When the modern era began (with 'Enlightenment' or 'the age of reason') - the idea and impulse emerged that Men should not passively be ruled by unconscious instinct; but that instead we ought consciously to reason-out our belief and behaviours by our intellect.
At first there was the idea that intellect ought to be rooted in 'empirical' - or perceptual - data; which led to the idea of 'science' (broadly defined).
Thus; for Enlightenment our beliefs and behaviours ought to derive from conscious and intellectual reflection only on information derived from the senses, and from memories of sensory information (including memories encoded in writing and other symbolic systems such as mathematics).
But a minority of Men became aware that self-styled 'Enlightenment' and 'reason' was - in practice - merely to swap a primordial unconscious passivity to instinct and nature, for a modern conscious passivity to human society.
Such conscious passivity is normal nowadays, especially in public discourse; where the mass of Men passively believe... whatever is currently dominant in their perceptual environment - and then call this obedience to human power by the name of science!
Instead of ancient Men being un-consciously in accordance with the natural world; modern Men consciously choose to live in accordance with a Man-made world of ideology.
The alternative is called Romanticism, which emerged from the middle 1700s when Enlightenment was reaching its height.
True Romanticism was aiming at something unprecedented in human history: conscious awareness and choice to live by intuition; where intuition is the guidance and knowledge of our real and divine selves.
Intuition was already and always there in us, but unconscious - Romanticism is the 'project' of becoming aware-of, and living in-accordance-with, this pre-existent intuition.
Conscious thinking therefore ought to become directed at becoming aware of what our real-selves are saying, at any given time; and these real-selves were assumed to be attuned to ongoing divine creation.
But Romanticism soon divided and diverted into an atavistic and false Romanticism, which became commonest, and usurped the name of Romanticism.
By this false Romanticism, the task was for Men consciously to return to what had been an unconscious the primordial state of spontaneous harmony with nature.
In other words; false Romanticism advocated (and still does) that conscious effort and will should strive to direct thinking to knowing and living in accordance with instinct...
And indeed, the ultimate ideal of false Romanticism is that conscious thinking should strive to eliminate itself; so that Men might return to primordial unconscious harmony with the natural world.
As well as being regressive, it turns-out that false Romanticism is both ineffective, and counter-productive - playing into the hands of the intellect and Enlightenment, and amplifying the power of empiricism.
In a word: False Romanticism is Impossible.
We cannot return to the childhood of our selves or our race.
Therefore we face a forced-choice between the mainstream-degenerate Enlightenment intellectuality of directing consciousness at perceptual information and its symbolic representations - which has converged upon discovering, believing, and obeying "whatever is currently dominant in society"...
Or else to aim for real Romanticism: which is to direct our conscious thinking at discovering, and living in accordance with, our intuitions.
