Human development is ‘model dependent.’ Every generation stands upon the shoulders of the previous. Nature assumes that the adult model, each individual and the collective culture, is sane, intelligent and wise. She could not do otherwise.
Unquestioned acceptance of the given was Piaget’s observation. That is nature’s agenda. And it worked perfectly for billions of years until the neocortex evolved and with it the capacity to imagine. Imagination is the most powerful tool in the known universe. Ah, but what if the user hasn’t a clue what it is or how to use it – sanely, consciously? We all then become the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
The catch is we are ourselves quite mad, having been infected with a false image of self, imagined to be independent from its source – imagination. Missing this critical fact, due largely to the youthful immaturity of this quite new and unique capacity, a compounding array of self-deceptions fill each of us and the world.
This myriad of self-inflicted fantasies are spread by the phantom we create and it somehow manages to assume a reality of its own, embodying and expressing all sorts of insane characteristics; ambition, comparison, fear (of the imagined future), greed, jealousy, pride, arrogance – and a with each comes a unique form of conflict and violence.
These personal characteristics are then multiplied, compounded and mirrored back by the meta-self-image we call culture. And this collective madness, grounded firmly in our identification with a phantom image, inner and outer, becomes the model for the next critical generation.
That is our present situation and our challenge.
Now, what are you going to do about it?
Michael Mendizza