontology.

Until then there has to be some dialectical phrasing, if in terms of complete materiality. It does in postmodern variants cause pathology if it claims the goal has already been reached, if it claims "the end of history" has already been made real, hence destroying the dialectical functionality, contradicting itself, and nullifying all sense.

Quote

Blaspheming the sacred idols of today is a way to do that. I accept that this is rather childish and futile but I trust that I will grow out of it soon enough. Maybe it is a sort of left-hand path… By alienating myself from this world I am reminded of it’s unreality. You’ve read Nietzsche, after all: his later works demonstrate a similar tendency in this regard.

The eternal recurrence is the most worthwhile thing he ever detected in his walking sprees through nature, and it has something to do with how sunlight affects the earth, how leaves fall in motions that make too much sense, in how the sky is an abyss that can hold so much information under it,  the Emptiness that is identical with the luminousness of the Everythingness, all motions and sunsets impermanent and fleeting and eternally permanent together in the unity/multiplicity.

[Oeaohoo]

10 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

It seems his individualism was related to how crowds allow the shadow to run wild without self-examination.

I just wanted to quickly refute the idea that the supposed evolution from tribal forms to modern forms is necessarily a shift from individualism to collectivism. This is the sort of thing I was referring to:

Quote

“In the primitive world everything has psychic qualities. Everything is endowed with the elements of man's psyche—or let us say, of the human psyche, of the collective unconscious, for there is as yet no individual psychic life.”

- From “Archaic Man”, Modern Man In Search of a Soul.

In this sense, history is a movement away from collectivism towards the differentiation of the individual. Jung often claims that, in the archaic and “primitive” mind, there is a synthetic, lived and holistic vision of the world; the modern mind, he says, is instead characterised by the developments of analysis, detachment and a vision of the world primarily in terms of separation. I understand that this is more or less what models like Spiral Dynamics write off as a “mythic” and “childish state. In any case, I don’t agree with him because I see no reason to believe that the so-called “primitives” he is talking about - for example the tribal Aboriginal peoples of Australia - are really representative of the type of man that preceded modern civilisations.

Given that a certain historical framing views things as advancing more or less like this - individual humans in a Hobbesian fight for survival; formation of tribal allegiances; establishment of small cross-tribal villages; development of farming and creation of city-states; institution of nations; international corporatism - it is significant that, in a way, this can actually be viewed as a movement away from collectivism and towards the individual; an individual who, because of his detachment and separation from life, has developed all of the hang-ups and complexes which Sigmund Fraud and Carl Junk were able to make a “science” out of.

10 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

His anti-communist beliefs were definitely based on this. The deceptions of the crowd become the obscurities of the shadow individually, so the only way for the individual to unravel itself is introspectively and not by becoming a victim of rabble-rousing and group ideologies.

This is one thing in which I can agree with Jung. The forms of collectivism which he had seen emerging are almost like a sort of demonic inversion of the totems, fetishes, sacrificial scapegoats and individual subsumption into the collective of so-called “primitive” - again, I say so-called not because I think this term is offensive, but because I do not believe that the people to whom it refers are really historically primitive - tribal identities. In this regard, his case that Nazism represented the resurfacing of pre-Christian Germanic Paganism, in particular of the warrior god Wotan, is quite convincing.

10 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

But then, none of that refutes the fact that gaining a view of reality with more scope, with a greater collection of information and perspectives, is more in line with the highest Truth.

Of course. I would just question whether the contemporary view of reality is really one with more scope...

10 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

So "pure formless transcendence" or an escape from the dream is difficult. How would a society "organise around . . . God" if it's to be entirely transcendent, entirely dreamless.

In the same way that Muslim pilgrims circle around the Black Stone of Mecca, which Muslims around the world face in prayer, and that the Holy of Holies is kept in the inner heart of the Jewish Tabernacle. Think of the way that an ancient temple was structured: 

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From the exterior to the interior, the rooms become ever smaller, while the floor becomes higher and the ceiling lower. Corresponding to the diminution of space is an increasing darkness. The courtyard, which is flooded with light, is followed by the crepuscular Hall of Appearance. The inner rooms lie in deep darkness. Hence the invisible divine light is contained in the temple’s inner darkness, while the visible daylight outside is relatively empty if its presence.

- From Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination.

