When an ecosystem functions well, it’s homeostasis; if it’s in decline or in the midst of unsustainable growth (as with cancer), then it’s heading into trouble. The system could end up in a state of constant vigilance and, to use Feinstein’s term, become allostatic and never return to normal.
It may be that Hegel was not entirely wrong in seeing human history as a story of progress—not toward a merely rational reason, but rather toward a greater and more expansive awareness, a consciousness in which Pascal’s “reasons of the heart” predominate and act as a container for instrumental rationality.
Basically, when we approach life with our habitually passive attitude (James's “inferiority to our true selves”) we are saying to our robot, “Go ahead and take care of this, it isn't important enough for me to attend to,” and the result is that sense of separation from life, of never really touching it, that plagues so many of us in the modern world.
Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential.
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