Spinning Top

A Things To Know List

There are five ways in which the world as a Spinning Top is hostile and dangerous not just to the individual, but to life itself. Those five ways are:

1. Weakness

2. Presumptuousness

3. Immaturity

4. Falseness

5. Selfishness

The world as a Spinning Top becomes hostile and dangerous to the individual and life itself when the conflict between one’s inner-life and the outer-world they live in is so great that it weakens the individual and any group they belong to, often without them knowing it, or if so, not being able to do much about it, ie; respond adequately. The mismatch between inner-life and outer-world ends in weakness, because the outer-world is moving too fast, and the inner-life needs time to develop. In a strange way, people can become irrelevant, even, or especially, to themselves. Everything else follows from this. One consequence, or defense, is presumptuousness, which, not surprisingly, plays out in group behavior. In short, the individual comes to believe that they are part of a group that is now, always has been, and always will be, more just than any other group, because they are more put upon then any other group. This is a slave mentality that ends in a slave morality. A fact Nietzsche pointed out long ago. The conviction that one is intellectually, socially, and morally superior (because they can't even begin to consider the possibility that they might not be) ends in a failer to grow.

The consequence of this mentality become morality is a permanent immaturity that devolves into delusion and violence, even murder. The explanation for this is found in the fact that to believe one possesses a virtue that they do not possess is a denial of reality, and so a form of insanity.

The result of this distorted picture - emanating from a weak, presumptuous, and immature person - is falseness, specifically, a false self that is confused with the real thing and ends in a “prudent” selfishness that is constantly threatening whatever group this individual belongs to (and the individual as well) with undermining, disintegration, and cultural impoverishment.

All five, weakness, presumptuousness, immaturity, falseness, and selfishness are ultimately subsumed by what is arguably the most dangerous defensive reaction of all, the surrender to a Salvation System, or utopia that claims to be perfect, true, good, final, and the answer to all of our problems.

But, over time, even worse follows from this. People go beyond the surrender to a Salvation System and adopt a position of over-conformity, that is, conformity for the sake of conformity, and not for problem-solving, or even the belief in a Salvation System. When over-conformity, itself a consequence of inadequate teaching and learning and rapid growth, rules the day, the end of those who have surrened to it is near. The reason is that over-conformity condemns both the individual and group to reinforcing the five attributes acquired by living in a world that has become a Spinning Top.

At that point, the forces of life in general, and the instinct and intellect of the individual in particular, are paralyzed and ultimately destroyed.

Unless, of course, the individual finds a way to either stop the top, or jump off, or, even better - both. And where does the individual land? In reality.