The principal forces which have driven society forward over recent centuries have been science and technology and their contribution to material progress. These forces have ridiculed intuition, treated the senses with suspicion, and are profoundly embarrassed by the very notion of the human spirit.
The banishment of part of human individuality and the individual sense of humanity gives people a sense of being diminished and deprived of any valid basis for self-esteem. The past is not another country, but is in us and of us. But this intangible essence explored by psychoanalysts and therapists is pushed to the margins. The widespread sense of disillusion, the resentment, the imprecise but powerful sense of individual yearning arises from this marginalization of the inner self. If individuals are stricken, by the false belief that there is a necessary connection between material well-being and human happiness, perhaps they are also diminished by the false belief that there is no necessary connection between ourselves and the natural world.
Society is reinforcing a personal sense of meaningless by continuing to use former images and styles which have little or no connection to personal experience. Images point to an absolute, unambiguous universe. Powerful Twentieth Century symbols, rites and mythologies point to shallow spirit journeys. A person experiences his perceptions and experiences as suspect. Few individuals have the courage to explore the depth of their lives so most live with little meaning or greatness.
The social forms that once created meaningful, reinforcing images and life styles no longer do so. Personal images and symbols are shallow and inadequate to express individual consciousness and the meaning of life. In an absence of situations where the meaning of symbols is acted out, people lack consciously appropriate perceptions, both of awe and of encounter with their own inner depths. They fail to recognize the greatness and significance of their own existence.