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4:48

(In »Living religion versus deadly alienation«)

As long as the soul is kept separate from the body, it can be held morally responsible for any possible transgressions of the body. This explains why totalism is always followed by moralism, and with it, the possibility to threaten, persecute, imprison, monitor and terrorise people. If there is anything that totalism is constantly obsessed with, it is the thought of creating the perfect society, where the law is always adhered to and need never be changed. The totalist mind is thus obsessed with stasis and hates all forms of variability. The variability that can be observed in society and in nature is regarded as a regrettable anomaly which, with some good will and a suitable mix of remedial measures – that is, through criminalising the undesired behaviour that disturbs the statis fantasy – one should be able to wipe out. Totalism is an eternalism that refuses to be part of a dialectics with mobilism. It is, if we use McGilchrist’s metaphors again, the left cerebral hemisphere which runs amok devastatingly in the absence of the right hemisphere, and at its expense.