Fulfilling the Synthetic World by Breaking the Dominion of the World: Knowledge and Skills for Being in the World but not of the World

 

Fulfilling the Synthetic World by Breaking the Dominion of the World 

Knowledge and Skills for Being in the World but not of the World

• Introduction

• Understanding The World: Cosmology, Psychology, and Redemption

• Spiritual Misapplication of “The World”

• The Synthetic World and the Dominion of the World

• The Incarnate Word and the World

• A Disordered World: Reciprocation of Synthesis and Dominion

• Modes and Tropes of The Synthetic World

• Morality of the Synthetic World

• The Scapegoat Mechanism and The Dominion of the World

• The Salve of Intimacy

• Managing the Influence of The World

• The Incarnation and Encounter: Methods of becoming a Sign

• Modalities of Intimacy: Attraction, Humility and Community

• Conclusion

Introduction

The last line in the Gospel of John reads, “There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.”  John’s Gospel is replete with double meanings and famous for using words on multiple levels. On the face of it, this last line reminds us that neither this book nor any amount of books can contain a complete historical account of the objective facts of Jesus’ ministry. On a wider level, it is a reminder that no amount of “record-keeping” can contain the phenomenon of humanity, Jesus or otherwise. On an even wider level, there is a play on words and the world. Jesus is the Incarnate Word that made the world in the beginning, the lesser (both as the world created by The Word and written words as pale imitations of The Word) cannot contain the greater (The word, Logos, of God). Lastly, “The World” hints at a theme in John's gospel that stands in contrast to who Christ is and what he brings to us. In this sense, The World cannot contain the Word, because it will not accept who he is.

The purpose of this treatise is to develop psycho-spiritual exercises to assist the Christian practitioner in the skill of being “in The World but not of The World” by extrapolating and analyzing the concept of “The World”. The skills will include both shifts in psycho-spiritual perspective and in social engagement. It is hoped that appropriation of these skills will better orient the practitioner to their environment and allow them to be more capable of finding their value through Christ rather than The World.

In the first section, we will define the World as used in the scriptures, honing in on its use as the world of human affairs. We will contrast this with the Hellenisticly synchronized tendency to see “The World” as the physical world, which is evil, as opposed to the spiritual world, which is good. We will proceed to distinguish between “The Synthetic World”, the self-defined world of human affairs that is generated by postlapsarian consciousness, and “The Dominion of the World”, which is a sub-dominion of what Paul calls “The Flesh”, that is, all spiritual vices and dispositions that must pass away like flesh. The Dominion of the World manifests when we find our locus of value laterally in The Synthetic world as opposed to transcendental in God’s proper order of creation. Lastly, we will consider how the incarnation offered redemption of The Synthetic World and freedom from The Dominion of the World.

In the second section, we will start by discussing the divisive nature of The World, noting the dualistic tendencies and the operation both socially and psycho-spiritually on the individual. Next, we will discuss the moral assumptions of the World and the tropes by which the world ropes us into believing we are acting virtuously when, in reality, we are operating according to the moral assumptions of The World. These tropes involved both misidentification of virtues and misprioritization of virtues. Next, we will illustrate how the interface of the Synthetic World and the Dominion of the World operates through a corruption of the scapegoat typology. Lastly, we will analyze the particular danger of our current context and the developing digital continent. We will also probe the synchronization of the spheres of the Synthetic World and the Dominion of the World and speculate on possible damaging psycho-spiritual as well as social impacts. 

In the final section, we will discuss skills for neutralizing the effect of the Synthetic World and the oppression of the Dominion of the World. We will start by dissecting the nature of attraction. We will note that attraction is an urge placed in us by the divine toward union. Next, we will distinguish between attraction whose purpose is communion, and attraction whose purpose is domination. We will go on to discuss how humility helps us attune our attraction to the goal of communion. Finally, we will note that immediate intimacy is the antidote to the ill effects of The World no matter one's status or authority.

Understanding The World: Cosmology, Psychology, and Redemption  

In this first section, we will seek to define the World as used in scripture and considered how the incarnation offers both redemption of The Synthetic World and freedom from The Dominion of the World. 

Spiritual Misapplication of “The World”

In the beginning, God creates the world, and when he is done he looks at everything he made and declares it “very good”. The world is made through God’s Logos (Word). In Greek philosophical terms, the word Logos means, among other things, order or plan. The Greek word for World used in John's Gospel means “That which is ordered”. In this respect, there is an analogical relationship between how the Father and Son relate (begetter and begotten or lover and beloved) and how the Logos and the World relate (orderer and that which is ordered). The World can mean any of three tiers of existence in John’s gospel. First is the entire cosmic creation, that is, the heavens and the Earth. Second, it can mean everything in this terrestrial realm, all Earthly existence. Lastly, it can mean human affairs, all of our social, political, or psychological maneuverings. 

So why does the Christian need to cultivate a spirituality of being “in the world but not of the world”? In John 17, Jesus prays to the Father, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.” The quote states that we do not belong to the World, but at the same time we are not to be taken out of the World. In fact, we are to be “sent into the World”. Since we are here in what most of us consider “the world” now, what can this mean? The first point to remember is that The World, as God created it, experienced the Fall. “That which is ordered” became disordered. In this sense, the paradisiacal perfection was lost and the incarnation is the event in history that begins the reordering of the world to a new eschatological perfection. The primary purpose of this treatise is to offer information and skills for participation in that reordering. 

We should probably start with the most common misunderstanding about the use of the term “world” in John’s Gospel. When John uses the term The World it is not simply the physical universe, but an indicator of the disorder as it exists. As we shall see, this disorder exists objectively and subjectively. The human ability to relate specifically to God is what defines us as the personal beings of creation. As such, humans should be first concerned with how the disorder manifests in us subjectively, and then how that disorder affects the way we relate to others. Over-focus on the external or objective nature of The World leads to a common misapplication of the dictum “in the World but not of The World”. 

Because of our off-base dualistic tendencies, Christians place negative connotations on the physical, which is neutral at worst, and glorifies God at best. The devaluation of the physical is a result of synchronization from Greek cosmology and leads us to think of The World as the physical world. But the heretical condemnations of gnosticism and docetism both instruct us against regarding the physical world as intrinsically evil. Even still, Christian history is filled with a brand of self-denial that bolsters the belief that the physical world is to be actively shunned rather than regarded as a sign of God’s glory. The most constant and illustrating example is the development of the Christian monastic tradition from hermeticism to communities that absolutely reject what they consider “The World” but turns out to be simply “pleasure”. This misdirected spirituality perfectly exploits the common Christian phrase to be “in The World, but not of The World”, basically boiling it down to, “you live here, but don’t have anything to do with it, in fact, despise it”.

  Following Augustine's interpretation of concupiscence, these spiritualities generally apply being “in The World but not of The World” by a methodology of denial of pleasure, which often leads to a denial of any joy in engagement of the senses. The World is interpreted as physical pleasures that entice and inflame desires and thus excite the disorder of passions and appetites overruling reason. Striving for self-mastery as an expression of asceticism can be spiritually helpful. But self-mastery is an auxiliary Christian skill, Christ saves us we do not save ourselves. Therefore “self-mastery” cannot be a primary goal. Our religion demands that we give our sense of mastery over to Christ. Furthermore, as much as it fosters a disdain for God’s created world, such an ascetic interpretation does damage to an integrated eschatological view. The physicality of the World or the pleasures it possibly provides is not what makes The World evil. To strive for self-mastery as a primary goal with a strategy of absolute denial of the joys of the senses is anti-Christan. When properly exercised, spiritualities that deny or detach must be transitory for the Christian. 

