Chapter 8: God and the Genealogical Origins of Gender

There is a chasm between science and religion, that not only exists within society but within the heart of man. The enlightenment fractured man in two, and consequently we must contend with the ways in which this fracturing has polarized us. Darwinism is much like a lethal blow to claims of the bible existing as an accurate description of reality. The bible gives names to the first Humans as Adam and Eve, and the entity responsible for their creation is God. Darwinism however, shows us that there is much more cohesion between species than we could have previously thought, and that humans are not the direct descendents from an ultimate source. We now understand that there were many species between the ultimate beginning of life, and leading up to human life.

So then, because the bible has human characters, there couldn't possibly exist a reality where there was a "first human." Rather, there are features that make species distinct from one another. Therefore, Adam and Eve couldn't possibly exist. And this is literally true. However, if we view the bible from a symbolic psychological perspective, we begin to understand that the characters existing in the bible aren’t to be taken as literal people, but as personified pathologies by which one can begin to unfold themselves. Given that archetypes have an ancestral and therefore genealogical beginning, it is not actually too absurd to propose that darwinist ideas of evolution and religious symbolism may be compatible.

As the west has become hyper fixated on the subject of gender and sexuality, the subject itself has only become more ambiguous. It is not clear that science actually has all of the answers, as the subject is not solely determined by biology. The idea that one may contain a subjective experience in relation to their sex, is inherently a psychological and spiritual problem that may not have an exhaustive empirical explanation ever, or for at least quite some time. The modern problem of gender is inherently subjective, and therefore it should be delegated to the territory of phenomenology. Given that religion often addresses masculinity and femininity via characters and symbols, and given that religion itself is a microcosm of human psychology, it is likely to lead us in a more intuitive direction than any other course of understanding.

Being, Split

God is the most precedent Being. He is the source of Being, is entirely undifferentiated and is the most universal principle. God is the one that contains all, or can otherwise be understood as the all compressed into one. God takes precedence over space and time. In order for him to be the source of Being, he himself must not be bound by time or space, otherwise his existence will degenerate into infinite regress. Since he is undifferentiated and formless, he is necessarily omnipresent. When everything is compressed into one Being, there no longer exists any dimension, no axis for differentiation, and therefore God is precedent to form. Any form that emanates from God, is not itself Being, but instead contains Being, as form comes after God, but is still sourced from God. When substance forms Humans for instance, we get Human-Beings.

As it pertains to a vast majority of species, the process of reproduction requires a differentiation of the species. The species must be split into one that can carry seed, and one that can carry egg. Once the evolution of life hit a certain point during its entire genealogy where this feature of biology became genomically acknowledged as a superior survival strategy in nature, biology of the species became differentiated. This means that the species has split into two forms. Since Being precedes substance and form, and substance has been split, then so has Being.

We are fully aware that we have parents who are a pair of the differentiated forms who unionize to reproduce, and that our parent's have parents, and so on and so forth. We know that if we were omniscient, we could climb ourselves up the family tree and watch God create us ourselves. But unfortunately we must resign ourselves to what we know: we were sourced from our parents, and we know that each sequential set of parents have parents themselves, there is in fact a direction pointing towards an ultimate source. Even if the distance between your creation and the ultimate creation of life is infinite, it is still remarkable that it has a direction at all.

So genealogically, we have the spirit of the One and the All, who is the source of two states of Being: the One of All Masculine, and the All of One Feminine. The One and All, God, is comprised of both the One of All Masculine and the All of One Feminine, in an undifferentiated state. As life and species unfolded, the energy of Masculinity and Femininity became differentiated, as they became distinct forms through primary and secondary sex characteristics. These characteristics determined the early roles of the sexes in the group, which could be hypothesized to create a psycho-social differentiation within their psychopathology.

The All of One Feminine, is the collective pathological image that is inherited by each sequential generation of women. The flow of this libidinal energy is towards all-pointedness. The leading function of individuation within women is towards lateral descent of her attention into the unconscious. This is how one may begin to integrate their femininity. This is why femininity is typically associated with Yin.

The One of All Masculine, is the collective pathological image that is inherited by each sequential generation of men. The flow of this libidinal energy is towards single-pointedness. The leading function of individuation within man is towards developing consciousness through linear ascent of his attention towards a single point. This is how one may begin to integrate their masculinity. This is why masculinity is typically associated with Yang.

There can also be a symbolic association to these states of Being to autism and schizophrenia, where autism is an overabundance of the masculine temperament, and schizophrenia is an overabundance of the feminine temperament. Autism is typically a very linear form of functioning in relation to webs of information, whereas schizophrenia is typically much more lateral and loose with its associations. Whereas schizophrenics drown in their mystic interpretations, autistics suffocate under their own hyper-reflexive ego-consciousness. Neither can ever really breathe.

An individual with a dominating feminine embodiment, contains an internalized pathological feminine image. If we were to collapse the totality of feminine pathologies into one image, we may understand it as the ultimate source from which femininity emanates from. In the bible, we may consider the symbol of Eve as this primordial image, as she is canonically the first woman. She is created after Adam, and is separate from Adam, so Eve is a character that exists in a differentiated state. She is human, and is one half of humanity. She is the most precedent image of femininity to exist.

The same can be said with Adam, for individuals with a dominating masculine embodiment. Adam is the internalized image of the masculine pathology. He is the totality of masculine pathologies, and is the monad of masculine images. He is canonically the first man, is one half of humanity, and is differentiated from Eve. He is the most precedent image of masculinity.

Modern Contextualization

These dualistic forces may become polarized within an individual, especially in developed societies that have technologies to fill in the gaps created by sexual characteristics. The spirits of masculinity and femininity begin to return to an undifferentiated, formless state. For example, for much of the history of society, men occupied roles that demanded physicality, as male biology is differentiated from female biology. The biology of a man is usually much more capable of physical energy output, and so it would make sense for them to occupy a physically laborious job. This is especially true when considering that work is required for the thriving of a society, as societies are usually competing. But as automation has begun to fill these roles, men are becoming increasingly left without any social role that would lead to their masculine differentiation.

Consciousness permits Being. The conscious experience of this differentiation in the individual, creates a dualistic relationship that one must contend with. If one is sourced from an undifferentiated Being, but is biologically differentiated and yet still contains Being, one may become aware that they are unwhole. This is a process that creates ambiguity between the subject of the person, and the object of the body. As stated in chapter one, society is a collective effort to become more conscious, and does so by means of obtaining biological security. Now that societies have achieved a high level of biological security around the world, the more subjective nature of Being is propelled into the consciousness of individuals within these societies.

When the subject becomes fully aware that there is another half to their Being that is physically alienated from them, an integration process may begin. I think that to some degree, this is the metaphysical source of transgenderism in the west, perhaps in an immature form. I would also posit that one reason transgenderism is mocked is because it is a class issue. The ability to retreat into oneself and unfold the nature of their Being is a process that inherently requires some abundance of physical resources so that one can direct their attention towards such endeavors to begin with. Countries with less means and more oppressive governments develop the sentiment that westerners are privileged, weak, soft, and indulgent, because westerners have the means to detach from the dependence on their physical lives. This is a narrative the right also uses to mock individuals who explore topics of gender in the west, especially the “manosphere.” However true those claims may be, it's a real-life example of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.