Since the ultimate reality is formless and transcendent, symbolic representations of it are generally in some way negative. Hence the concealment and “blackness” of the Kaaba and the inaccessibility of the Holy of Holies, which would only be attended by the High Priest on the day of Yom Kippur. A similar principle underlies the centrality of divine figures such as Buddha or Christ within their religions, of enlightened masters within their communities, or even dare I say of the great Monarchs and Emperors...

Of course, these aren’t necessarily idyllic or perfect manifestations; they simply give an idea of what it means for a society to be oriented around the transcendent. Nor should we mistake them for anything more than earthly reflections and symbols of transcendent realities. Then again, the earth itself and all of human existence are ultimately only symbols in this same way. After all, this is just another way of saying that everything is a dream in the mind of God.

10 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

The eternal recurrence is the most worthwhile thing he ever detected in his walking sprees through nature, and it has something to do with how sunlight affects the earth, how leaves fall in motions that make too much sense, in how the sky is an abyss that can hold so much information under it,  the Emptiness that is identical with the luminousness of the Everythingness, all motions and sunsets impermanent and fleeting and eternally permanent together in the unity/multiplicity.

Certainly. To me it is the ultimate lesson of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The preliminary teachings of Zarathustra, particularly that of the Superman, are only relevant in terms of their leading towards the goal of the realisation of Eternal Recurrence...

Edited August 19, 2022 by Oeaohoo

[AtheisticNonduality]

4 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

Sigmund Fraud and Carl Junk were able to make a “science” out of.

You're referencing Austin Osman Spare?

4 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

In this sense, history is a movement away from collectivism towards the differentiation of the individual. Jung often claims that, in the archaic and “primitive” mind, there is a synthetic, lived and holistic vision of the world; the modern mind, he says, is instead characterised by the developments of analysis, detachment and a vision of the world primarily in terms of separation. I understand that this is more or less what models like Spiral Dynamics write off as a “mythic” and “childish state. In any case, I don’t agree with him because I see no reason to believe that the so-called “primitives” he is talking about - for example the tribal Aboriginal peoples of Australia - are really representative of the type of man that preceded modern civilisations.

Young Jung could be construed as casually racist (just because of the times he was in), referring to "the lower races" to describe people, like the Aborigines as an example. So when he later used "primitive man" it is actually a lot less offensive, and just pointing out a connection which is the difference between nonlinear mythic thinking you might get from tribal dance and modern rational thinking you'd get at a university. Whether or not this difference of consciousness applies cross-culturally to more importantly historical examples than those in Australia, we could of course point out that none of the pattern could be replicated exactly from place to place, but there has to be a simplicity to complexity or undifferentiation to differentiation somewhere along the lines, in lieu of the serpent and the Tree of Knowledge.

I don't know what your proposed alternative to something like the Aboriginal-type analogies is.

4 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

The forms of collectivism which he had seen emerging are almost like a sort of demonic inversion of the totems, fetishes, sacrificial scapegoats and individual subsumption into the collective of so-called “primitive” - again, I say so-called not because I think this term is offensive, but because I do not believe that the people to whom it refers are really historically primitive - tribal identities.

What is an individual supposed to make of this? It's a very bafflingly complex web of totems, sea of fetishes, and systemic world of sacrifices. Whatever's identifiable is difficult to deal with, and there's a lot that, still, is shadow.

4 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

In the same way that Muslim pilgrims circle around the Black Stone of Mecca, which Muslims around the world face in prayer, and that the Holy of Holies is kept in the inner heart of the Jewish Tabernacle. Think of the way that an ancient temple was structured: 

Since the ultimate reality is formless and transcendent, symbolic representations of it are generally in some way negative. Hence the concealment and “blackness” of the Kaaba and the inaccessibility of the Holy of Holies, which would only be attended by the High Priest on the day of Yom Kippur. A similar principle underlies the centrality of divine figures such as Buddha or Christ within their religions, of enlightened masters within their communities, or even dare I say of the great Monarchs and Emperors...

Hopefully you should be able to see that an approach like this would be entirely ineffectual. Nobody, literally or metaphorically, is going to in the ages of modernity or postmodernity circumambulate around darkness ritualistically when they are distracted, lured, pulled aside by the lights of various meanings and technologies. The esoteric will frequently become less dark and more illumined by the false lights, as nothing remains internal and everything is spread out to the exterior multitude, or otherwise the individual must, to survive and influence, anyway encounter the brightness of God, a Void, an Everything.

The only reason Jesus was obscure was that he was dead, in Nothingness. But Nothingness is not dark: it's completely colorless, and luminously in positive terms upon touching Everythingness.

