2:0 - the world of 2 (3)

2 is strife and tension—a war between life and death, love and hate.  This war, in the world of 2, has no resolution until death.  We build necessary walls to control the war.  We form families, get jobs, seek lovers.  We have houses, cars, routines.  But families change and break apart.  Jobs end.  Lovers leave or we leave them.  We get bored of houses and cars decay.  The same routines no longer meet our needs.  The more one runs away from this war, the more one lives a living death, becoming like a lifeless battery encased in a useless shell.  But make no mistake—the war is still there, now lurking like a spy, now erupting like a warrior.  The degree to which we deny it in ourselves is the degree to which we deny it in the world.

The more we build tangible structures around ourselves to shield us from the tensions in the world of 2, the more we sever ourselves from the very blood of our existence.  But, also, the more we live only according to the rules of this war, the more we accept 2 as the only reality and live as beasts divorced from a larger destiny.

[

This war of 2 includes the struggle between subject and object — between myself (my needs, desires) and the world (other people, possessions, nature).  It also includes the struggle between myself and words, ideas and symbols.  The first is my struggle for survival and domination.  The second is my struggle for meaning.  For many, the first struggle is the second struggle.  In this case, I find meaning through my body (food, clothing, shelter, sex) and my domination over other people and things (status, possessions, security, sexual and relational conquests).

I experience myself as an utterly isolated individual in an ambiguous world.  To reduce my terror I try to append as many objects as possible to myself to add stability, continuity and security.  The more objects, the greater the odds that they will not all leave or collapse at once, ensuring a life which, while hardly trouble-free, at least has its major and minor catastrophes spread out in time.  This way of speaking is not a description of existence as it can be, should be or even is always lived.  It is only a description of a life lived solely from within the confines of the world of 2.  Today, however, the world of 2 dominates and many only live their lives, consciously or otherwise, building a wall of objects around themselves.