“The Problem With The Humanities”
Excerpts from John Lamb Lash audio talk February 16, 2021

The elimination of the humanities deprives you of an ancestral inheritance that could enrich and guide your life, and it cripples your capacity to act on your conscience. Reflect on that statement for a moment; the consequences of the elimination of the humanities.

Wiki-pedia definition of the humanities:
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance the term contrasted with divinity, that is theology, and referred to what is now called the classics, the main area of secular study at universities at the time. Today the humanities are more frequently defined as any fields of study outside of professional training, mathematics, and the natural and sometimes social sciences. The humanities include the study of ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, history, archeology, anthropology, law, politics, religion and art.

JLL’s definition of the humanities:
The humanities comprises a wide range of studies and practical approaches to life, practical and moral attitudes, that center on the question of what it means to be human. So the humanities are primarily concerned with investigating and questioning basic values and attitudes that determine what it is to be human, that determine the sense of humanity that we all have. I’ve spoken of the sense of humanity in reference to the symbiont equation. Everyone has a sense of humanity which has two modalities. One points to yourself: I have my sense of my humanity, or the humanity in myself. And the other modality points to others: I sense, or detect, or recognize the humanity in others. So if you can think of the sense of humanity as something that we all possess innately, then you can think of the humanities as the tools and studies to heighten that sense, to bring it into definition and eventually to propose behavior which is consistent with a sense of humanity that has been cultivated, a cultivated sense of humanity. That’s what I say the humanities are.

Let’s examine the syntax of these two statements, there’s two components:
1) The elimination of the humanities: well that begs the question, who’s eliminating the humanities? Or, are they being eliminated and why?
2) The other syntax concerns the inheritance, your ancestral inheritance. But who are you, and who am I talking about here?

Reflecting on these two components can be quite revealing. In order to receive an inheritance, usually it comes from the family… Your immediate blood relatives are the heirs to the entire ancestral line of your race…

Who are the ancestors of all the races of the world who produced the humanities, who are they? The answer is, they are the White, Aryan, Caucasian races, exclusively. No other race or civilization has produced the humanities. They are a unique inheritance from the White Caucasian races. Therefore the humanities are racist. And you guessed it, that’s one of the reasons why some people need to eliminate them.

It is a simple and brutal fact of reality in the world today that to eliminate the humanities is to tear out the roots of identity, morality, and spirituality that are inherent to the White, Aryan, Caucasian races. And therefore the elimination of the humanities can be considered as a form of intellectual genocide…

The elimination of the humanities damages (and cripples) your ability to act on your conscience. It doesn’t mean that you can’t act on it, conscience is a powerful element in the human psyche. But it means that you may not be able to act on it in an optimal way in a confident, strong, courageous and forceful way. That’s what the elimination of the humanities does. That is how deeply it damages human behavior.

Synedesis = Greek word for “conscience.” Surviving records from antiquity from the Pagan world of Greek and Latin literature present the evidence of the first known use of that word. It can be found in the play “Orestes” written by Euripides in 408 BCE, that’s 2,400+ years ago…

Previous to the definition of conscience and the discussion that ensued, which has been going on for 2,400 years in the Fifth Century in Athens, human beings around the world did not possess conscience in the way that you possess it today. They did not have that faculty. Conscience is like an app that was installed at that time through Greek tragedy and Greek philosophy. Synedesis is the gift to humanity from a particular race: the Hellenic peoples of the ancient world. And that is a very great fact, and it is irrefutable…

…Previous peoples had what is called “social conscience” or socially externally-framed conscience. The concept of Themis in Greek religion is an indicator of that type of conscience. But that’s not the kind of conscience that you have. Now you can apply your individual conscience to social matters, and you can take responsibility for social behavior, or even for the activities of others in the society to which you belong. In doing that you are applying synedesis to social events and situations. In the past, individuals did not have the unique subjective, inner reflective tool of conscience. They acted as social animals and as such, yes they had a form of conscience…

The conscience that was born out of Greek intellectualism in the Fifth Century BC is comparable to an app. So you have this faculty as a human animal called attention, the ability to pay attention… this faculty of attention is a multi-tasking tool called rigpa in the jargon of the Gnosis today. So your rigpa is your power of attention which is applicable in many ways. Now just imagine that this tool of attention has an accessory, it has a special feature… when conscience, synedesis, is attached to your attention, your attention functions in a unique manner. So conscience depends on the ability to reflect upon yourself and upon your own actions in a completely exclusional and private way. No one else is involved in those reflections. The app of conscience only works for you, you operate it, and it only works in relation to you until you decide to act on your conscience outwardly.

This internal self-reflective faculty of conscience can be called “synedic attention.” That’s an adjective I invented, synedic, S-Y-N-E-D-I-C. It is derived from the Greek root for the word conscience, synedesis. Synedic attention is what you use and operate when you are reflecting or contemplating a choice based on your conscience. And when you don’t use it, it’s neuter, neutral, the switch is off, and for many people the switch of conscience is permanently off.

One of the fascinating things about the way conscience works, and this is kind of an existential spin I’m putting on it here, is that you can’t really say you have it unless you’re using it. So when you use it, you use that app, then you are working conscience, you are using that tool, but when you are not using it, it’s as if you don’t have it at all. Can you see that? Sartre’ was someone who pointed out that particular odd feature of conscience in a number of his expositions, although I think I do better at delineating it than Sartre’ did, dare I say!

There are a couple of other really intriguing features of conscience…
… a really striking feature of conscience… another property of conscience is the less you use it the less of it is there to be used. It’s like a tool that atrophies if you don’t use it and exercise it, like a limb that atrophies. So, as I said, the elimination of the humanities damages the faculty of conscience in everyone.

You might recall that in Mythology 101 I pointed out that myth is racist, why? Because all myths in the world come from particular races, that lived at a particular time, in a particular land and spoke a particular language. Nevertheless the content of those myths as they survive, the stories, the narratives, the characters, and the things that can be learned from the myths of different cultures… are there for all races of the world to enjoy even though they were race-specific in origin.

The same is true of conscience. The specific origins of conscience are racial. It comes from the peek period of Greek philosophy and culture in the Fifth Century BC. But now that conscience has been installed, now that it is available for the human animal, it’s there for everyone who chooses to recognize what it is, and who wants to learn how to use it, and that’s what the humanities teach, how to use your conscience.

Now, you already know how to use your conscience, don’t you? I’m pretty certain that you do. So here the question is, just asking for a friend, do you want to know how to use it even better? That’s what the study of the humanities will give you. That’s what it will teach you.

In conclusion, I’ll refer to Nemeta. In a recent talk I gave on Nemeta, I said that the purpose of Nemeta, which is a modern Mystery school, is to restore and regenerate the humanities. It should be added that the framework and groundwork for doing that is firmly based in the Gnostic practice and the Sophianic way of life, that’s an innovation. That is a complete innovation in our time! To have a study of the humanities framed in that way is completely new and has never been done before. Although in the Mysteries there was a kind of preparation then for the Mysteries today. So perhaps now you will see why I consider it so important that I make that statement that when you go to Nemeta what you see are courses in the humanities, and that’s why you see them. Nuff said, and I’ll be seeing you in the Beauty to come!

Video Image: Parthenon with moon; Athens Greece