Many of the points you made can be paralleled by two distillations of
modern psychology: "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker and "The
Anatomy of Human Destructiveness" by Erich Fromm. What you are saying
in this video describes the result of the subconscious desire to either
deny or evade our mortality: culture and civilization. To make an
opinion that is compelling one must exaggerate one's point and thereby
imply that other viewpoints oppose their own. Additionally, Freud
discusses some of your ideas in his ending section of "Civilization and
its Discontents."
I would suggest studying D. T. Suzuki's, C. G. Jung's, and Alan Watts'
writings, and especially the book "Love's Body" by Norman O. Brown. In
these authors' works (and in the works they discuss) you can come to
clearly understand what is meant by such vague and indiscriminately
used bywords/phrases like "self-realization" and "self-transcendence."
In regard to Brown's book: The work's aphoristic style is neither
accident nor embellishment. It is central to Brown's project of
undermining the fiction of the continuous, self-identical ego and its
willed separation from the cultural quests and illusions out of which
it is formed and which it haplessly reinforces. But do not be misled by
this into thinking that the thought expressed here lacks philosophical
rigor. Brown had already proved, in "Life Against Death" and other
works, that he is eminently capable of sustained argument of the
highest degree. If you are attentive, you will see a developing
argument that sweeps through the entirety of human psychology and
culture to reveal the deepest underpinnings of our personal aspiration
and collective behavior. Brown's is an Orphic voice, calling us to a
necessary disillusionment that is also the wellspring of all happiness.
This is a work of incredible genius, one of the great moments of
perception in all twentieth century literature. If you grasp its point
you will inevitably be moved to a life of self-transcendence.
I would also suggest the physicist David Bohm's work on Holonomic Brain
Theory and his book "Thought as a System," wherein he writes:
What is the source of all this trouble? I'm saying that the source is
basically in thought. Many people would think that such a statement is
crazy, because thought is the one thing we have with which to solve our
problems. That's part of our tradition. Yet it looks as if the thing we
use to solve our problems with is the source of our problems. It's like
going to the doctor and having him make you ill. In fact, in 20% of
medical cases we do apparently have that going on. But in the case of
thought, it's far over 20%.
...the general tacit assumption in thought is that it's just telling
you the way things are and that it's not doing anything – that 'you'
are inside there, deciding what to do with the info. But you don't
decide what to do with the info. Thought runs you. Thought, however,
gives false info that you are running it, that you are the one who
controls thought. Whereas actually thought is the one which controls
each one of us.
Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they
are there naturally. This is another major feature of thought: Thought
doesn't know it is doing something and then it struggles against what
it is doing. It doesn't want to know that it is doing it. And thought
struggles against the results, trying to avoid those unpleasant results
while keeping on with that way of thinking. That is what I call
"sustained incoherence".
What I mean by "thought" is the whole thing – thought, felt, the body,
the whole society sharing thoughts – it's all one process. It is
essential for me not to break that up, because it's all one process;
somebody else's thoughts become my thoughts, and vice versa. Therefore
it would be wrong and misleading to break it up into my thoughts, your
thoughts, my feelings, these feelings, those feelings... I would say
that thought makes what is often called in modern language a system. A
system means a set of connected things or parts. But the way people
commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts
are mutually interdependent – not only for their mutual action, but for
their meaning and for their existence. A corporation is organized as a
system – it has this department, that department, that department. They
don't have any meaning separately; they only can function together. And
also the body is a system. Society is a system in some sense. And so on.
Similarly, thought is a system. That system not only includes thoughts,
"felts" and feelings, but it includes the state of the body; it
includes the whole of society – as thought is passing back and forth
between people in a process by which thought evolved from ancient
times. A system is constantly engaged in a process of development,
change, evolution and structure changes...although there are certain
features of the system which become relatively fixed. We call this the
structure.... Thought has been constantly evolving and we can't say
when that structure began. But with the growth of civilization it has
developed a great deal. It was probably very simple thought before
civilization, and now it has become very complex and ramified and has
much more incoherence than before.
Now, I say that this system has a fault in it – a "systematic fault".
It is not a fault here, there or here, but it is a fault that is all
throughout the system. Can you picture that? It is everywhere and
nowhere. You may say "I see a problem here, so I will bring my thoughts
to bear on this problem". But "my" thought is part of the system. It
has the same fault as the fault I'm trying to look at, or a similar
fault.
Thought is constantly creating problems that way and then trying to
solve them. But as it tries to solve them it makes it worse because it
doesn't notice that it's creating them, and the more it thinks, the
more problems it creates. (pp. 18–19)
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Empty eyeballs knew
That knowledge increases unreality, that
Mirror on mirror mirrored is all the show.
-- from "The Statues" by W. B. Yeats