On Transcendence

It’s inherently hard to be human. We’re subject to the Great Experiment called consciousness.

Self-consciousness develops during human adolescence and it’s fraught. Adult life is often a slog of tasks and obligations; enervating, frustrating, boring.

Get out of bed in the morning and you’re at risk. Vulnerability, infirmity, precarity.

Not to mention: Civilized life requires repression, channeling, and disciplining of instinctual energy in a way that no other animal subjects itself to.

* * * * *

We can’t take it. It drives us crazy.

Thus your basic Moses, Jesus, Caesar. Your garden-variety monarchs and popes. The Mussolinis and the Trumps.

Nation down here, Heaven up there.

All around, the cocoon of culture. Assuagement and palliation.

Mythology and authority. Institutions and technologies. The urban labyrinth.

No spider could possibly weave such a web.