When the Empaths (I feel strongly that…) within society find themselves intensely opposed to what the Logicians (logic tells us that…) within a society are proposing, that society is facing an existential problem. The same is true when the situation is reversed. How long the society may have before it suffers serious, if not irreparable harm, may vary but is a function of the intensity of the conflict.
Why does such a conflict weigh so heavily for the health of a society? Because both our feelings and our intellect exist for the primary purpose of counseling us on what pathway we should take in any given situation. To fail to give adequate consideration to either aspect of our innate guidance systems does not bode well. That is true whether the “we” is more accurately an “I’; an individual facing an internal conflict between their feelings and intellect, or an entire society in which the people more oriented toward a feeling/emotional experience of the world are at odds with the people more oriented toward an intellectual/logic related experience of the world. Such a conflict on either the intrapersonal or interpersonal level is an expression of the plight addressed by the axiom: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” (Paraphrasing the Biblical reference Mark 3:25).
To put this in simpler terms, when the “warm and fuzzy” of an issue finds itself intensely opposed to the “cold and objective” of an issue, or vice versa, it does not bode well. Something significant is being missed (overlooked or ignored) most likely by the people on both sides of the issue. One thing that can be counted on if both sides are working in good faith, is that both sides of the conflict are, to a greater or lesser extent, grounded in reality. Another thing that can be counted on is that if those on both sides of such an issue would calmly sit down and the Logicians would try to empathize to understand the strong feelings of the Empaths, and the Empaths would try to see the reasoning of the Logicians, the chance for the best possible outcome becomes a possibility. In all likelihood when such an agreement is able to be worked out neither side is going to find their original position completely vindicated. However, neither side is going to find their original position completely invalidated either. The scales may tip more one way than the other, or not.
That being said, it is conceivable that one side may be completely right and the other completely wrong IF one side is not being completely honest. Or, if one side is attempting to further a covert agenda. If either side is pursuing special interests of some kind that also stands to confound the situation. Further, if the special interests are overly represented in the outcome, the outcome will not have the authenticity, the same potential, to produce the degree of favorable outcome it would have if that weren’t the case. If both the feelings and intellect, when expressed in authentic form, are working toward the wellbeing of the “whole”, any efforts to artificially distort those efforts, one way or the other, will distort and/or warp the authenticity and the effectiveness of the outcome. The “whole” will not be honestly nor optimally served. Whether the “whole” in question is an individual or a society.
For those who have been heavily indoctrinated in the pre-quantum physics illusion of separation and individualism, the proposition that a society may be a single interconnected organism and that all the citizens within that society are to a significant extent, as cells within a body, may seem subversive to some egocentric agenda or another. However, having said that, don’t conflate “interconnected” with “the same”. While all people share, to a greater or lesser extent, many common characteristics, we also have aspects to our authentic selves which, when taken altogether, are unique to us as individuals. That’s why over regimentation of a society is ultimately doomed to failure. But just as over regimentation does not create a viable society for human beings to live within, neither does anarchy. If we want healthy, viable societies, the recognition and honoring of the basic, mutually shared aspects of our lives is the bedrock upon which the basic structures of a healthy, vibrant, viable society, one which also provides room for the diversity so necessary to a healthy society, must be built.
When we know enough about ourselves and our mutuality, and we find the viable balance wherein we are honoring both the mutually shared aspects of our being and the more individual aspects, we will be a lot closer to being able to create the wonderful, viable lives within a wonderful, viable society that we have the potential to create. Until then we are allowing the illusions, the fears, the hatreds, the perversions, the distortions which in large part, if not in totality, are birthed by the lies and abuses which we have too often inflicted upon one another, control our present and our future.
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