As we explored in the treatise Temperate and Sacrificial Detachment, Christian detachment exercises are adjustment maneuvers that detach from disordered attachments on our end, in order to reattach with a properly ordered relationship. 

The detachment that Christ preaches is instrumental to the reattachment, much like preparing materials or counting troops. It cannot be an end to itself. Christ and Buddha call for the same thing, absolute detachment, and renunciation of what they experience as “real”. But Christ’s detachment is strategic to the goal of interpersonal love. Buddha renounces quickly beyond love and even beyond the goal of self-extinction “as a goal”, which itself is a form of attachment. The Christian is called to abide in a paradox of detachment and attachment, of disenchantment and enchantment. Navigating this paradox takes a teleological calibration, the goal of which is perfect attachment, also known as love. 

The spiritual maneuver to remain in the World but not of the World is just such a tactic, a temporary spiritual maneuver of detachment meant to recalibrate the self toward the object (The World) in order to reattach with Love. The process of de and re-attachment involves the urge and attempt to heal any objective disorder, but the sphere most in our control is our own spiritual disorder. 

The Synthetic World and the Dominion of the World

Augustine rightly emphasizes the dangers of spiritual  “disorder” when regarding The World. One can reinterpret this disorder for effective practice on a broader scale with the simple shift of identifying that disorder as a disorder in the “locus of value”. Our “locus of value” is literally the location of where we definitively find our personal value or dignity. Augustine sees the disorder as a disorder of the Functional World and the operation of our soul working in destructive disharmony. Augustine interpreted the soul as disordered because the passions and appetites ruled over reason. His cosmology views that disorder as working synergistically with a disordered exterior world, which inflames our concupiscence from the outside. Our strategy here will not be completely different. We will first consider culpability internally as the psycho-spiritual disposition of value. A Locus of Value determination allows us the opportunity to shift our locus with practice and prayer.

Augustine is correct in understanding that there are two levels of postlapsarian disorder to consider when speaking of The World, an internal and an external. We will understand the external as involving the third definition of The World offered above, not the world of the heavens and the earth or simply the terrestrial creation, but The World of human affairs. Since it is constructed by humans we could call this the “Synthetic World”. The Synthetic World is wrapped in the disorder of Social Sin. In Paradise, the World of human affairs found its value calibrated toward the transcendent. With the fall, we see humans work collectively to self-define, self-determine, and combat God. In as much as we create closed self-referential systems as humans, we are fashioning ourselves the orderers, opposing the order of the Logos. We define the World as “that which is ordered” according to our own making. It is a character of social sin that these definitions become realities for us and have effects on our lives, our manner of thinking, and even our souls. As we shall see, the Synthetic World, as ordered in isolation from divinity, becomes oppressive and cannibalistic. 

The internal level of disorder regarding The World is at the level of a personal experience of concupiscence. This is a spiritual reality we will call “the Dominion of the World” in that it is “The World” as it has dominion over our psyche. Because of the disorder of our souls, our passions and emotions are not in tune with the locus and quality of our own inherent value. We know that this locus and definition come from an external source. The truth is we receive our dignity, and our value from God (the true external source of our value) as a free gift. We are beyond any constructed metric of value that The World accords. Properly ordered we understand that our locus of value is God and we understand this through his gift of life to us. A well-ordered locus of value looks “up”, to the transcendent God. Consequently, how we value all of the things we encounter also looks upward to the transcendent God. Physical pleasures are not evil distractions if we value them as gifts of God, enjoying them with gratitude for his glory. Our value of others also looks upward, and by this, we learn to meet the image of God in them, just as we seek to encounter it in ourselves. The Christian seeks a locus of value that is transcendent and uses that transcendence to calibrate how they find value in the entirety of the cosmic order. 

Unfortunately, too often we look laterally into The Synthetic World (of human order rather than divine order) for the locus of our value. When John’s gospel speaks of The World, a solid interpretation understands The World as this dominion of value, as a draw that shifts our locus of value from the transcendent to a lateral orientation. Linguistically, the difference can be seen by semantic consideration of the disparate connotations of “worth” and “dignity”. Human dignity connotes personal value and is used by catholic teaching to talk about the value God places on us and thereby the value we should afford each other. Dignity calibrates charitable relationships, and by its calculations urges self-offering for the benefit of the other. The word “worth” connotes economic calculation of value. That is to say, it is a metric for the fair exchange of goods and services in the world. The Fall instilled concupiscent disorder in our souls that makes it near impossible for us to operate according to divine justice, operating on agapic mutual self-giving. As a crutch, a survival technique, or out of our own pride, we developed a shadow sense of justice, reached through mutual agreement and philosophical speculation, understanding it as “fair exchange”. As barter developed into currency, the concept of “worth” became objectively measurable. These orders of value were not created as part of the transcendent order, but laterally as part of The World. 

Under one of our interpretations in this treatise, “The World” consists of the systems we create to manage our affairs when we presume the absence of God. They are lateral systems that operate according to metrics, modalities, principles, prescriptions, and legislations we fabricate after our rebellious spirit left us alienated from God. That does not make them irreformable. Post-incarnational existence is a struggle to fulfill them by a proper cosmic order. But without being in tune with the true and divine cosmic order, they are haphazard pale imitations of that order, at best only partially participating in the glory of divine order. At worst, they are a social sin; the social manifestation of our corporate rebellion in how we seek to usurp the role of the Logos and order the World to our own synthetic design. 

When an external locus of value orients laterally as opposed to transcendently, we both internalize and fundamentally externalize these methods of value in a feedback loop. Our own devised order becomes the primary way we see the world. A primary prioritization that is laterally oriented is the spiritual disposition of “The World” as a dominion in our psyche. With this type of interpretation, The World of John’s Gospel is a spiritual orientation, under the umbrella of The Flesh in Saint Paul’s letters. Saint Paul uses Greek assumptions of the spirit/flesh //mortal/immortal distinction to frame spiritual attributes. “The Flesh” consists of dominion of those spiritual dispositions that must pass away, as opposed to those that are swept up in the Eternal God and live. The World would be an example of one such a spiritual dominion. John works off this same type of imagery in 1 John 2, “Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life is not from the Father but is from the world. Yet the world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever.” Understanding The World as a spiritual reality that holds dominion over us is important because living “in the World, but not “of the World” is a spiritual maneuver.

Previous to the incarnation of the Logos, it was impossible to operate outside The World in each of these manifestations; social construction and personal locus of value. This is why salvation history and revelation up to this point consists of systems such as The Law, and The Nation, two systems that command terrestrial allegiance but are divinely inspired. We will look laterally to find our value and these help by baby steps to orient us to the transcendent. These structures are fabricated in order to facilitate the loss of intimacy that came with the Fall. 

Consider, for example, Law. By law I mean systems of rules to engage socially. It could be anything from civil law on the national level to simple assumptions of  “polite society” in a parlor. Law’s purpose is to help us engage uniformly in situations especially when we don’t have enough familiarity with the person we are engaging with to be adaptable, considerate, and trusting. At an interpersonal level, the more familiar you are with a person, the more intimate you are, the less applicable any systematic application of law is in your relationship. This leads us to why the Law is considered a pedagogue in Paul’s assessment. It is not an end in itself but is a matrix that facilitates intimacy. Once intimacy is achieved Law should fade in importance. With the incarnation, God is demonstrating perfect intimacy with us. The question is, are we seeking to reciprocate?   

