Part of what is propagandized and becomes assumed in our society is that one may have everything that is desired–and all at once. Since anyone who thinks about this does not consciously “believe” it, it is also assumed to be untrue and ineffective–which allows the effects to be pervasive. The message is pervasive.
Sense withdrawal. In order to concentrate one’s mental focus, it can be helpful to free one’s attention by fixating the gaze, reducing the imposition of arrhythmic noise, calming emotions, stretching the muscles, relaxing digestion, aligning the skeleton, regulating the temperature and humidity, and avoiding noxious odors and tastes. In calming the emotions (for the purpose of concentration instead of joy, ecstasy, communion, or trance), it is as necessary to avoid enjoyable turbulence as aversive turbulence. Since social connection is also largely assumed, written into genetics as well as personally desired, social calm is also conducive to concentration. To an extent, either by moments or by general degree, social withdrawal is conducive to concentration.
Just as asceticism is an extreme example of relaxing the digestive system which can lead to negative physical and mental effects, social withdrawal can lead to an emotional imbalance. Just as forcing someone else to not eat is more brutal than convincing them to not eat for a time, one might force one’s own emotional calming by withdrawal instead of coaxing or finessing calming by emotional and attentional mastery. The deleterious effects of an immature application of force abound. While the effects of asceticism in religion have been noted, it may be that the effects of withdrawal on tradition and theory have not been adequately noted.
While increasing degrees of concentration require a certain type of environment or context (including internal physical milieu), it may be that too much force is too often applied in the beginning, influencing the entire experience towards various types of exaggeration in order to compensate. In this sense, we cannot take the “normal” or standard social environment as an adequate comparison, but we should take a healthy, proportional social environment as comparison. Even if a healthy social environment is only a hypothesized construct at this point in history, it frees one’s imagination from referring exclusively to ideas of “average” and one’s own experience. The open-ended suggestion is to consider what might be a “most conducive” social environment for individual development. (In such a case, a robust group is at least implied.)
If a balanced and consistent ability to concentrate along with clarified emotional experience is desirable, it may make sense to consider how one develops concentration in a healthy, proportional manner which respects the more obvious needs of the social/physical organism. This would mean pursuing concentration with a multitude of values being at least tacitly recognized and somewhat balanced. Just as learning anything else requires a greater degree of investment when one is beginning, stabilizing meditative concentration requires a greater investment when one is beginning. When this is recognized, it is possible to expect a period of relatively intense investment, and just as possible to plan for the negative effects of that period as well as expecting and enjoying the positively experienced effects of that period.
The current social milieu has significant effects on how one experiences a sense of individualism, personal growth, spirituality. The pervasive effects of our social assumptions can be difficult to pin down since they are obvious when considered–seemingly too crude to be taken seriously. When they are not taken seriously, though, they have considerable indirect influence instead of being dealt with directly. When this influence is paired with the millennia-old overemphasis (in spiritual traditions) of either Authority (e.g: Law, Nation or Group, Karma, God) or individual enlightenment or sainthood, we arrive at childish expectations and an impulsive embrace of some version of 21st-century American Free Spirituality for Individual Consumption.
Combined with an inadequate perspective and misunderstanding of individual and group human development, the results range from strange to cultic. Referring to the obvious silliness in the Army’s recruiting campaign, “Army of One”–named after the unmentionable 1994 Dolph Lundgren movie?–we can consider from quite an advanced historical perspective the idea of a Cult of One. This cultic propensity is noticeable on an individual level, but what is noticed may be abstracted and applied at a social level as well. The overvaluation of one’s personality that may come from such “spiritual” pursuits shows at group levels in the hubris surrounding ethnic, ideological, and national pride. This “spirituality” goes hand-in-hand with xenophobia, economic exploitation, culture wars, genocide, isolationism, and intolerance in general.
From here, we may critique any Culture of One. We may also, then, be able to appreciate every individual culture and personality for its specific (unique) and potential value to various group interactions at the same time that we can adequately consider the limitations inherent in those cultures and personalities. When an untouchable “spiritual” right to hubris is removed from individual personalities and individual cultures, we are living in a noetic space where everyone may appreciate the benefits brought about by constructive criticism. The phenomenal range of perspectives that may be brought to bear at this point in global history offers an unimaginable wealth of cultural potential. Opening into that potential may require a greater degree of humility–recognition of one’s own abilities and limitations brought about by clearer observation of particulars along with broader awareness of context. Simultaneously, greater humility may require less modesty and less hubris. Modesty is a false show of humility, and hubris is a false pretension of grandiosity. Interested humility avoids both these types of overinflation as well as apathy, alienation, and nihilism. Interested humility is observation and tolerance looking for clarity and shared joy.
Copyright Todd Mertz