The yearning for immersive belonging, and the fear of self-deception

There is, and has been for many generations, deep yearning for a life that is one of immersive belonging. 

It has many individual and cultural manifestations - the yearning for the idyllic aspects of early childhood, for 'primitive' tribal societies, for a future "Age of Aquarius" in which we are all united with everything in a state of cosmic consciousness...

This intense combination of nostalgia and the hope of escape from suffering and angst; goes-with the assumption that this needs to overwhelm us, and that overwhelming is a measure of authenticity, truth, validity. 

In other words, what we want is that we ourselves, and everyone in the world, will be-transformed, will be-made-anew, even against our resistance. 

So; this yearning fantasy is also one in which we desire to be un-free; it is (perhaps covertly) a rejection of our freedom as having caused existential-loneliness, division and misery - it is a hope that this alienating freedom will be dissolved away into a state of blissful connectedness. 

I think that some such mistrust, even hatred, of freedom and active agency underlies the great fear of self-deception that afflicts - and too often paralyses - modern people. I mean, the idea that if we take an active role in attaining knowledge, then that knowledge will be tainted by our own wishful thinking. 

This, then, is the flip-side of the above-described idea that valid and authentic knowledge is - ought to be - overwhelming; that what is true must be irresistible. 

It is also perhaps exactly this feeling or expectation that underlies the self-annihilating spiritual death and chosen-slavery of the majority of modern Men. 

Modern man has a profound mistrust of himself; of his personal capacity and motivation to seek what is true and good - a kind of terror of following any line of thinking that steps out-with the overwhelming and immersive ocean of external influences.

Any other-person who is suspected of doing this, of genuinely working from-himself; may well become an object of fear or ridicule - and perhaps loathing. 

Even worse is when this is incipiently is detected in one-self: a thinking actively from one-self that launches-out beyond immersive external influences...

Stop It At Once! 

There is thus a profound mistrust of free and active, independent thinking; which mistrust is only made worse by the fact of its joyousness, and sense of self-validating truth and creative flow.  

For Christians, this self-mistrust may be made worse by some version of the conviction of 'original sin' - which conviction can induce self-loathing and a craving to be-controlled. 

So, in the end, Mankind en masse has willingly submitted to the mind-control of global totalitarianism - as administered by its converged and controlled pseudo-Christian churches...

And all the time The Answer - the path to escape! - lay unused and indeed rejected; located within the mind and capability of every Man.