4 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

Certainly. To me it is the ultimate lesson of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The preliminary teachings of Zarathustra, particularly that of the Superman, are only relevant in terms of their leading towards the goal of the realisation of Eternal Recurrence...

Which is how transient Everything and intransient Nothing meet in psychological aspects.

Edited August 19, 2022 by AtheisticNonduality

[AtheisticNonduality]

@Oeaohoo Aurobindo (with many obscurity-light dualities):

Quote

Arraigned by the dark Power that hates all bliss

In the dire court where life must pay for joy,

Sentenced by the mechanic justice

To the afflicting penalty of man’s hopes,

Her head she bowed not to the stark decree

Baring her helpless heart to destiny’s stroke.

 

. . .

Her spirit refused to hug the common soil,

Or, finding all life’s golden meanings robbed,

Compound with earth, struck from the starry list,

Or quench with black despair the God-given light.

Quote

A piston brain pumps out the shapes of thought,

A beating heart cuts out emotion’s modes;

An insentient energy fabricates a soul.

Or the figure of the world reveals the signs

Of a tired Chance repeating her old steps

In circles around Matter’s binding-posts.

A random series of inept events

To which reason lends illusive sense, is here,

Or the empiric Life’s instinctive search,

Or a vast ignorant mind’s colossal work.

Quote

A pure perception lent its lucent joy:

Its intimate vision waited not to think;

It enveloped all Nature in a single glance,

It looked into the very self of things;

Deceived no more by form he saw the soul.

In beings it knew what lurked to them unknown;

It seized the idea in mind, the wish in the heart;

It plucked out from grey folds of secrecy

The motives which from their own sight men hide.

Quote

He saw the Perfect in their starry homes

Wearing the glory of a deathless form,

Lain in the arms of the Eternal’s peace,

Rapt in the heart-beats of God’s ecstasy.

 

[Danioover9000]

@Romanov

On 8/12/2022 at 1:29 PM, Romanov said:

This is only my take, it’s not absolute truth. 

I’ve heard Leo and many others say that collectivism always wins, it’s at the top of spiral dynamics, etc. The thing is that you can’t have a collective without individuals or an individual without the collective; they are two sides of the same coin. Even if an individual was stranded on an island by themselves, they would rely on the food sources there. Collective can also include the environment. Liberals usually stand for collectivism but if their individual rights got threatened-they would quickly become conservative. Having the right to abortion is a very individual right, “my body, my choice.” Even if globalization was to fully triumph and we all became one nation…if we end up finding other civilizations out in the galaxy…then we could end up being nationalistic as the entire human race among different alien civilizations. I don’t think individualism can be separated out from collectivism anymore than a wave can be separated from the ocean. 

Spiritually speaking, one can say the collective represents universal consciousness and individualism represents ego. But like Leo has mentioned in many of his videos, the ego is is there to help with navigation and survival. This universal consciousness would not experience itself or get to know itself very effectively if there is no ego to help you survive. The other issue I see is that since universal consciousness is nondual in nature, people will pit nonduality against duality. And non duality vs. duality is yet another duality! How can we know what selflessness is without knowing selfishness? 

I’ve also heard people say that progress always wins and that the liberals of yesterday are the conservatives of today. However, I don’t think either side wins…because I see them as complimentary to one another. Progress needs a foundation in order for progress to happen. I think the reason that we are so politically gridlocked is that both parties are compromised, in other words there are two parties within each party…causing both to be constipated with hardly much bipartisan support on many issues. 

The majority of atheists are liberal but to me atheism aligns more with conservatism because it’s very individualistic and skeptical, no worship of gods and generally prioritizes feelings over facts. Since there is no worship of gods, it makes sense to also not worship the government. And Christianity in the other hand, I view as very liberal given Jesus’ teachings. The GOP’s ideology goes against the teachings of Jesus, they would never get behind Jesus if Jesus could be president. As former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev has said, “Jesus was the first socialist. The first to seek a better life for mankind.”

