Francis Berger
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Modern Transcendence is Purely Horizontal

1/3/2017

1 Comment

 
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 It has been replaced by a desperate and fevevish striving to bring heaven down to earth or, more correctly, to create heaven on earth (since belief in an actual heaven is, well let's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.
1 Comment
James Away
11/20/2020 16:22:50

"Everything is pointless-stop worrying and feel joy/embrace fear or you're weak/go and accomplish things with your one fortuitous opportunity at life"

"Don't value your being in THAT way." "Don't take THAT chance on being wrong." "Don't pursue THAT high and potentially elusive ambition that presents itself by your most extraordinary state of affairs."

"Not at the cost of attending to the rest of us! So what if we would drag you back into our bucket of nightmarish nihilism? Why should you get to be out of it? Not at the cost of any attendance to the mundane which we find so infinitely and infallibly disposable!"

"FFS, There's too much at risk!!!"


Hm

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