Most of the times that Jesus speaks about The World in John’s gospel he is orienting his descent. This orientation begins with the prologue where the Word dwells among us, and is perfectly manifest in John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  With the Incarnation of the Word, Divine order, based on the true cosmic order of personal agapic self-gift, entered reality. As a gift it does not destroy The Synthetic World, that is the systems we created, but rather, redeems, fulfills, and sanctifies them. Along with that, Christ offers us the opportunity to recalibrate our locus of value to the transcendent. Thus The World passes away in 2 respects. First, any true disorder in the manner of a terrestrial system such as oppression or objectification must pass away. Apart from that, The World, as a spiritual disposition we possess, that is The World as our locus of Value, must also pass away. “I tell you, brothers, the time is running out. From now on, let those having wives act as not having them, those weeping as not weeping, those rejoicing as not rejoicing, those buying as not owning, and those using the world as not using it fully. For the world in its present form is passing away.” (1 Cor 7:29-31) These two simultaneous passings are how we make sense of our active call for Social Justice as well as our passive requirement to be in the World but not of The Word. 

The Incarnate Word and the World   

With the Incarnation of the Word of God, The Synthetic World as ordered by human concupiscence has begun a process of redemption along with each of us individually. As John the Baptist says,  “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” We respond to this redemption by the destruction of the Dominion of The World as it infests in our souls and with the struggle for social justice to fulfill the redemption of The Synthetic World that we organized and fabricated through our social calibration as a result of the Fall. Things such as Law, Economy, and Nation, can become sanctified in as much as they are used as expressions of self-giving love by those who have thrown off the Dominion of The World in their own soul. 

When the Word of God spoke creation into being, what was spoken was a sign of God’s love. In sacramental theology, a sign is a symbol that affects what it communicates. Creation is the macro example of a sign of God’s Love. It is the matrix in which we experience, offer, and reciprocate love laterally and transcendently. Though the operable sign of creation is love, the Fall makes the sign dysfunctional from our end. Because of original sin, we have a hard time reciprocating. We are self-centered and thereby blind to the sign of creation. Because of the Fall, we would rather make our own “world”, that is, the Synthetic World. The very existence of such a world let alone our conscious allegiance to it is an affront to God’s self-giving Love. This shows the power of the famous passage John 3:16-17, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”  The stark reality of God’s love and the nature of the sending is also made depressingly clear in the setup of Luke’s Gospel.

  

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town.

 And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

 

For the Scripture scholar, this passage offers valuable data for historical circumstances. For the joyful celebrator of Christmas, it speaks the context of hard times that quickly culminate in a peaceful scene of angels and sheep. But to one who contemplates The Synthetic World, it is the overture of struggle that runs from prenatal to Christ, to Christ crucified. A bureaucratic governmental maneuver that sets the circumstances of the incarnation, which feeds directly into the political shuffling between temple guards, Roman soldiers,  chief priests, local king, and imperial procurator, that leads to his execution. 

These are the artificial boundaries and rigidly applied numbers of the Synthetic World that bear down on our lives. As a parent, one can generate true sympathy for this oppression in the most menial way when your child is sick, and X number of days is allotted for their time off school, and simultaneously X number of days is allotted for your time off work. There are projects that demand the generation of numbers in a bank account and projects that must be translated to the numbers of a GPA. There is public judgment of work ethic. All of these uncaring systems weigh in the mind of the parent, “I can't miss work! They can’t miss another day of school!”  Meanwhile, a child is simply sick, life’s way of forcing rest. Yet, no rest is given. In Luke, the opening scene is a mass migration so that The World, manifest as Empire, can organize its numbers, that is, collect taxes and recruit soldiers. 

The hard traveling is a hopeless acceptance that this system will have its way or it will punish. Joseph will pay, by coin or by a child who serves. And there is no care for the fundamentally human and natural beauty of God generating life, a gift beyond measure. There is no concern for what care that gift requires. Instead, mass migration causes chaos at the macro and micro levels, such that there is no accommodation for them when they arrive. Such haphazard planning and forced adherence to contradiction is a hallmark of the Synthetic World. It is often a damned if you do, damned if you don’t system promulgated by a host of co-oppressed who fear to question the operation and demands of the system. It is not surprising that levitical law strictly forbids such census taking.

For our modern example, it is a common strategy of parents to dose Ibuprofen at drop-off and cross their fingers for the best result. The kid suffers all day at school, the parent suffers at work because of their love for their child, and the school suffers because disease spreads. If in the end, the drugs don’t work, the parent is judged by multiple systems for trying to sneak past the rules, whereas if they had stayed home, they would have been judged for mismanagement of metrics. This cruel set of multiple competing and self-consuming systems is the “World” that God loves and wants to redeem. Our modern example is a benign problem of middle class America. Move to the working poor and the navigation becomes impossible, move to the indigent, and the navigant is left neglected, judged, and crushed. The latter level was the depth of Christ’s love, an indigent crushed by the Synthetic World..

This is the world that God wants to redeem and calibrate to functionality. But that functionality is not a complete overhaul. It is a realignment of significance. The signs of creation that affect God’s love in Eden are gone. The World must be engaged as it is in a way that effects God’s love and humanity’s response. 

With the Incarnation of the Word, the functional system of cosmic significance can finally be rekindled from the human end. Jesus Christ as true God and True man reconnects the circuit of love and reestablishes the effective sign of creation. In Him the circuit is complete and through him, we can access God’s Love because as a sign through human nature, Christ is accessible to us.

Because of the incarnation, this dysfunctional world can be sanctified and in turn glorify God. All of the self-referential systems and tropes we have created absent the circuit of Love and based on The World can now be bound to and reconfigured in Christ. This changes the operational manner of the sign of Love over the space between Eden and the Eschaton. The sign operates differently between the two because the latter has gone through a process of differentiation and reintegration. That process takes place in all of humanity through our individual struggles as we exercise our will to conform ourselves to Christ through his grace. This struggle includes throwing off the Dominion of The World 

In order to cooperate with the grace that Christ brings, knowledge is helpful. When it comes to The World, and the ability to be “in the world but not of the World”, it is imperative to be able to distinguish between the world as the created sign of God’s love and The World as a sounding board for our unhealthy self-centered pride. With a framework for understanding the psycho-spiritual Dominion of the World, we can seek to glorify God through created reality 

In this section, We defined the World as used in the scriptures and honed in on its use as the world of human affairs. We contrasted this with the Hellenisticly synchronized tendency to see “The World” as the physical world, which is evil, as opposed to the spiritual world, which is good. We went on to distinguish between “The Synthetic World”, the self-defined world of human affairs that is generated by postlapsarian consciousness, and “The Dominion of the World”, which is a sub-dominion of what Paul calls “The Flesh”, that is, all spiritual vices and dispositions that must pass away like flesh. The Dominion of the World manifests when we find our locus of value laterally in The Synthetic world as opposed to transcendental in God’s proper order of creation. Lastly, we considered how the incarnation offered redemption of The Synthetic World and freedom from The Dominion of the World.

In the next section, we will start by discussing the divisive nature of The World, noting the dualistic tendencies and the operation both socially and psycho-spiritually on the individual. Next, we will discuss the moral assumptions of the World and the tropes by which the world ropes us into believing we are acting virtuously when, in reality, we are operating according to the moral assumptions of The World. These tropes involved both misidentification of virtues and misprioritization of virtues. Next, we will illustrate how the interface of the Synthetic World and the Dominion of the World operates through a corruption of the scapegoat typology. Lastly, we will analyze the particular danger of our current context and the developing digital continent. We will also probe the synchronization of the spheres of the Synthetic World and the Domaoin of the World and speculate on possible damaging psycho-spiritual as well as social impacts. 

