The Ontological War

As one goes through life, listening to what others say and reading what they have written, one sees that most people fall into one of four groups when they are judged by their ontological sensitivity and insight.

The first group, which is probably the largest, is made up of people who are not sensitive ontologically. It doesn’t make any difference if the members of this group are insightful ontologically or not because by not being ontologically sensitive they don’t have access to any of the emotions that come from their realselves, and therefore they don’t have anything to be insightful about. When many of the people in this group hear about an ontological emotion or idea, their first thought is “Huh?” In this blog the members of this group are called socialself people because that is the only self they are aware of.

The second group is made up of people who have a little ontological sensitivity, but are lacking in ontological insight. The people in this group have enough sensitivity to make them look into themselves for answers, but they don’t have the insight that is needed to understand what they see. They see the unpleasant qualities that are within all of us, but they are never able to see beyond these qualities to the best that we are and will ever be, our realselves. The members of this group then reject all the unpleasantness that is within us and willfully turn back to their socialselves and the socialself world. Some even go on to become strong advocates for socialself life and use every opportunity they have to criticize everything about the realself. The ontological defeat and retreat of this group’s members becomes the foundation for their philosophical, psychological, and ethical beliefs, and this results in many of these men and women becoming political or social conservatives, or both. The members of this group are called decreasing realself people because the main direction in their lives is to decrease their degrees of being.

The third group consists of people who have some ontological sensitivity and some ontological insight. When the men and women in this group look into themselves they are able to sense the best that we are beyond the worst: their sensitivity and insight let them do this. But these men and women do not have enough ontological insight to be able to move forward consistently toward their realselves, and so they eventually come to a stop in their ontological journey. They continue looking forward toward their realselves, but their lack of ontological understanding prevents them from becoming more their realselves. Members of this group might believe in new-age ideas or in ideas that appear to deepen realself-to-realself and realself-to-natural world bonds, but don’t actually increase one’s degree of being. As with conservatives, the ontological understandings of this group’s members are the foundations for their philosophical, psychological, and ethical beliefs. This results in many of these members becoming liberals socially and politically.

The last group includes those who are ontologically sensitive and ontological insightful, and it has by far the fewest members. The members of this group are sensitive enough to their realselves to receive a continuous flow of ontological emotions. The realselves in these men and women play a significant role in their lives, even though they may not yet be fully conscious of their own realself’s existence. With their greater insight, these men and women are able to keep up intellectually with the flow of emotions they receive from their realselves, and this permits them to continue moving forward. The members of this group are also on the liberal side of the social and political spectrum, even though for many of these men and women the important spectrum or dichotomy is not liberal/conservative but realself/socialself. The members of this group and the previous group are called increasing realself people here, with the assumption that the people in the third group will start increasing their degrees of realself once they understand how to move forward again.

In later posts I’ll be going into more detail about ontological sensitivity and ontological insight.