Total independence is an imaginary construct, the limit case of interdependence, which is universal. And the whole is shot through with purpose (a notion, by the way, that has nothing to do with some sort of engineering God), and endlessly creative, not pointless and passive. This cosmos is one from which we are never separate, but out of which we arise, in which we dwell, and to which, finally, we return.
My ultimate aim is to contribute a new perspective from which to look at the fundamental ‘building blocks’, as we think of them, of the cosmos: time, space, depth, motion, matter, consciousness, uniqueness, beauty, goodness, truth, purpose and the very idea of the existence or otherwise of a God. . . . Of course, these are vast topics, ones that have been grappled with by the ablest human minds for millennia; naturally I don’t presume to try to settle the disputes that have arisen. Moreover, I am very far from being the first person to argue that the prevailing view is badly mistaken. But I do believe that the [brain] hemisphere hypothesis casts a very revealing new light on those disputes and strongly suggests that the view that has prevailed – a view heavily indebted to a belief in reductionism – very seriously distorts the evidence of the nature of reality that is before our eyes if only we would attend to it fully. It provides a genuinely new and compelling context in which to revisit these issues, one that may encourage us toward very different conclusions.
“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself,” Friedman wrote. “A free market” was “a system of economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom.”
This equation of the "free market" and "economic freedom" as a "necessary condition for political freedom" bamboozled a lot of people. In short: it isn't. This isn't to say that markets aren't often useful (they are) or that decentralized economic decision-making implied by markets isn't efficient (it can be), but to equate economic decision-making with political decision-making is a category mistake.
Zeno, or possibly Chrysippus, introduced yet another distinction within the “indifferent” class, that of appropriate and inappropriate actions (making, finally, seven categories of actions: virtuous, preferred, appropriate, indifferent, inappropriate, avoided, vicious). The distinction between appropriate and inappropriate actions is again one which the Cynics rejected. It was primarily a concession to social stability, a concern of the Stoics which the Cynics did not share.
Indeed, anyone who had lost patience with traditional politics and was looking for a new direction was a potential Nazi. They were the “catchall party of protest,” calling for people to put aside social divisions and class differences for the sake of a larger ideal, the nation, the Volk. The message had enormous appeal to any unaffiliated (and non-Jewish) voter, and to students and the young, who provided the party with its bustling energy, it was a political elixir.
Coming from a country [Germany] where “the people” had overridden all legal processes for the sake of what was viewed as the common good, she [Hannah Arendt] was highly sensitive to maintaining the role of law in society. And that role, pace [Sidney] Hook, was definitely not to enforce some notion of morality, which was a private matter and which she knew—obviously with Nietzsche whispering in her ear—could be defined any which way, depending on the momentary mood of the public. Hook’s government-enforced morality was a path on the way to the thought police and the midnight knock at the door. Against the vicissitudes of popular opinion, the law, developed through reason, persuasion, and judgment, provided stability and protection for the individual. The critics never really did understand her distinction between state and society. “Metaphysical mumbo jumbo,” one of them contemptuously called it. But then he had never experienced—or couldn’t even imagine—the damage that a tyranny of the majority could wreak (and he received an even more contemptuous flick of the wrist from Arendt in response).
Where is this unconscious today? Where do the roots suffer? Where are the sparks of Sophia buried in our present world’s darkness? Attention to them is Jung’s therapy of culture.
Contrary to popular belief, Chesterton did not say, “When men stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing. They believe in anything.” The nearest thing is in his short story “The Miracle of Moon Crescent”: “You hard-shelled materialists [are] all balanced on the very edge of belief—of belief in almost anything.”
