Thank you all.

I have distilled, yes reduced….

I don’t see that you have “reduced”, but only distilled. (Distillation and reduction are not one and the same. )

This is a distinction I’ve drawn several times the past year or so to illustrate the difference between distilling the essential meaning of a “sacred” text from its context to find, share and mutually understand the truth within it that is common to all and the reduction of wholes to their constituent parts (or the sum of their constituent parts) for the sheer sake of it, which can only result in the very all-pervasive automation, fragmentation, fusion and homogenization we are witnessing today and which was clearly foreseen before every episode of collapse in human history by “prophets” ranging from Daniel to Jesus to Jean Gebser and William Butler Yeats.

“Sacred” and “prophets” are in quotation marks here because it’s not just religious texts (and contexts) that become “sacred” in the sense of “unquestionable”. In fact, in our times, everything from Islamism to Christianism to Darwinism to Atheism to Liberalism, Conservatism, Socialism and Environmentalism, ad infinitum have become “sacred” to a large degree and an awful lot of people seem to feel that these very human ideologies are absolutely unquestionable.

how non-dualistic are any of us if a subset of people such as reductionists are negatively separated from us?

Well, I was half-joking there, but ’tis true that I’ve allowed reductionism to upset me no end the past few years. As a result, I’ve had to struggle deeply to relocate my own center of balance and peace, so I certainly can’t recommend trying to engage a determined reductionist in dialogue and appreciate a quote such as the one posted here immensely.

The “our way is the only way” crowds are enough to drive anyone nuts and it is my personal opinion that adherents of any ideology prefixed with “neo-” may be either knowingly or unknowingly reductionist. “Neo-”, of course, is supposed to mean “new” and does in the case of those elements of various traditions that are seeking to understand and cooperate with one another, but what it more often means to me these days is “extremist”.

A lot of online folk seem to think I’m a reductionist myself, but I no longer concern myself with whether anyone does or not because there is, frankly, far too much at stake to care. Please allow me to explain….

The all-pervasive dualism and fragmentation we are witnessing today and which we are all struggling to overcome whether we realize it or not is, I feel, the direct result of the reductionistic principles that accompanied the Enlightenment and that I suspect have underscored the entirety of human history. As I’ve also argued in the past, however, it’s not people (or subsets of people) that I feel nations, communities and groups ever should have been or be “against”, though I’ve yet to locate anyone who agrees with me on this point. The reason I feel so, however, is that such is the very basis of warfare. Rather than being against people, I feel that it is this all-pervasive, shared strain of ideology and its resultant action of reductionism that is tearing apart the very fabric of our shared existence from the international to the national to the societal straight through to the family and even the individual mind (and/or vice versa).

Even here, I personally don’t believe we should consider ourselves against so much as we merely require — as a species — to recognize it as something that desperately needs to be acknowledged and transformed. Thing is, this strain of reductionistic thinking is so ingrained in our collective psyche (for want of a better term), there is no reasoning with anyone who holds purely reductionistic views and the evidence of this is absolutely everywhere. I personally feel that the number of leaders of reductionistic movements determined to wield “power over” others is steadily waning, but have been cautioned in the past that our collective passage through the never-ending crises we have created for ourselves will take several generations.

the unforgiving character of complexity and/or reality

As I’ve also been made aware in the past, there are those who believe the universe is inherently hostile, though I currently feel they may be confusing the natural laws that govern the universe with the universe itself. As Oren Lyons put it, “the natural law knows no mercy; it is only the law” and if we think Nature hostile, I’m inclined to believe it’s because humankind, having come to view ourselves as separate from Nature, have convinced ourselves in large part that we can challenge and/or subdue natural law for our own ends when we most certainly cannot.

Namaste.

Power, as in hierarchical power over another, subjugation, overpowering, etc seem much more the types of behaviors and actions (if not feelings) that crowd out love.

I see it in myself – when I want to have power over someone (usually because I am afraid of them for some reason) then I cannot bring myself to also love them.

When I bring in love for the person, even if I’m afraid, I cannot act in ways that serve only power.

I don’t think – based on her writing – that Anne Lamott would entirely disagree with me. I really, really, really like her books!