Collective Existentialism

Do we revere things because we hope that other people will too?

Maybe openness is the real way, tempered by experience. How many people really die in bar fights, blind rages, etc? But then I see those back-alley people. Women who don't realize how badly they are treated, constantly tense. Men who are ready to lash out at a moment's notice. There is little room for growth there but wasn't this a natural restraint on progress? Before conservatives, there was the reality of slowness in the conceptual evolution of, and implementation of, progress. Now we have some restraint on the implementation of progress and varying levels of theoretical restraints on the evolution of progress. We have outgrown the base-emotional restraint and yet have not devised any system to replace that restraint. The fact is that most people are still functionally the same as the back-alley types that used to be the ruling majority except they no longer restrain anyone else with their backward culture (maybe because of police, distraction, apathy?), fear, violence, etc.. Where has this balance gone?

The worst thing is that I can hear the responses now, from the mediocre intellects of our time. They will say that all these new conceptualizations of progress and the wild implementation is nothing but good, perhaps not incrementally but in the long run. They ignore the complexity of the balance that we have lost. The fact is that those of us who can control our more base emotions are doing just that, controlling them. They exist, they are human responses, they carry information. A true genius listens to his unconscious.... somehow. And a true genius knows with some certainty whether their increment of progress sits well with humanity as a whole, the whole that includes the base emotions. This is how the geniuses of the past avoided ostracism, to an extent which allowed the acceptance of their progress, but perhaps more importantly earned the respect of their communities over the course of their lives.

This is the heart of the matter, the tribe mentality, the violence, the superstitions, the small-mindedness circumvented by genuine genius, the kind of mind that listens to the whole of humanity (at least within that community) and earns the awe-struck respect of that community over a lifetime, leading to an instance of progress that is accepted by that "tribe". This process ensured that growth was harmonious with consciousness, and vice versa.

The fact is that consciousness has been scattered in the modern world. Divide and conquer, right? this is how capitalism has survived so long without a re-organization of wealth. All these different "progresses" that don't mesh with consciousness.