The human race as a whole is simply a subordinate unit in some much larger organism altogether. In other words, it’s becoming more and more apparent, I think, to physicists and ecologists and scientists of various kinds, that the universe in which we live is not just some sort of dead chemical construction working on mechanistic principles, but that it is a living environment. And we’re beginning (very, very dimly) to see ourselves as members of an organism, a cosmic organism, much greater than our own lives.
Our conflicts exist to a very great degree because we feel ourselves not to be members of anything greater than ourselves. We feel ourselves, say, to be members of this nation or of that nation, we feel ourselves to belong to this creed or that creed, this ideology or that ideology. But we have absolutely—or people in general—have no consciousness of belonging to anything larger which transcends and synthesizes these various differences. Hence the intensity of the quarrels.
This sense of meaninglessness, of not belonging, is (as almost everybody recognizes) one of the great diseases of our time. We are so identified with small areas of life; so identified with a self defined as living within the bounds of a skin; so identified, say, with a particular family, with a particular community, township, county, or nation. And then, when we see the fate, the destiny, of this individual unit with which we are identified threatened, the bottom seems to drop out of life. And therefore we react to this threat with extreme anxiety, and this does not make for any kind of wisdom.
If we can feel that our existence—whether we succeed or whether we fail—has meaning at a higher level, we become identified with something beyond our individual selves, our families, our community, our nations, and our race. And if we can possibly feel that sort of identity, we then do not feel threatened, fundamentally, at the prospect of the annihilation of our race. And because we do not feel threatened, we don’t say to ourselves, “Oh, for God’s sake, let’s get it over with!” With that greater sense of identity we have more strength to stand the tension of uncertainty.
In all human situations, psychological strength is entirely a matter (it seems to me) of being able to support a tension to withstand an uncertainty. Not to have to rush into action in order to achieve a decision just to be able to stop oneself from being anxious. To be able to contain anxiety, to allow oneself to be anxious, and not to have to force a quick and easy solution, is the essence of strength.