In the final section, we will discuss skills for neutralizing the effect of the Synthetic World and the oppression of the Dominion of the World. We will start by dissecting the nature of attraction. We will note that attraction is an urge placed in us by the divine toward union. Next, we will distinguish between attraction whose purpose is communion and attraction whose purpose is domination. We will go on to discuss how humility helps us attune our attraction to the goal of communion. Finally, we will note that immediate intimacy is the antidote to the ill effects of The World no matter one's status or authority.

 

The Compounding Disorder of The World: Reciprocation of Synthesis and Dominion 

In the first section, we sought to define the World as used in scripture and considered how the incarnation offered redemption of The Synthetic World and freedom from The Dominion of the World. In this section, we will illuminate the operation and synthesis of the Synthetic and Dominion of the World.

Modes and Tropes of The Synthetic World

The World is a synthetic reciprocation of disorder between our creative minds and how they collectively manifest in the external world. In modern parlance, one easy way to frame the genesis of the trope is the concept of “they”. We can see how “The World” is a cannibalistic system in the way that the plural pronoun is often colloquially used as a call to conformity and at the same time a mechanism of alienation. 

“They say...” as a locutional starter implies a heavily authoritative collective reality that the listener and/or the one spoken of is not in accord with. This turn of phrase is evidence of a general alienation hinted at in the Fall story. It demonstrates our anxiety that some are not in conformity with a general truth about the common order of the world that everyone else seems to have. Meanwhile, the speaker gets to tribalize according to what they feel is something greater than themselves. This desire to align with something greater is a lingering desire of Original Justice, where our locus of value resided in the Transcendent God. The use of “they” seeks to satiate this inborn desire by operation of the Synthetic World.

“They” can also be used in an exclusively alienating way that excites tribalism. In the former mode, “They” are the group one is aligned with (or one should be aligned with). In this latter scenario, “They” are the enemy. “THEY are not better than animals” “THEY don't deserve our help” etc. In the former, the emotive evocation is a longing for communion. In the latter, it is an accusatory vitriol of alienation.

These two houses of They are “The They of Us” and “The They of Them”. Us vs Them is a primal division that every postlapsarian human has grafted into their mind. The Synthetic World creates a great host of structures that feed into our notions of each, nation, political groups and ideologies, social or cultural causes, classes & castes, interests & alignments (ex: opposing sports teams or jocks vs nerds), religions, and on and on. These structures run from macro to micro, from nations to high school friend cliques. 

The development of these structures even infects the Church by generating a whole set of Catholics with qualifications. A popular spectrum at present would be the “Trad-Cath” “Left-Cath” factions. But all through history, there have been many examples whether it be Antiochian vs Alexandrian, Scotists vs Thomists, or Scholastics vs Humanists. Any appreciator of Paul’s letters knows his line in 1 Cor 1:11, “For it has been reported to me about you, my brothers, by Chloe’s people, that there are rivalries among you.”  This is followed by a long tirade demonstrating the painful us vs them factions in Corinth. The author of the Johannine texts shows “The World” as They by bifurcating his deployment of The World. In the Gospel, it is clear that “The World” is operating outside the confines of the church and against it. However, in the Johannine letters, it is clear that “The World” is operable in the Church itself in the form of both mindsets and factional divisions.

 “The Church” itself can become “The World” when the Dominion of the World applies the metrics of the World to the Church. If this happens collectively within the Church, ultimately it creates a hermetically sealed  “Synthetic World” within the ecclesia that is not exactly the Fullness of the mystical body. Usually, such iterations of the Synthetic World focus on a set of virtues or teaching, but in a manner informed by the Synthetic World. Then the “Us vs Them” takes root and factions within the church begin. As James says, “Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from? Is it not from your passion that makes war within your members? You covet but do not possess. You kill and envy but you cannot obtain; you fight and wage war. You do not possess because you do not ask. You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. Adulterers! Do you not know that to be a lover of the world means enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wants to be a lover of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” When “The World” manifests as the Church it is one of the most dangerous manifestations because the divisive parties each see themselves as members of the Church against the World as exemplified in John’s letters. This becomes a self justifying reason to tear their enemies apart. But as we shall see, this attitude itself, being against one’s enemies, is indicative of the Dominion of the World.

Paul’s desire is a binding in Christ where there is no division, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  Of course, this doesn't mean that these categories such as nationality, craft, bio-sex or gender must disappear. But it does mean that any alienation and division that results from these categories must. In order for this to happen we must break the Dominion of the World in our soul, allow Christ to conquer and destroy it, and bring healing.

That domain operates by feeding into alienation and division. The chief operation of the Dominion of the World is an assumption of the power of the Synthetic World. Again we place our locus of value externally in the structures of the Synthetic World. By a complex psychological development, each of us as individuals will find our own value or seek validation from certain structures and reject others, creating our very own unique set of “Us vs Them” criteria. These criteria work well as long as we keep the structures fairly separate. The problem is that they are not isolated. They are all prideful fabrications applied to God’s good creation. As we encounter other people with differing alignments regarding structures, it is confusing to us that we share commonalities (we share Us) yet at the same time we divide in other aspects (we regard each other as Them).

The disordered cannibalistic nature of “The World” is that both the Synthetic World and Dominion of the World are seeking to completely order the World according to prideful concupiscence. The Synthetic World socially aligns and realigns constantly according to the Dominion of the World in the powerful of society. These powerful influencers over Synthetic Worlds make manifest in their domains of authority. The more macro-effecting the influential person, the more structures they fashion together toward a totalitarian Synthetic World. At the same time, their synthesis will clash with other powerful agents’ Domain manifested as a Synthesis and one will be destroyed. None will ever gain the totalitarian completion, because the (even incomplete) structure is made of a host of Dominions of the World that are varied and incompatible. Each personal Dominion seeks both validations of the structures of the Synthetic World, and to create or order such structures. You may create a powerful synthetic structure, but the dominions of that structure will never align. You may give yourself over to a very comfortable Dominion, but the Synthetic Structures will demand that you change in order to conform.

Revelations 13 shows the complex relationship between Dominion and Synthetic Structure in the form of two beasts, one that rules, and a second that promotes the rule of the first. These can (possibly) be interpreted as the Synthetic World (that rules) and the Dominion of the World (That promotes the rule via a lateral locus of value). Each is controlled by the Dragon (The Devil). The Dragon always seeks to encircle and enclose, creating a hermetically sealed whole, but always ends up eating its own tail (The Ouroboros). These three demonstrate a sort of anti-Trinity and facilitate one of the most powerful tropes of The World, the struggle of Good against Evil.

Proper Christian beatitude loves the enemy. The World, as synthetic and as a dominion, hates the enemy. That is the trope of alienation. In this very trope, one can see the corrupt good; a longing for harmony and unity of all reality. The prideful corruption is that the harmony and unity longed for is “my way” as the individual falls prey to categories of the Dominion of the World, or as Humanity orders structures of the Synthetic World. The trope of the supreme macro is the idea that there is a struggle against good and evil, and we must destroy the evil. Revelations 13 seems to absolutely validate this trope, which is why the trope is so dangerous. The weakness comes in how The Dominion of the World convinces us that we accurately see where the lines of Good and Evil are drawn, that we accurately understand what it means to “reject” evil, and that we use accurate methods to destroy it.

