Question: Why is it that scientists such as William James and Freud are not seen as part of our generation?

Answer: Because recently our desires have begun developing very quickly, rising so rapidly that each generation simply doesn’t understand the previous generation; we can see this very clearly.

In the past children were like their parents. A son stayed at his father’s home and worked at the same place that his father worked. If a father was a blacksmith, then his son was a blacksmith too. If a father was a weaver, then so was his son. When the son got married, he built his home next to his father’s, or they lived under the same roof. This means that everything developed in a simple linear way.

Technologies like the printing press developed from one generation to another, but they didn’t lead to any great changes, they were only simple machines.

In the 20th century we were suddenly part of a technological breakthrough that released our inner desires. Indeed, our desires, our perspective of the world, changed rapidly with every generation in the previous century. If a generation referred to a whole lifetime in the past, then today it refers to periods of 15-20 years and in such a length of time everything changes completely!

People see me as a dinosaur, and it is really so since the perspectives and flavors of my childhood, in the 50’s, the previous century, are all ancient history today. Time is so condensed now that it is simply beyond the limits of modern man’s understanding. Besides, in my days there was a totally different approach to science, technology, and culture. We had to read a certain number of books, to know musical pieces, and art. You were not considered a man if you didn’t absorb everything that was created by humanity, if you didn’t visit about 20 museums. It was embarrassing if you didn’t know something or didn’t understand.

Today it isn’t so. Today all this is put aside from the beginning. If you have a modem and a computer, you don’t need anything. A person doesn’t process the centuries old human culture through himself anymore. There is a totally new approach. I’m not criticizing anyone; I am simply stating a fact.

The search isn’t from ancient times till our days since the time axis is suddenly broken and has become round and  integral. The world is different and so the knowledge of the past is useless in the present. For the first time we begin to experience this in every aspect of life: in our professions, our family life, etc.

I can’t read books that were written 20 or 30 years ago, which advised us in the past, because the advice is irrelevant today. So every couple of years there is a reformatting of all the experts in the field of medicine, science, and technology in everything. The world today has not only accelerated, but it is also locked in a round integral system.

Although those psychologists were great innovators, they discovered the linear egoistic development of humanity, so we cannot use their advice today. Freud based his theories on man’s sexual urges, but today they take on such a form, such a change that I doubt whether we can use them to solve the problems of modern man or modern society.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/24/12

Related Material:
Psychology As A Mirror Reflecting The Development Of Ego
Total Disappointment
The Bottomless Pit Of Desires

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