Politically I’m centrist and I feel like both sides misunderstand centrism. They’ll use an example such as, “If one side wants to abolish slavery and the other doesn’t, the centrist will say to just have less slaves.” Centrism to me is where both sides have valid points in the entire political landscape, not on every single individual issue. That’s the misunderstanding. They see centrists as cowards but whose to say both sides can also cowards for succumbing to an extremist view over the other and not having the courage to listen beyond their echo chambers. Or people will vote for something only because their side does as this sort of unwavering loyalty. I support Ukraine and many conservatives won’t support Ukraine for the simple reason that the left does which makes no sense. Or people will sometimes say that sometimes extreme measures are needed for change and centrism defeats that purpose. I can’t agree because I don’t mind being extreme when it comes to certain issues. One does not have to be extreme across the board on every issue, it could just be on a few issues instead. 

Conservatism and liberalism to me are a lot like driving while following the speed limit. 
 

 

   That's a good post you're written. To just pull it back a bit to the beginning so that we can talk more about your ideas, could you tell me what you define postmodernism, individualism and collectivism as? And what connects the three ideas together?

[Oeaohoo]

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Aurobindo (with many obscurity-light dualities):

Very nice. Is it all one poem? Starting as being ‘arraigned by the dark Power that hates all bliss’ and ending as ‘rapt in the heart-beats of God’s ecstasy’ seems appropriate. I particularly like the way the earlier poems describe finding oneself entrenched in the machinations of illusion; it reminds me of the mortification and the Black Sun of the alchemical process.

4 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Hopefully you should be able to see that an approach like this would be entirely ineffectual. Nobody, literally or metaphorically, is going to in the ages of modernity or postmodernity circumambulate around darkness ritualistically when they are distracted, lured, pulled aside by the lights of various meanings and technologies.

Of course. I have no illusions about what is possible or realistic today; we have to face the realities of our situation. If even in Aristotle's day, prior to the ready availability of sensual delights and overstimulation of every kind, it was true that 'the majority of men are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts,’ how much more true must this be today? The difference in our case is that Western society has ceased to serve any other purpose than catering to the tastes of these “slavish beasts". Those who are so mired in externality and the greed for mere experience, living only for the intoxication of the senses, will of course have a frivolous and sacrilegious attitude towards the sacred.

There can be no going back, though. In what Hesiod described as the Heroic Age, situated between the Bronze and the Iron Age, there was the possibility of a temporary restoration of the primordial Golden Age. In the Iron Age, however, there can be no restoration: the only way out is through the dark night; excluding of course the realisation that it is all imaginary anyway. I’m sure that will all sound like a lot of made up nonsense to you. Never mind… Nietzsche has a wonderful insight in this regard:

Quote

Whispered to the conservatives. — What was not known formerly, what is known, or might be known, today: a reversion, a return in any sense or degree is simply not possible. We physiologists know that. Yet all priests and moralists have believed the opposite — they wanted to take mankind back, to screw it back, to a former measure of virtue. Morality was always a bed of Procrustes. Even the politicians have aped the preachers of virtue at this point: today too there are still parties whose dream it is that all things might walk backwards like crabs. But no one is free to be a crab. Nothing avails: one must go forward — step by step further into decadence (that is my definition of modern "progress"). One can check this development and thus dam up degeneration, gather it and make it more vehement and sudden: one can do no more.

I love the sentence: 'Nothing avails: one must go forward — step by step further into decadence (that is my definition of modern "progress")'!

4 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

The only reason Jesus was obscure was that he was dead, in Nothingness. But Nothingness is not dark: it's completely colorless, and luminously in positive terms upon touching Everythingness.

I didn’t mean to imply that Nothingness is actually dark. It is often symbolically represented as such, however, because anything that you positively ascribe to it is false; any ascription is a limitation, and we are talking about that which is beyond limitation.

4 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

You're referencing Austin Osman Spare?

Ah, yes. I actually couldn’t remember where I had heard those funny designations. It must have been when I was reading about him. I’m only really familiar with him through the references of a rather peculiar English occultist called Kenneth Grant. Some of his art seems nice though; that being said, the man he has dubbed “Carl Junk” was undoubtedly a better artist!

[AtheisticNonduality]

2 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

Very nice. Is it all one poem? Starting as being ‘arraigned by the dark Power that hates all bliss’ and ending as ‘rapt in the heart-beats of God’s ecstasy’ seems appropriate. I particularly like the way the earlier poems describe finding oneself entrenched in the machinations of illusion; it reminds me of the mortification and the Black Sun of the alchemical process.

They're from the beginning of the Savitri, which is the longest known English poem written in the 20th century!

2 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

I didn’t mean to imply that Nothingness is actually dark. It is often symbolically represented as such, however, because anything that you positively ascribe to it is false; any ascription is a limitation, and we are talking about that which is beyond limitation.