At the most basic level, we can fall prey to a Dominion of the World that recognizes and finds locus of value in a Synthetic Structure of the nation which demonizes a “They”, another nation, as evil to be destroyed. We assume we are correct in the demonization, we assume the hate we feel and the desire to destroy them is an appropriate experience of desire for harmony and peace, and we assume that killing “Them” until they see things our way is the appropriate methodology for conquering evil. When put so plainly, this sounds abhorrent, ridiculous, and obviously unchristian. But it happens all the time, even in Christian Nations.

This brings us back to our most uncomfortable and complex manifestation of this trope, when the structures at odds are internal to Christianity, through theology, spirituality, discipline ect. In this case, we assume our way of seeing or practicing is the only correct way, and other variants are evil, especially if they are of another denomination. We feel justified in the wrath we experience welling up in us when we are presented with examples of these variants. The only response is to eradicate those variants, not necessarily by killing them (yet…), but by vitriolic attack “for their own good”. There is a different emotion of attack and sense of urgency for those in outside denomination and those within one’s own denomination. This speaks to the differing emotive experiences along the spectrum of macro to micro factionalization. 

One beast, within, draws us to the other without in order to destroy that self-same beast “over yonder”. Meanwhile, the beast without seeks to overrule and destroy the beast within by remaking it according to its own image. To complicate things more, the Beast “over-yonder” is the beast without, just in a different guise. All these maneuvers are happening so that a great beast, The Dragon, can subsume the world in a totalitarian order hermetically sealed off from the divine. But this will never happen, because the urge is for unity, but the foundation is division, not unity and a house divided against itself cannot stand. The World in all these operations does not allow for Christian compassion or empathy. There is no urge to encounter the other as unique, edifying, and interesting, except in as much as they help us impose the Dominion of the World in our psyche onto the structures of the Synthetic World.

The Dragon uses the longing for divine harmony ordered by the Logos, to misdirect toward his longed for hermetically sealed totalitarian system. The Devil’s maneuver is a cosmic dualism of good and evil, where evil is hated and destroyed. This tribalization on all levels is the World’s ultimate downfall. There is a dichotomous absolutism of value where each system demands every competing system bow to it through subjugation or sacrifice of other structures. Again, the seed of destruction lies in the fact that “each system” ultimately boils down to every individual Dominion of the World.

All of these mutually combative levels can only be solved by union in Christ. Propper Christain's cosmology and ontology recognize that Evil does not “exist”. It is either a lack of existence where goodness should exist or a disorder of existing goodness. Things are not evil. People are not evil. Evil is not to be hated as a thing, it is to be engaged as a lack or disorder and this engagement must be a loving task. The maneuver for this is not destruction, but facilitation of growth and development, or reordering. The locus of value for both ends of the developmental healing relationship should be transcendent, not terrestrially lateral or self-referential. Love that seeks such healing happens under the unifying principle of the Mystical Body of Christ. As a member, you are not the body, therefore it is not to be assumed that you are the orderer. It is also to be considered that there are many parts all functioning in harmony, and the individual does not set the order and function, nor even necessarily understand the harmony. We all strive to help each other function fully and appropriately but trust that the head of the Body, Christ himself, facilitates the whole. 

Morality of the Synthetic World

“[Jesus] said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are addressed as ‘Benefactors’; but among you, it shall not be so. Rather, let the greatest among you be as the youngest, and the leader as the servant. For who is greater: the one seated at table or the one who serves? Is it not the one seated at table? I am among you as the one who serves.”  This is the illumination of Christian power dynamics. The first are the last. Christian power dynamics can be easily contrasted with the mode of the world, which consists of objectification and domination.

The core moral methodology of the World is debasement through tribalization rather than harmony and complementary compatibility. The morality of the world operates by a moral dualism that sees camps as good and evil or people as better and worse. It then defines an objectified “other”. The objective other may be a person or groups of people. By such objectification, the World sizes the object up as a pro or con to be utilized as an asset or combatted as an enemy. This maneuver is how the Dominion of the World operates on our mind and how the propaganda of the Synthetic World operates on our perception. The divisions and denominations of the World are a large part of what Saint Paul is combatting in the letters. We comb Paul’s letters and extrapolate teachings he implies concerning Christ, ecclesiology, and moral action. But the overall lesson of his letters is one of how division operates and destroys the church. Every once in a while we can even see it operating in the apostle himself beyond his conversion. Old habits die hard.

The divisive objectification of The World is a foundational tactic that leads to demonic misery. The most “pagan” of humanity simply accept it at face value. In their eyes, the strong dominate the weak and enemies are to be enslaved or destroyed, not loved. Augmenting this outright pagan worldview are an even more sinister cloaking strategies of the World that make it hard to live the gospel because of how the Dominion of the World orients our locus of value. These strategies involve a corruption, convolution, or disordering of virtues toward a divisive end. The synchronicity between the Dominion of the World orienting us toward the operation of the Synthetic World leads us to believe we are virtuous, when in fact we are possessed by the seven deadly sins and living by the dictates of The World. By these operations of The World, we use virtues to chest thump against our perceived enemies and brutally dominate those we have objectified as assets while seeking approval of those influencers who we look to as a lateral locus of value.

Deception of The World corrupts our understanding of virtue in two ways, misidentification, and mis-prioritization. The first is when virtues are redefined or bastardized by the Synthetic World as the Dominion of the World urges us to the exercise of “virtue” in order to dominate or seek inappropriate value in ourselves. A prime example of such misidentification is the offbase use of “Fear of the Lord” as a Gift of the Spirit. This gift is the most wondrous of the seven and therefore the most abhorrent to the World. Fear of the Lord is an absolute transcendent oreinter and thus the World seeks to bend it to a lateral focus and thereby render it useless to the Christian and extremely useful to the World.

“Fear” was appropriately rebranded as “Wonder and Awe of the Lord” as a result of the absolute effectiveness of The World's misdirection concerning its use. The World operates by domination, which uses fear to coerce. Wonder and Awe don’t garner respect by repellent fear but by desirous curiosity and inspiration through harmony to willful devotion. But those whose minds are overthrown by the Dominion of the World have very much created a Synthetic World of domination by propagating a “fear of the Lord” based on coercion and repellant enslavement. This operation of the Synthetic World is used to keep objectified assets in line, because to one whose mind is overthrown by the Domain of the Word, “the Other” is always a terrifying power that is out to destroy you, not a beautiful mystery-begging encounter. Awe of God operates on the Transcendent nature of God and thus, as always “other”, God is seen as terrifying by the Synthetic World because God cannot be controlled. The Synthetic World makes use of that mystery as a fear tactic to impose its own order. “Do what we say, or God (who is terrifying) will get you”. This is the opposite of the gospel, where, in fact, we want God to “get us” and such getting is freedom from oppression. The freedom to truly love best suits our circumstances.

The inversive redefining of virtues is the least impressive distortion tact of The World. With a little study and a little trust, it can fairly easily be neutralized. More sinister is the use of expressions of virtues that are poorly prioritized. This maneuver is more difficult to unravel because the disinformation involves truly good things and how they are expressed. The most vulgar of these would be simple cultural norms that are touted by the Synthetic World as summative sanctifying moral virtues. 

An example of this can be seen in Mark 7:1-13. In this passage, people seek to divide Jesus and his followers from his listeners and align them with their own group by pointing out a cultural norm that is useful, but not at all moral, “Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?”  It can't be doubted that washing your hands before you eat is a healthy practice. But they are using it to align Jesus’s followers with themselves and against him. At this point, a good cultural practice has become an albatross, because even though the hygienic and cultural effect is good, it is being used to divide people from Christ. Jesus responds, “ “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.’ You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” Again, it is difficult because it is good to wash your hands, but not worth cutting yourself off from Christ over.

