The romantic ideal of erotic love in our society—what I call The Myth of Romantic Love (MORL)—is an unachievable ideal.  It is a recipe for failure.  What forces would construct a myth, a fable that is so toxic?  Perhaps we may find an answer if we look at who benefits from this impossible ideal—big business, big government, big religion and, leaning on these three pillars of conventionalism, women.  Men who have come under the influence of MORL are doomed.  Their lives will surely be undone.  Hope the catastrophe wakes them up!

The mesmerized masses of people sleepwalking through lives of narrow self-interest are in a state of ‘blissful’ ignorance.  What they think is happening, what they tell themselves is happening, is not what is actually happening.  As Nietzsche put it succinctly: “All common people lie.”  As long as you are invested in the outcome of your seeing, you won’t see clearly what is happening.  And it just gets worse from there.

  When you look phenomenologically at what is happening, opening your heart and mind to seeing it without prejudice or fear, seeing what is happening as it naturally unfolds of its own accord, you soon see that people are generally ignorant about what is truly happening with themselves and in their lives, glossing over their lack of self-awareness with conventional platitudes, false beliefs and values about which they lack understanding.  They are like robots. They sleepwalk through a fog of misguided beliefs and values every day, feeling strongly that everyday reality is clear, comprehensible, and straightforwardly given.  They whisper assuredly to themselves that God is in His heaven and all is right with the world.  No need to worry or wonder, life has a clear and comprehensive rule book that simply needs to be followed.   In other words, such people as this, the masses of conventional people, are comfortably and complacently deluded.  But there is a big problem with the false comfort of their delusion.

When the impoverished, conventional, TV-driven, digitally enhanced lives of the masses don’t work out as they hoped; when, by an unexpected turn of events they fall into the pit of depression, disillusionment, self-doubt and despair, the deluded masses have no framework for understanding how to deal with unexpected upheaval, disillusionment or grief, and they do not know what to do to alleviate it.  Must be “bad karma” or God’s justified punishment for my sins, they tell themselves.  Must be bad luck.  It surely can’t be my fault, not my responsibility.  They assure and re-assure themselves, looking for approval from others to forestall any guilt.  And so, they suffer at their own hand without knowing it, without ever having a clue that they are pulling the rug out from under themselves, that they are their own worst enemies.

Humans have finally achieved the dubious ability to delude themselves.  What difference does it make to be such a deluded animal, one who thinks it knows, believes it knows, when, in fact, it doesn’t have a clue as to what is happening?  Behold the deluded animal, fully capable of deceiving itself without letting itself know that it is doing so.  The most dangerous animal that ever lived.

Have we really evolved as a species?  There is no conclusive evidence to support the theory of evolution with absolute certitude.  There is no clear and definitive link between species, for example, no certain proof that something greater can ‘evolve’ from something less, that natural selection and random mutations could ever produce rationality, consciousness and self-consciousness, value, life itself. I don’t think so.  That an ill-defined engine called “evolution” could ever produce such rarefied elements as these seems unlikely.  Perhaps it is not so much that humans or any animals or species “evolved” as it is that the whole Earth has ‘evolved’ taking everything along with it, producing everything as a kind of afterthought from the future to the now.

What, then, might be the new generation of animal that Earth will have engendered look like, the post-delusional animal?  Surely, it will not be anything that we can see right off.  We can’t even see ourselves or see what is happening right in front of us.  Forget about seeing what is coming.  It seems more likely that the new, post-delusional animal that Earth might serve up will arrive unseen among us.  Perhaps it has already arrived.  Those stuck in the perceptual framework of conventionality will certainly not be able to see the end of delusional storytelling and the new beginning.  It will not be like us.  It will replace us before we know what is happening.  Perhaps it has already replaced us from the future in an evolution that has already been accomplished before it has played itself out.  One can hope that it will bring a new way of seeing, a new perspective, a new hope.

What will it take for you to be there, to be ready?  Here is what I think it will take.  Above all other requirements, it will take a letting-go of the old way, detachment from the comfortable way, the familiar way, the conventional way of everybody and nobody, the way of striving and contending to be the same as but better than everyone else, always figuring, plotting and scheming, grasping and clawing at ghosts of delusional self-importance, manipulating and controlling others to get what you want, wanting others to see things your way, to validate you.  Let go of all that and you will be well-started on the journey called going-your-own-way.

But who is willing to let go enough to make that happen?  Who is daring enough?  Free enough?  Mad enough?