The general failure of American institutions stems from their containment in P-B, a context that is not profound. That is to say, the emotions, beliefs, attitudes and values of P-B are not founded in Simple Reality. We will take Freud representing psychology and several philosophers to illustrate the faulty underlying substrata that explains the shaky, unsustainable institutional structures that characterize the nightmare that is life in America today.
This essay is fundamentally a comparison of Simple Reality with P-B. The dynamics between reason (the intellect) and passion (afflictive emotions) is juxtaposed with intuition (wisdom). Since modern humanity has lost touch with wisdom (since the enlightenment) and has come to rely on religion and the intellect, we will posit a controversial alternative to prevailing western thought.
We are not advocating in any way a return to the past since humanity has never lived in any narrative other than P-B. In fact, the human experience has not fundamentally changed from ancient to modern times in terms of the ability to understand Simple Reality. The ancients saw life as a struggle between the forces of reason and human passion. What we call emotional reaction they called in its more extreme form “frenzy” or “madness.” We are still unaware of the importance of this key distinction between “going berserk” or reacting and remaining calm until a rational and non-violent response can be made. Knowing and practicing the difference between the two is nothing less than the difference between chaos and societal transformation.
Thanks to Freud, we think we can explain human behavior and to some extent intervene to heal or control all but the most extreme forms of human self-destructive behavior. We can’t. Let’s look at the Freudian delusion and its relationship to afflictive emotions, the intellect and intuition. Freud saw the source of human dysfunction not as the conflict between reason (the ego) and emotion (the id) but as the repression of the emotions resulting from that conflict. The ego also has to mediate the conflict between the id (the false self survival strategy and instinctual desires) and the superego (the ego ideal of perfection which is also a dimension of the false self). The entire structure of the Freudian personality is illusion based on physical and mental form and having no substantial basis in Reality.
For example, Freud’s “reality principle” is based on the human striving for greater security and success. We know that these drives stem from the security, sensation and power energy centers of the false self. Hence, Freud’s reality principle is the antithesis of reality.
Another colossal error of the Freudian paradigm is that repressed emotions lead to human suffering called “complexes.” These human disorders manifest as neurotic symptoms and behaviors such as phobias, anxieties, obsessions, compulsions and the physical manifestations of hysteria such as blindness or paralysis that have no organic basis, so-called “mental illness.” Rather than repress human “passion” or to express it in association with the body, mind or afflictive emotion there is the third alternative of responding in the context of P-A. This is the only way to avoid continuous reaction and either mental or physical illness and the attendant suffering.
Freud, however, did have profound insights although the following example was considered “extreme” by his critics. “…Freud sometimes goes to the extreme of insisting that all apparently rational processes—both of thought and decision—are themselves emotionally determined; and that most, or all, reasoning is nothing but the rationalization of emotionally fixed prejudices or beliefs. ‘The ego,’ he writes, ‘is after all only a part of the id, a part purposively modified by its proximity to the dangers of reality.’” Needless to say, Freud’s reality is not our Simple Reality.
In the Freudian narrative “reality is dangerous” and all human behavior is “emotionally determined” consciously or unconsciously. His inability to transcend P-B thwarted his ability to understand the causes of human dysfunction let alone offer a pragmatic solution. “Medically, emotional disorders call for diagnosis and therapy. Morally, they call for criticism and correction.” For many of us the experience of Freudian “diagnosis and therapy” seems like maintenance and survival not getting to the fundamental causation of our neurosis. As for the “criticism and correction” of the moralists with religious precepts, the shame and guilt associated with them have both been sufficiently tested by time and they have been found wanting.
Philosophers have done no better in their worship of the intellect. “Human bondage, according to Spinoza, consists in ‘the importance of man to govern or restrain the affects …for a man who is under their control is not his own master.’ A free man he describes as one ‘who lives according to the dictates of reason alone.’” Aristotle and Augustine seemed to have agreed with Spinoza.
Whether adopting the view of Spinoza that “passions are intrinsically evil” and need to be constrained by reason or the view of Kant and the Stoics that passion is normal and can be made to “serve reason’s purposes,” we have found that both approaches are a dead end. They both invest the human intellect with power that it does not have. In P-B, human reason is overpowered by the conditioning of the false self. Without our intrinsic wisdom to guide it, the intellect becomes the servant of the survival strategy and is powerless to moderate the emotional reactions of the human organism identified with the body, mind and emotions. Our future, if we are to have one worth living, is to shift to the paradigm of Simple Reality where the intellect is the servant of our intuition which knows how to handle the dynamics of the id, the ego and the superego which are, after all, only an illusion within an illusion.
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References and notes are available for this essay.
Find a much more in-depth discussion in books by Roy Charles Henry:
Who Am I? The Second Great Question Concerning the Nature of Reality
Where Am I? The First Great Question Concerning the Nature of Reality
Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival
