Western civilizations have reached a dead end with their obsession with the idea of equality. Fortunately, we are not, and this post shows how to escape this trap.

Discalceation is the rite of uncovering one’s feet before approaching holy ground. It is still widely performed in Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim (Eastern) religions but forgotten in Western, predominantly Christian traditions. This is despite the command in Exodus 3:5, where God commands Moses to remove his sandals: “Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing is holy ground.” Not even priests discale themselves entering the holy ground!

Discalceation, among other symbolic meanings, distinguishes between different levels of ground. If followed, it forces us to differentiate.

Western devaluations

If nothing forces us to discriminate in this or another way, we forget to see differences. If there is no need to see the light and then to see the dark, everything is grey. All is one, and all is the same. If there is no difference, there is no sense. It doesn’t matter, so I do not care. Everything is equal, so what! So what, everything! Values are not necessary anymore, either.

That is why we (Westerners) feel some incomprehensible power behind “eastern” belief systems. They do care, and we don’t. They do win since they care.

There is a difference between striving and caring. We strive, but don’t care. We strive for grey equality, that is, equality of our grey minds (not grey matter) that can not differentiate one ground from another—a tragic dead-end of equality of men.

No panic!

From the evolutionary point of view, this dead-end of the Western mind is not so tragic. It is only a minor deviation of around 500 years (from the Renaissance on) against a background of 6000 years of modern thought and more than 100,000 years of civilization. This “so what” equalization is doomed in any case—sooner or later—for a reason, as I have pointed out above.

Conservative rites for the future

It is a common mistake to understand discalceation and similar rituals as regressive. Contrary to politically correct notions, they oppose tribalism and are, at the same time, conservative, as all myths “conserve” memes. 

But such rituals, if active, have to be contemporary at the same time. As much as they conserve, they open our symbolic future. They represent the only option for the future. 

Such rituals as constructions of the future are also not collective entities. Rituals and constructions of the future can only exist through individual symbolic working. It has always been my “revitalization” of some existing myths. Others might use and abuse my upgrade, but they can only upgrade it through personal, private “revitalization.” And so on. 

In this way, a collective in the form of a memetic field emerges. While a collective entails individuals, it does not superimpose individuals, at least not in myths and rituals. 

Contemporary theory supports the Bible better than Catholic practice

In such an emergence of a collective, the only absolute subjectivity lies in the individual. Thus: homonism not humanism. 

As Derrida and David Haig beautifully explain, the collective of such an emergence is nothing but a difference that makes a difference. A collective is a memetic field of strategic memes, a “sack of inherited and preserved cultural traits.” As such, a potential (a quantum superposition) materializes each time an individual materializes it with his reflection into a material meme that can then be further embodied into an artifact. 

We do not need to go to any institution to enact the transmission of our cultural traditions, albeit an institution could help in such an endeavor. It is all written in the Bible as an artifact of a past memetic field we are supposed to enact today. It is written not as a prescription but as a symbolic invitation. If understood like that, differentiation and non-equality are necessary, thus saving us from the abyss of contemporary equalization.

(Note that the Bible is not the only artifact from the past that plays such a crucial role.)

References:

Derrida, J. (1970): Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, ResearchGate

Derrida, J. (2006): Writing and difference, Routledge

Haig, D. (2020): From Darwin to Derrida: selfish genes, social selves, and the meanings of life, The MIT Press