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George Carlin’s social commentary is an example, as is The Matrix, dystopian novels like Brave New World and 1984, and even more contemporary pieces such as Ben Stiller’s surprisingly thoughtful The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
If society were to listen to George Carlin, rather than laugh at him, the end result would likely be a strike or an uprising of some kind. Yet, although his messages and comedy are wildly popular in North America, or at least were at one time, nothing has changed. Why is this the case?
The problem, again, is with metaphysics, which determine values, which in turn determine behavior. If the behavior has not changed, it is because the values have not changed – and if the values have not changed, it means that the person’s understanding of reality has not been sufficiently altered. Given that a great deal of time and energy has been spent by established interests to corrupt the West’s understanding of human nature, it seems most helpful to begin there.
As Abraham Maslow lamented in his 1968 memorandum, too much time has been spent focusing on the negative aspects of the human experience – the Christian original sin, the psychoanalytic trauma – rather than on the positive aspects and the potentialities. Thus, in order to begin to address the damage that has been done by the Western project, it becomes necessary to reconstruct a new psychology from first principles in the hard sciences, expand that understanding to group and social dynamics, and finally investigate some of the fundamental claims made by evolutionary scientists to determine what is true about the species and the universe.
By developing a more correct understanding of human nature and its implications in this way, the West can begin to heal its metaphysical corruption, develop a value system that is not decadent and is finally in line with reality, and begin to develop the behaviors and systems needed to establish a sustainable utopia. As has been suggested throughout popular culture, perhaps most famously Disney’s The Lion King, once we remember who we are, we will be able to step into our full potential and become everything that we could be. Indeed, everything that the sun touches is ours. (Ticket to Heaven by Zachary R.J. Strong, PDF version, p 92-93)
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