I think there has been a ferocious search to rediscover an objective basis for morality on the new-fangled bedrock of contemporary psychology, which itself has a Judeo-Christian base at heart There are different measures and expressions of this, but it is behind the phenomena of people referring to others as “narcissists”, and themselves as “empaths”.

Related to this, I think there is a fundamental ontological drive to find out and define identities “objectively”, and to make such identities, once they are found, conform with traditional ideas of morality. As said, this style of morality is viewed as “objective”, and also as “universal”. It has an underlying Judaic element, due to the influence of psychoanalysis. But it is also, much more, fundamentally Christian in its means of applying contemporary psychological paradigms to weed out those who are deemed “grandiose”.

This hunting for, and rooting out of the “grandiose” among us is another iteration of the age old Christian tradition of looking for non-conformists, or those who “have airs” and bringing them down a peg or three. The idea behind this is that this is a good thing to do, because it will not only reinforce “objective morality”, but it will teach people their proper roles, including traditional gender roles. Conformity is deemed as a good in itself.

I think we are living in very interesting times, where many things will be leveled. The consequences of this leveling will also be entirely, and in every way, unexpected. That which remains standing will be very strong indeed. It will be so powerful indeed , having resisted all the leveling, to the point that it unexpectedly, it alone will stand up as the possibility of “objective morality”, when all else in the cultural realm has become annihilated.

We are undergoing a very great “cleansing” mood, and this is all taking place in the cultural realm. A great sweep is happening, a purge, a pogrom directed against the artists and the intellectuals. But in the end, it is the masses themselves who will be cleansed, as they are indeed purifying themselves by fire.

I think there has been a ferocious search to rediscover an objective basis for morality on the bedrock of contemporary psychology, which itself has a Judeo-Christian base. There are different measures and expressions of this, but it is behind the phenomena of people referring to others as “narcissists”, and themselves as “empaths”.

Related to this, I think there is a fundamental ontological drive to find out and define identities “objectively”, and to make such identities, once they are found, conform with traditional ideas of morality. As said, this style of morality is viewed as “objective”, and also as “universal”. It has an underlying Judaic element, due to the influence of psychoanalysis. But it is also, much more, fundamentally Christian in its means of applying contemporary psychological paradigms to weed out those who are deemed “grandiose”.

This hunting for, and rooting out of the “grandiose” among us is another iteration of the age old Christian tradition of looking for non-conformists, or those who “have airs” and bringing them down a peg or three. The idea behind this is that this is a good thing to do, because it will not only reinforce “objective morality”, but it will teach people their proper roles, including traditional gender roles. Conformity is deemed as a good in itself.

I think we are living in very interesting times, where many things will be leveled. The consequences of this leveling will also be entirely, and in every way, unexpected. That which remains standing will be very strong indeed. It will be so powerful indeed , having resisted all the leveling, to the point that it alone will stand up as the possibility of “objective morality”, when all else in the cultural realm has become annihilated.

We are undergoing a very great “cleansing” mood, and this is all taking place in the cultural realm.

If we put them to the test, we would probably find they had just as much mental grit any anybody else has had in the history of modern cultures. But they have, alas, fallen victim, in my view to a systematic prejudice which vies against an older strand of thinking, which is that one can and should have one’s own experiences in life, which one contemplates in order to learn something from.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there has been a successive sense of entitlement by each subsequent generation in Western culture, that they should have everything handed to them on a plate, as it were, including the very meanings of their lives. But — the style of thinking of the systematizes of modernity has been to make everything as predictable in life as possible. These control systems are not made or formulated by the young people of today, but they have nevertheless grown up within their confines. It is as if they were small fish developing their fins and tails in a very, very regulated environment — at least ideally (if not always so much in practical reality).

Those who grow up feeling and experiencing that everything in life needs to be already pre-emptively controlled and that experiences of all sorts need to be limited, less they become “traumatic”, will not have the same attitude to life as did their predecessors. (“Trigger warnings”, anyone?)

It seems to me, nowadays, that what should be grasped and understood as the most authentic side of experience, (because it comes to us without any control or deliberation, and emerges suddenly as a spontaneous feature of experience), is not acknowledged positively at all. Rather, it is deliberately and systematically denied. It is as if anything, whatsoever, that hasn’t already been incorporated as part of systematized mode of regulating human reality is now cast under suspicion. Much of the time, psychological terminology is used to reinforce the idea that whatever comes to us spontaneously, and freely, without first being filtered through a chain of systems that regulate “normality” should be viewed without further consideration as “traumatic”.

We are in a very weird situation indeed, as the baby fish now gasp for air, finding that their tanks have become under-kept and even contaminated, and rendered uninhabitable by the very systematizers themselves.