Let’s begin by recalling our table that maps the esoteric-exoteric distinction against the levels of being:
| Exoteric | Esoteric |
| Higher esoteric | Higher esoteric |
| Socio-cultural | Socio-cultural |
| Biological | Biological |
Each of these distinctions can be thought of as a component of our identity. That is, our identity has an exoteric, outward-facing aspect and an esoteric, inward-facing aspect. We can think about identity creation as a continuous feedback loop that not only moves back and forth between the rows but can also jump up to other levels of being. Driven by some inner desire, we act in the world, and then the consequences of those actions may trigger new esoteric states.
For example, let’s say there’s a person who is addicted to eating but who knows they have a problem. They feel the need to eat (not because of hunger, but addiction) and then eat to excess. This makes them feel ashamed and having yet again been unable to control themselves. If that loop repeats itself enough, shame may turn into despair, and despair may motivate more extreme actions in the outer world. (This is less likely with food addictions but definitely relevant to more dangerous addictions).
When we model identity creation in this fashion as a set of relationships between different aspects of our character, some important insights become apparent. For example, consider each row in the table and then ask the question, Which scholarly discipline is dedicated to it? For the biological row, this is straightforward. Biology is the discipline in question. But note that biology is only concerned with the exoteric side of the equation. It studies what can be known from outward appearance. It is not concerned with the subjective experience of biological processes like hunger, thirst, cold, etc. The inner aspects our biological identity have been left out of scope of the discipline of biology.
The same is true of our socio-cultural identity, which includes the disciplines of economics, political science, anthropology, and sociology. But all of these are concerned with outward behaviours and not with inward states. An economist wants to know how resources are allocated and tries to measure economic variables such as production, inflation, and unemployment. The other disciplines in question are also concerned with what can be measured and, therefore, with the exoteric column and not the esoteric.
Modern economics is particularly interesting in this respect since it not only ignores the esoteric aspect; it builds a theoretical framework based on an assumption about the esoteric that makes no sense. Economics recognises that economic activity is driven by human needs and wants (esoteric), and yet it assumes those needs and wants are infinite. But human life is finite. How can we have infinite wants in a finite life? The economic doctrine of scarcity is born out of this assumption, since if wants are infinite, there can never be enough time or money to satisfy them. Modern economics also fails to recognise the hierarchy of wants implied by the levels of being and therefore does not account for the fact that the desire for self-actualisation may require no resources at all and therefore be infinitely attainable. It requires no resources to fall in love, for example.
But economics is not alone in this ignorance of the esoteric dimension of existence. We see the exact same problem in political science, anthropology, and sociology. All of these pay no attention to the esoteric side of the equation since that would make their discipline subjective, and science is supposed to be objective. As a result, there is no science of the esoteric aspects of our biological, economic, political, or even military identities. These are ruled out a priori by the assumptions of modern science.
As a result, in modern Western culture, the esoteric parts of existence have been left to the artists, writers, and philosophers to deal with. Since biology has not been a traditional subject matter of the arts, we have almost no representation of inner biological states in either science or art. This includes things like hunger and thirst but, more interestingly, feelings of ill health.
There are all kinds of interesting questions to ask here. What does it feel like to be sick? What symptoms are common across illnesses? Is there any difference in the severity or quality of those symptoms? Another relatively unexplored area is the nature of sensation. How do the tastes of things differ, or the smells of them? What are the qualities of vision or hearing? What differences exist in the sensory experience of touch? Within our schema, all of these belong to the esoteric aspect of the biological level of being.
Although the biological has been ignored, the esoteric aspects of the socio-cultural level of being have been a primary subject matter for art, literature, and philosophy since these equate to important matters of politics, economics, and war. But even then, there is a huge split between the exoteric and esoteric investigations. Historians, economists, and political scientists focus on objective representations of external events. Such-and-such a war happened. Such-and-such a battle swung the war this way or that. Such-and-such a ruler was defeated and removed from power. These all belong to the exoteric side of the equation.
The esoteric side of the equation is left to the artists and writers, who explore the motivations behind war and other political disputes. Why did the war start in the first place? What were the motivations of the rulers? Why were the public so enthusiastic about it, or why did they not want to fight? These are questions that could be asked and yet never really get answered. Political disputes are treated much like illness in that their subjective aspects are presumed to be not amenable to explanation. Is that actually true, or has nobody ever tried?
We might expect more attention to be paid to the esoteric motivations of the ruling class, since they play a disproportionate role in political matters and are easier to study. Shakespeare explores such themes numerous times in his plays, especially in Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and Richard III. Richard III is the true psychopath that will do whatever it takes to gain power and feels not the slightest remorse. Hamlet is almost his opposite. He is a young man who should take power but lacks the decisiveness to do so. Othello applies the logic of power to his marriage, and it ends up destroying both himself and Desdemona. Macbeth is perhaps the most interesting because he has honourably served his king Duncan, but cannot resist the temptation to take power when the opportunity presents itself. Nevertheless, Shakespeare shows us that Macbeth is hesitant before the act and then suffers afterwards.