Worse is when the tradition is simply cultural, yet completely morally (and hygienically) neutral. A current and almost constant example of this is the discourse concerning “modesty”. Modesty is a cultural communication that signals the appropriate mutual expression of, and building of intimacy. Every postlapsarian culture has such customs. However, the manner of operation is widely variable. Countless spheres of the Synthetic World have diversely defined expressions of modesty in a beautiful and harmonious array. Chapter 7 of Revelations recounts the multi-cultural harmony of the Eschaton. This is easily contrasted with the divisive dissection of cultures by The World. One operating by a Synthetic model and influenced by the Dominion of the World will seek to impose their culture's view of modesty from the outside upon people who already mutually communicate effectively otherwise rather than appreciating that their manner of communication is internally valid. The deception of the World offers a sense of superiority by treating the dependent expression as the fundamental virtue. According to The World, the manner of expression is more important than the goal of appropriately communicated intimacy. This is so pervasive that most people would not naturally connect modesty and intimacy, because modesty is identified negatively as a divisive rubric that separates, not positively as a manner of healthy engagement.

The most sinister manner of inversion is when a legitimate virtue is exalted above a superior virtue or worse becomes the lens through which all virtue is measured. An excellent example of this is self-discipline. Exercise of will as discipline such as moral exercise or fasting is necessary for a Christian, but not sufficient. Ultimately, we are a religion of salvation, not self-mastery. Also, we are a religion that seeks the whole through love rather than division. Given the fundamentals, whenever our own exercises of self mastery dominate our sense of salvation, we are rejecting the greater for the lesser. We must rely on Christ. Whenever our own sense of self-mastery prohibits the mutual exchange of loving charity in any way, we have made a lesser virtue dominate a greater. 

This past Lent I saw a social media post concerning fasting claiming in a rather blanket fashion that a spouse (particularly a wife) is often detrimental to spiritual discipline. What this tells us is that the poster has more value in their own self mastery than the growth of and cooperation with grace in their sacramental marriage. To interpret a sacramental bond as “detrimental” as opposed to cooperative in spiritual life is a serious problem. This is not to say that a spouse may not have an effect, or that marriage is not difficult. But the divisive posture of the poster is indicative of The World, not the indissoluble bond of matrimony (as was implied). Such conflict in a marriage is an invitation to humble and compassionate communication and harmonization, not divisive whining on the internet. To assert this as a blanket statement about marriage in general demonstrates a disdain for the union and an urge to universally destroy it. The attitude reeks of infection by the Synthetic World and dominance by the Dominion of the World.

Another way that The World contorts virtue is to take a solid virtue and magnify and misapply to the detriment of the Christian or the Church. An example of this can be seen in the classic debate maneuvers, “what-about-ism”. With what-about-ism, we see the Synthetic World bringing a virtue to bear in order to stomp a just criticism or call to action. Demands for a just wage are squelched by “what about abortion” and demands the protection of in-utero life are squelched by “what about the death penalty”. Absent the divisive influence of The World, a Christian would be able to hold the harmony of virtue and at least trust that those working on other causes do so in good faith and for a good purpose. But the infectious nature of the Synthetic World allows the Dominion of the World to inflame our anxiety concerning whether “our side” will win or not. In such cases we use one moral stance as a hammer against another compatible one, thereby diminishing both. 

When one habituates one’s self to this type of divisiveness under the influence of The World, these virtues and counter virtues quickly become empty of content. They become “buzzwords” simply used to identify perceived enemies and snipe at them divisively. At one time the zeal for the virtue may have been present, but now the virtue is gone, and all that is left is a word that is a carrier or catalyst for division. In the worst case scenario, this particularly demonic maneuver by the World not only turns virtues against each other in a disordered fashion but empties the virtue of effect in the one “touting” it. This can expand beyond virtues to any complex concepts that can be used to stifle communion and love. For example how the term “The Faith” is used online. When deployed, the term “The Faith” implies familiarity with the entirety of the church teaching, but in reality is simply an empty term interlocutors use to bludgeon others with condemnation and disdain. 

A last and most sinister divisive tactic is tribalized myopia. With tribalized myopia, the World takes a virtue that one need not personally practice, elevates it above all the others, and then uses it as a bludgeon against those who struggle with such a virtue. What is a virtue one may not need to practice?  Well, two prominent examples are chastity for the same sex attracted and resistance to abortion. A heterosexual male does not have to worry about either of these temptations. A heterosexual male will never need to exercise these particular virtues because they do not apply to his situation. The political flip side is a poor or middle class person calling out corporate greed as the worst sin. The poor person will never experience the temptations faced by a corporate leader.

To take these personally irrelevant issues as one’s singular evangelical cause in life is a convenient way to demonize the “type of person” one will never have to worry about being. It is the safest way to operate according to the moral dualism the World offers because it involves no struggle on the part of the practitioner. Once the immoral are identified, they can be defined as “evil” and compassionless condemnation can begin. To crusade on issues that have nothing to do with our own spiritual struggles can become a convenient way to ignore our own spiritual struggles, because one is already “working so hard to destroy evil”. It is also a perfect recipe for lack of empathy. And lastly, it plays right into the operation of the Synthetic World in conjunction with the Dominion of the World. Division, tribalization, and rancor follow this operation and corrupt the soul. For one subject to tribalized myopia, it is extremely hard to see how this is a bad thing. The victim sees themself as “preaching the truth”, which may even be the case. But usually in such a way that is repellant and also as a diversion tactic against their own problems. No good comes of it. Such confusion, division, and suffering are hallmarks of the operation of The World.

The World finds clever ways to distract us from intimacy and virtue. Using virtue itself and the exercise of it in disordered ways means there is a constant need to be mindful of our exercise of virtue. Such discernment is aimed at helping us aim our practices toward love. Is my action edifying and causing harmony?  By my practice of virtue, am I showing compassion and truly leading people to the gospel for freedom and love?  Is my exercise of virtue emitting an image of God that Christ shows? By my exercise of virtue, would an observer come to know God as Love?  As we shall see, to reject The World means to aim such discernment at our personal intimate relationships, not at dominating the world or for example becoming a media influencer. Most of us are aware that we will never “rule the world” or be a great influencer or creator of a sphere of the Synthetic World. So before we move to solutions we must explore one last tactic that painfully illustrates how the Synthetic World and the Dominion of the World can operate unbeknownst to us and run rough shot over our experience of the joy and peace of Christ. 

 

Scapegoat Mechanism and The Dominion of the World

Due to concupiscence we generally seek to order other’s lives according to our own self-interest or in edification of our own sense of authority. Or we treat people who are different from us as “evil” people because of the variance, forgetting the many parts of the body. In this manner, one of the most clever ways that The Dominion of the World manifests in our mind is a disordered presentation of the significant nature of our fellow humans (specifically their ability to signify God to us via the imago dei).

As we noted in section one, all of creation is intended to be significant, that is, it operates as a sign of God’s love. Also, as we said above, a sign is a symbol that effects what it communicates. Human beings are a key element of the sign of God’s love, in that we receive the communication, the effect, and we reciprocate it, between ourselves and God and mutually between each other. What we will explore now is one particular way which significant reciprocation malfunctions under the operation of the Dominion of the World. 

