The other day, this blog got into the murky waters of reality-making through paradigms - and how these paradigms (like gods needing the blood of humans to keep the world alive) become more and more focused with time, excluding more and more external phenomena. But those certain explicit ideas and events are some of the easiest aspects of reality- making. Below that and more fundamental to human reality systems are the feelings that are compelled or chosen by a society in reaction to external stimuli.
Although that may sound grand, it is really very simple: how do people respond to things and events in their lives? In any given culture, these reactions are considered natural. However, they are often learned, and expose in part the nature of the reality system in place.
For instance: the fictional work Shogun tells of a Dutch sailing vessel in the 17th century that runs aground in feudal Japan. The crew become captives, and one is put in a large pot by a local shogun and slowly boiled to death, the temperature kept just low enough to keep him alive for several hours. His wails of agony and pleas for mercy and death are listened to by the shogun who is sexually stimulated - pleasured to ecstasy - by his suffering. While the work is fiction, the sentiments from that part of the world, at least back in time, are not. Genghis Khan, whose words were often recorded in writing, spoke of conquest: (paraphrase) "There is no greater pleasure in conquest than raping your enemy's wife before him and slashing the throats of his male children." While such attitudes may not have been the norm for average people from those groups, they were the norm for those in power. Power to them meant the power to cause exquisite suffering in those they did not like. This feeling lay at the bottom of conquest and power in the East, and was re-enacted vigorously during WWII. It suffused the power structure, and probably seeped right down into individual families. It would define the rhythm of history for them - conquest, total rule, and the re-conquest of revenge. It would also permeate their spiritual training, as it changed from a shamanic form of the individual melding with the nature spirits, to strict, arduous years of self-denial in formal schools.
We could go on: the Fatherland brought tears to the men of Germany in the 19th and early 20th century; and songs of lost love, tears to American men of the later 20th century. Each told the direction that the nation would take. In our case, we might say that we are on a sentimental journey defined by international liberalism that wishes to make up for mistakes of power in the past by a conciliatory restraint of power in the present. This is America's sentiment, a lover's regret; however, it is not the sentiment of most of the power elite of the world. It will lead to its own conclusion, one that is not anticipated because it is not based on the more widespread pan-human feeling-reality of the present.
That last must be emphasized - the pan-human feeling-realities of the world are still only temporary sentiments. They are what defines our age, and they will change again, just as the European powers changed from the colonial imperialists that they were. There is, however, an optimal feeling-reality, defined by the spiritual masters of the past. It is what they tried to guide us to - and in it is bliss and cosmic union. As such, it is is beyond the ephemera of history. It is the Golden Era, or the New Age, and its actualization gives us a reality far removed from the dreary disappointments of our current age. However, I am not sure if such an age changes physical reality or not. While this seems impossible from our current reality, there is evidence that this might occur. To be discussed at another time. FK
Although that may sound grand, it is really very simple: how do people respond to things and events in their lives? In any given culture, these reactions are considered natural. However, they are often learned, and expose in part the nature of the reality system in place.
For instance: the fictional work Shogun tells of a Dutch sailing vessel in the 17th century that runs aground in feudal Japan. The crew become captives, and one is put in a large pot by a local shogun and slowly boiled to death, the temperature kept just low enough to keep him alive for several hours. His wails of agony and pleas for mercy and death are listened to by the shogun who is sexually stimulated - pleasured to ecstasy - by his suffering. While the work is fiction, the sentiments from that part of the world, at least back in time, are not. Genghis Khan, whose words were often recorded in writing, spoke of conquest: (paraphrase) "There is no greater pleasure in conquest than raping your enemy's wife before him and slashing the throats of his male children." While such attitudes may not have been the norm for average people from those groups, they were the norm for those in power. Power to them meant the power to cause exquisite suffering in those they did not like. This feeling lay at the bottom of conquest and power in the East, and was re-enacted vigorously during WWII. It suffused the power structure, and probably seeped right down into individual families. It would define the rhythm of history for them - conquest, total rule, and the re-conquest of revenge. It would also permeate their spiritual training, as it changed from a shamanic form of the individual melding with the nature spirits, to strict, arduous years of self-denial in formal schools.
We could go on: the Fatherland brought tears to the men of Germany in the 19th and early 20th century; and songs of lost love, tears to American men of the later 20th century. Each told the direction that the nation would take. In our case, we might say that we are on a sentimental journey defined by international liberalism that wishes to make up for mistakes of power in the past by a conciliatory restraint of power in the present. This is America's sentiment, a lover's regret; however, it is not the sentiment of most of the power elite of the world. It will lead to its own conclusion, one that is not anticipated because it is not based on the more widespread pan-human feeling-reality of the present.
That last must be emphasized - the pan-human feeling-realities of the world are still only temporary sentiments. They are what defines our age, and they will change again, just as the European powers changed from the colonial imperialists that they were. There is, however, an optimal feeling-reality, defined by the spiritual masters of the past. It is what they tried to guide us to - and in it is bliss and cosmic union. As such, it is is beyond the ephemera of history. It is the Golden Era, or the New Age, and its actualization gives us a reality far removed from the dreary disappointments of our current age. However, I am not sure if such an age changes physical reality or not. While this seems impossible from our current reality, there is evidence that this might occur. To be discussed at another time. FK
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