As magnificent as Shakespeare’s plays are as an exploration of the attainment of power, they don’t really explore the interaction between the esoteric and exoteric aspects of politics or war. The plots of his stories don’t revolve around any specific political issues. Thus, there is no real connection between the exoteric and the esoteric in his stories. They are first and foremost psychological investigations.
Thus, we have ended up in a situation where science explores the exoteric side of life, while art and literature explores the esoteric side, and never the twain shall meet. We don’t have a model of the feedback loop that occurs between the exoteric and esoteric aspects of human existence.
But, more broadly, there is still a big imbalance between the exoteric and esoteric. Science is still the dominant source of “truth” and science is focused on the exoteric. There were signs in the 19th and 20th centuries that this imbalance might begin to be corrected. The arrival of psychoanalysis was one. In my opinion, Freud and Jung’s more speculative work in anthropology (Freud) and even theology (Jung) was their most interesting. Although he drank way too much of the Wagnerian kool-aid, Spengler’s work provided an example of esoteric historical scholarship. There was Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, which was interested in some of the issues we discussed earlier, such as the subjective feelings of illness. Meanwhile, anthropology and sociology toyed with what was called “qualitative analysis,” which, in our terms, meant esoteric investigation.
All of these were positive developments that occurred prior to WW2 and then were snuffed out afterwards. Even psychoanalysis, which started off so positively, has turned into modern psychology, which now models every mental issue as a bio-chemical problem to be addressed by the administration of medication. All that esoteric stuff took too long, so now we just jab people with needles to get the result we want more quickly.
We see much the same pattern in the recent developments around the trans debate, especially as it relates to the surgical and pharmaceutical interventions required for people to change gender. Using our exoteric-esoteric distinction, we can see that the gender change concept is all about the exoteric side of the equation. This includes innocuous things like the application of make-up and hairstyling, but has more recently incorporated interventions such as implants, injections, and other surgical procedures. Together with the correct application of socio-cultural identity markers like clothing, these enable a change of gender in the exoteric sense.
But much like modern economists write off the esoteric side of their discipline by simply assuming that humans have infinite wants, so too is the esoteric side of the trans issue almost completely ignored. The assertion is that an individual simply feels like a man or a woman, and that is enough justification to have medical professionals running for the scalpel and the syringe. The question that never gets addressed is, “What does it actually feel like to be a man/woman?”
There’s a song whose title indicates it might provide an answer to exactly this question. It’s called “Man, I feel like a woman,” and was a big hit for Shania Twain about twenty years ago. Could we find an answer here to the question of what it feels like to be a woman? Well, not really.
The best thing about bein’ a woman
Is the prerogative to have a little fun and
Oh, oh, oh, go totally crazy, forget I’m a lady
Men’s shirts, short skirts
Oh, oh, oh, really go wild, yeah, doin’ it in style
Oh, oh, oh, get in the action, feel the attraction
Color my hair, do what I dare
Oh, oh, oh, I wanna be free, yeah, to feel the way I feel
Man, I feel like a woman (hey!)
Now, we shouldn’t expect much from a pop song, but the absence of even a single definitive esoteric quality of womanhood in the lyrics is indicative of a larger problem. How could we know what it feels like to be a woman, or a man for that matter? If we can’t answer that question, how could we ever verify when somebody says that they feel like one or the other? How could anybody know for themselves what they feel like?
The reality is, we are living in a culture which simply doesn’t care about the esoteric side of life. The economist states that gender surgery is just another of the infinite number of humans needs that contributes to the GDP. The medical professional is more concerned with performing the operation correctly than whether its esoteric motivation is justified. There’s a giant black hole where the esoteric aspects of existence should be. To make things even worse, the existential consequences of this absence of esoteric understanding are then weaponised by politicians who pretend to care. That’s why we end up with identity politics and all the variations on wokeness, which has increasingly amounted to nothing more than the insistence that anybody should get whatever they want just because they want it.
This is the unholy alliance between capitalism and liberalism that has dominated our culture in the post-war years, and which has reached new heights of absurdity in the last few decades. Both have ended up in a position of assuming infinite wants which are qualitatively indistinguishable. Economics assumes it because it enables things to be measured monetarily. A dollar spent on one thing is the same as a dollar spent on any other thing. Liberalism assumes infinite wants because for somebody to assert that there really are qualitative differences would be “authoritarianism”. Both of these are predicated on a wilful ignorance of the esoteric side of life.
Now, still we haven’t really addressed the topic which motivated this series of posts in the first place, which is why economics and politics have become a religion. But this post has started to hint at the answer. It lies in the disconnection between the esoteric and exoteric aspects of existence. Whatever one wants to say about Christianity, it had an explicit model that accounted for both body and soul. Thomas Aquinas, for example, emphasised the harmonious relation between the esoteric and exoteric. The decline in Christianity as an active force in the culture has left science in charge. But science has no integral or holistic approach to the esoteric-exoteric distinction. In fact, as we have seen, science all but ignores the esoteric. Without any notion of esoteric truth, the esoteric side of our culture has become increasingly hysterical.
We’ll explore these themes more in next week’s post.