Our very being is made to operate significantly, to make a visible display of God’s invisible love. The malfunction comes in a lateral locus of value instigated by the Dominion of the World and sought in the Synthetic World. According to this disorder, our fellow humans become signs, not of God’s love to be shared, but of operable structures of the Synthetic World. The Dominion of the World urges domination over these structures, possibly first by strategic adherence, but then by domination. One characteristic of the Dominion of the World is that it does not operate with regard to authentic persons, only with regard to the Synthetic World and its structures. This is why over and over again, it is shocking to us when we encounter a person who does not follow our understanding of the order of the structures of the Synthetic World. For example in the structure of “America” the substructure “Republican” is not supposed to care about the poor and the sub-structure Democrats is not supposed to care about God. As a member of one, it is off-putting to meet a member of the other who does not fit our conception of the structural requirement. 

Such variance is present in every person. Part of the pain of the Dominion of the World is that it warps our sense of our own variance and urges us to conform to dominance or dominate to conformity, rather than be at peace with how variance can exist in harmony. Ultimately under the Dominion of the World, we are seeking to impose our own order on the world. If we are transcendent in our focus, encounter with mystery is our default mode. In this beatitude, to meet variance is expected and pleasurable. Our simple minds are at peace with the fact that we cannot fully comprehend such a vast beauty. Encounter, as Pope Francis talks about it, is a developmental process of growth where we try to develop the imago dei in our neighbor to the best of our understanding and try to find it there and learn from it to better develop ourselves. A mind overthrown by the Dominion of the World operates in an opposite fashion. Instead of respecting mystery and encounter, it seeks to define and systematize, usually according to spheres of the Synthetic World. But even those spheres are too vast for our finite human minds, so the Dominion of the World uses clever psychological defense mechanisms to cause us misery. In short, the maneuver involves scapegoating and displacement.

The Scapegoat is a maneuver of sacramental signification that exists as an adaptive sign in postlapsarian existence. In the scapegoat ritual of Leviticus 16, the goat was used as a sign of the community’s sin. All of the community’s sin is “placed on the goat” and it is driven from the community. The word itself has become indicative of such “bundling” of guilt onto a symbol, or in an effective case a sign. The process of this ritual atonement is deeply embedded in the postlapsarian human consciousness and manifests across human religious traditions. The typological end game is humanity’s ability to recognize how Christ takes our sin upon the cross and destroys it.

Unfortunately, the urge to the scapegoat typology is manipulated by both the Synthetic World and the Dominion of the World. The Synthetic World will use the scapegoat trope to mitigate threats and maintain control over its adherents. Defining a person as indicative of an entire problem and then destroying that person is a classic diversion in order to satiate an ill-at-ease populace. So for example, a “tough on crime” DA will tout a specific criminal and their crime as indicative of the entire problem of crime plaguing society, and by pursuit of the criminal and their imprisonment or possibly their literal execution will present the problem as solved. Conversely,  a local politician will use the reform story of a particular indigent as a sign of the success of their program. The reader will notice, these symbolic scapegoats are not actually effective of their communications. They are not “signs”. Like Hebrews 10 says, “ it can never make perfect those who come to worship by the same sacrifices that they offer continually each year.” They become symbols and require every developing displays because they are “symbolic” rather than “significant”. They are mockeries of the sign of God’s mercy experienced in the scapegoat. At worst, they become signs of cruelty, domination, and intolerance.

As observers in Christ, we must reject such displays on three levels. First, we must be aware that as mysteries made in the image and likeness of God, we cannot accept the singular definition of a fellow human assigned by an operation of the Synthetic World. Second, in general, we cannot accept such easy placations for the complexities of the postlapsarian world. And third, more specifically, such a maneuver is generally born out of a divisive and tribalized moral dualism that seeks destruction of an enemy. For Christians who are told to “love our enemies”, both the dualism and the mode of solution (destruction) are unacceptable.

The Synthetic World operates via scapegoat in order to symbolize both its assets and its enemies. Assets are the influencers of one’s aligned spheres and simultaneously the enemies are influencers in any opposing spheres. These influencers and enemies manifest and are utilized by the Dominion of the World in our individual psyches. Psychologically, our internal dialogue is at times aimed directly at our locus of value. If our locus of value is placed properly in the divine, then our internal dialogue will aim transcendent. Our thoughts will be prayers and will be ordered to harmony of the whole through love. A mind overthrown by the Dominion of the World will seek value laterally via spheres of the Synthetic World, spheres seen as temporary assets in the unconscious belief that we ourselves can create; “The System”, that will order world opposed to the True orderer, the Logos. But again, our finite minds can’t grasp the entirety of an ever evolving set of fractured Synthetic Worlds that ultimately boil down to billions of Domains of the World struggling against each other to create a personal order. 

We accept the influencers and enemies defined by the Synthetic World. We use internal dialogue with them to define and engage with the spheres of the Synthetic World in our mind. These dialogues are often self validating when aimed at an influencer or express conflict with an enemy of an oppositional sphere. This “Bundling” of the spheres of the Synthetic Worlds is a clever disordering of the signification of the imago dei and the postlapsarian scapegoat typology. Our true nature, present in Eden as original justice, seeks to meet “Ultimate Transcendent Love” (God) via our neighbor as a sign of that Love. But in this postlapsarian world, we have a lateral locus of value, and we seek that same sign in the spheres of the synthetic world. These are our influencers. 

Similarly, the scapegoat typology, a ritual meant to alleviate the stress and trauma of sin in various cultures and point us to how Christ takes on our sin is disordered as well. The typology, as used by the Synthetic World, does not focus on the relief of our own guilt, but rather, the assignment of guilt on the particular scapegoat. Spheres of the Synthetic World pit against each other and our minds, unable to hold even the fullness of what a synthetic sphere means, bundles our opposition into one enemy scapegoat figure who will bear all our hatred and malice toward that sphere. Ultimately, however, it is the habit of the Dominion of the World to turn each individual against every synthesis that is not particularly their own. So even the most stalwart influencer becomes a scapegoat in the correct circumstances. In fact, the more powerful the influencer, the more glee the Dominion of the World takes in the vitriol and disgust when the influencer becomes the scapegoat.

Our minds identify influencers and scapegoats at two levels. First is the macro level, which would be cultural influencers and scapegoats that a whole synthetic sphere would recognize as an asset or an enemy. Second, we identify micro influencers and scapegoats out of our life experiences in our own personal communities. These are people in our intimate lives who symbolize concepts informed by the operative spheres of the World. These people become symbols of assets bolstering our laterally oriented worldview, or enemies demonstrating the evil of opposed spheres of the Synthetic world. 

Especially concerning the scapegoated enemies we possibly even begin to “dialogue” with them internally, which is a mockery of prayer. “Dialogue” in the previous sentence is in scare quotes because prayer is harmonious dialogue with the transcendent God, but the mockery is actually an internal monologue fabricated by the Dominion of the World inside a closed system. The Dominion of the World directs us not transcendently, but laterally into a host of “I should have said” monologues to our macro scapegoats and “I would have said” statements to our macro scapegoats. Such internal monologues are laterally focused on our perceived enemies, who we seek to dominate. The figment of a person we have such dialogues with becomes objectified and equivalently indicative of the sphere of the world they symbolize for us. It is important to note that our notion and use of them as a scapegoat symbol is not ACTUALLY who that person is. 

This process is the summation of the domination of the Dominion of the World. We become locked in our own minds fighting enemies that do not exist in reality. They are a figment representation of an enemy who is not real, as we fight for “harmony” that is actually discord. The symbols of both the enemy and the harmony are an illusion of a fractured and ever fracturing Synthetic World. 