I don't know how to reconcile Nothingness as both Infinite Blackness and Infinite Light, without bridging formlessness and form through something like an eternal recurrence.

There's a poem by Charles Baudelaire called Châtiment de l'orgueil, the English translation as "Punishment for Pride":

Quote

Some years back when Theology was in full bloom

and flourishing with utmost energy and vim,

a famous doctor of religion, it is said,

since he had salvaged souls that had been mostly dead

and roused them from the depths of lightless lethargy,

went on to thrust himself toward sacred ecstasy,

seeking by mystic pathways, to himself unknown,

a state pure souls alone were able to attain.

Like someone who had climbed too high and was afraid,

he cried out in the raptures of satanic pride:

"O little Jesus, how I have exalted you!

But if I chose to lay your helpless body low,

I'd mix disdain in with your all-too-sacred state

and leave you merely an outrageous neonate."

Suddenly his intelligence was cracked in two.

His solar brilliance was concealed in weeds of woe.

Utter disorder rolled into the gifted mind

that once had been a precious temple where, enshrined

beneath illustrious ceilings, he had reigned supreme.

Now speechlessness and night set up their camp in him,

as if he were a vault to which the key was lost.

Henceforth he walked the city like an idle beast

and, when he passed through gardens without fathoming

the things he saw, as blind to winter as to spring,

he was negligible as a broken tool,

and children jeered at him as if he were a fool.

 

[Oeaohoo]

35 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

There's a poem by Charles Baudelaire called Châtiment de l'orgueil, the English translation as "Punishment for Pride":

Beautiful. It is worth drawing out something that is implied in this: satanic pride is a deviated form of the heroic impulse. It is a failure of a trial, the result of pursuing a goal for which one is not qualified or prepared; in this case, “a state pure souls alone were able to attain.” Initiation, particularly in the pre-Abrahamic world, was often a matter of trials of this sort, ensuring that only those deserving of the highest truths would be able to receive them. After all, there is something audacious and almost arrogant in the pursuit of ultimate liberation: one is seeking to go beyond society and all human knowledge, the limitations of embodied existence and even of all gods as they are conceived; Buddhism in particular emphasises this aspect of conquering the gods themselves. If one deviates from the path during this pursuit, one danger is that the arrogance which was necessary in the beginning becomes inflated and takes on a titanic or even demonic form. In medieval chivalric literature, which also had an initiatic dimension in the sense that I have described it, this temptation was represented through the female figure of Orgeluse, whose name is literally the Old French word for “Pride”.

[Romanov]

Totally forgot about this thread. Someone asked me how I define postmodernism, individualism, and collectivism. Postmodernism for me is funny because it even refutes itself. Postmodernism to me is having the stance of no stance. It goes against all claims of absolute truth from so called ‘facts’ to math, religion, science, etc. The reason I tie that to individualism and collectivism is because a postmodernist would refute both concepts as existing separately from one another. I see conservatives worshipping individualism and liberals worshipping collectivism, I worship neither. For me if I had to pick between the two, it would be more like deciding on what I’m going to eat for breakfast.

I view absolute truth as a paradox. Everything I say is both absolute and relative. If I say that there is no absolute truth, it is a statement of absolute truth. And since it’s self contradictory, that’s perfectly ok! I think people are so afraid of contradicting themselves that it causes them to be unaware of their hypocrisy. As long as I can admit that I contradict myself, I am no longer contradicting myself. People think in terms of being a hypocrite vs. not being a hypocrite. I think in terms of admitting you are a hypocrite vs. not admitting it. It’s not about never contradicting oneself, it’s about being aware that you do it all the time. Like Leo has mentioned in his devilry video, it’s about seeing that YOU are the devil himself. 
 

And Leo I guess what I meant by collectivism being at the top of SD, I meant that you mentioned it was at least ‘higher up’ than individualism. You have said that liberals tend to be higher up than conservatives when it comes to SD or level of consciousness. 
 

Am I confused and lost? Hell yes I am. But one thing I am not confused about is the awareness of my confusion. I have people telling me, “But what you said doesn’t make any sense! It’s illogical! It’s fallacious!” And my only answer to that is, “Why does anything have to make sense?” Or I get told that if I don’t believe in anything, then I end up with nothing. I see nothing wrong with having nothing. That means one has nothing to lose, they are free. 

Edited September 21, 2022 by Romanov