I got to thinking about transcendence today and how any yearning for transcendence in today's world is purely horizontal in nature. Gone is the vertical structure of lifting earth up to heaven. It has been replaced by a desperate and fevevish striving to bring heaven down to earth or, more correctly, to create heaven on earth (since belief in an actual heaven is, well let's face it, so passé and yesterday). The motivation for transcendence still exists, but its direction has shifted entirely, to the point that vertical transcendence barely exists at all and if it is ever mentioned it is immediately frowned upon or ridiculed.
Naturally, the observation that contemporary transcendence is horizontal is nothing new. It has been made a handful of writers, philosophers, and thinkers over the past few centuries. Nevertheless, what strikes me about our contemporary notions of horizontal transcendence is how doggedly we persist with it and how oblivious we are to the results.
Naturally, the observation that contemporary transcendence is horizontal is nothing new. It has been made a handful of writers, philosophers, and thinkers over the past few centuries. Nevertheless, what strikes me about our contemporary notions of horizontal transcendence is how doggedly we persist with it and how oblivious we are to the results.
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