This inability to effectively harmonize that locks us into ourselves is first noted in the Story of Babel. In that story humans have a gift, speech, which communally binds towards harmonization. Humans choose to use this gift to overthrow divinity and thereby their speech, now aimed laterally as opposed to transcendently, is ineffective. They end by leaving the Tower unfinished. This story reminds us that it is impossible for the Synthetic World to complete its stated goal. “The Tower” is the attempted synthesis, the communication becomes miscommunication. 

In our world today there is a developing maelstrom, a situation, that has been manifesting and re-manifesting throughout human history. That maelstrom is the development of effective communication technology that ends up intensifying miscommunication. The reader will notice the digital continent is a trove of information and a medium of communication the likes of which the world has never seen. At the same time, the effect of social media and mass communication has been further isolation, further disharmony and antagonism, and chaos rather than unity. This paradox has also been the pattern throughout history. It is most readily observable in the fall out from the introduction of the printing press in Europe. The result was both the rise of nationalism and the ecclesiological fracturing known as the Protestant Reformation. As communication becomes increasingly available, the Dominion of the World intensifies observation of differences in newly available spheres of the Synthetic World, which in turn intensifies fear of those differences, and our worlds and minds are torn apart. Again we can see the same result in the innovation of broadcast and telephone technologies and the extremely organized propaganda efforts of the Synthetic Spheres of last century as shifting ideological synthetic spheres twice chose destruction across the entire globe and subsequently chopped the Earth up into contested domains.

Now in our new century, the digital continent poses these same dangers in innovative but painfully familiar form. What we wish to note here is that as these synthetic spheres jostle for a position they will never attain, the Dominion of the World in each of us becomes active in order to insight anxiety, fear, anger, and ultimately hatred. It behooves us to take a moment to notice the operations as they manifest in this particular context. Both politically and ecclesiological the synthetic world has operated on the digital continent to divide according to a dualistic morality. Left vs Right, Trad vs Novus. 

As we have noted these “systems” are not actually systematic, but fabrications of the Synthetic World, only as strong as their strongest symbolic influencer. The Dominion of the World employs a lateral locus of value and drives us to these spheres to be confined and trapped. We take sides under a dualistic view and thus are divided by making scapegoats of our fellow humans. The internal lateral dialogue becomes a particularly strong distraction, as the Synthetic World pumps the opinions of our objectified assets and enemies into our consciousness by purposely addictive social media platforms. Continuously observed they become continuous in our consciousness, overthrown by the Dominion of the World. We ruminate according to all the distractions mentioned above, virtues misidentified and misprioritized. We celebrate or decry when influencers fall from grace or “switch sides”. The nature of the digital continent makes the macro constantly manifest in our micro experience. We generate seemingly intimate communities based on ideologies and factions, all taking place in images of light, but born out of darkness.

The experience of one totally overthrown by the Dominion of the World will be one where the spheres of the Synthetic World have become internalized as scapegoats and influencers that they are constantly combating via internal “dialogue”. The external locus of value will necessitate ever more radical alignment with the most extreme in order to gain influence. The internal dialogue will become a dialogue of bitter division always driven back to the evershifting and elusive spheres for validation and combat. In short and not surprisingly, the Dominion of the World is a hellish domain. 

    This image is terrifying because it is an image bereft of Christ and operating absent of the Spirit and ignorant of the Father. Even if such a mind used these terms (Christ, Spirit, Father), which they often do in ecclesial manifestations of this process, the terms would be ideas employed for combat and not indicative of actual relationships. Father, Son, Spirit, Church Teaching, and The Magisterium, become objectified terms to dominate assets and destroy enemies. The most important thing to remember is that this is not new. This is exactly the situation of the Pauline letters. What is new is the reach and speed of the communication technology. 

When we witness this maelstrom, our immediate wish is to “fix the problem”. Our urge to do this personally, or find someone who can, is the urge of The World. It strikes directly at our pride and operates by a lateral focus to fix the problem as I, a human, interpret it by means acceptable to me. That it is an operation of The World, as opposed to an urge to evangelization or justice can be discerned by a calibration of prayer that regards the other as a mystery to be encountered rather than belief in a set of axiomatic ideas. The phrase “mystery to be encountered” implies that the goal sought is the Imago Dei. It fosters in us humility, reminding us that we don’t know everything and may just learn from our perceived “enemies”. At the very least we give them the benefit of the doubt in their intention. Also, a seeker of evangelization and justice is aware that neither they nor “their side” will fix the world. First, there is only one side, love. Second, they cannot fix it, only celebrate salvation and strive to exercise compassion personally and socially until the eschaton. With the psycho-spiritual as well as social intricacies of The World pondered, we can now turn to the more hopeful topic of our response as we notice its operation in our lives.

In the first section, we defined the World as used in the scriptures and honed in on its use as the world of human affairs. We contrasted this with the Hellenisticly synchronized tendency to see “The World” as the physical world, which is evil, as opposed to the spiritual world, which is good. We went on to distinguish between “The Synthetic World”, the self-defined world of human affairs that is generated by postlapsarian consciousness, and “The Dominion of the World”, which is a sub-dominion of what Paul calls “The Flesh”, that is, all spiritual vices and dispositions that must pass away like flesh. The Dominion of the World manifests when we find our locus of value laterally in The Synthetic world as opposed to transcendental in God’s proper order of creation. Lastly, we considered how the incarnation offered redemption of The Synthetic World and freedom from The Dominion of the World.

In this section we started by discussing the divisive nature of The World, noting the dualistic tendencies and the operation both socially and psycho-spiritually on the individual. Next, we discussed the moral assumptions of the World and the tropes by which the world ropes us into believing we are acting virtuously when, in reality, we are operating according to the moral assumptions of The World. These tropes involved both misidentification of virtues and misprioritization of virtues. We then illustrated how the interface of the Synthetic world and the Dominion of the World operates through a corruption of the scapegoat typology. Lastly, we analyzed the particular danger of our current context and the developing digital continent. We probed the synchronization of the spheres of the Synthetic World and the Dominion of the World and speculated on possible damaging psycho-spiritual as well as social impacts. 

In the next and final section, we will discuss skills for neutralizing the effect of the Synthetic World and the oppression of the Dominion of the World. We will start by dissecting the nature of attraction. We will note that attraction is an urge placed in us by the divine toward union. Next, we will distinguish between attraction whose purpose is communion and attraction whose purpose is domination. We will go on to discuss how humility helps us attune our attraction to the goal of communion. Finally, we will note that immediate intimacy is the antidote to the ill effects of The World no matter one's status or authority.

The Salve of Intimacy 

In the first section, we sought to define The world as used in scripture and considered how the incarnation offered redemption of The Synthetic World and freedom from The Dominion of the World. In the second section, we illuminated the operation and synthesis of the Synthetic and Dominion of the World. Now we will go on to discuss skills for neutralizing the effect of the Synthetic World and the oppression of the Dominion of the World. 

Managing the Influence of The World

The complexities of how the World influences our lives can become overwhelming. Compounding that complexity is the fact that by trying to solve the problem, we fall right into the trap of it. Christ is the only one who mediates for us a transcendent orientation such that we can escape the trap. It is worth considering successful strategies for employing free will in order to escape the Dominion of the World. Following our intricate exploration of the cooperation between the Synthetic World and the dominion of the World, we can better understand what it means to be “in the World”. Breaking the dominion of The World over ourselves does not solve the problem of the Synthetic World. We must also learn to be “not of the World”, which means to abide among the spheres of the Synthetic World but with a transcendent locus of value. Since all things we experience are terrestrial, the only true indicator of the transcendence we have is the God-Man Jesus Christ. 

We can now use two key relational terms we explored above to navigate Christ’s Lordship. Those terms were  “influencer” those we wish to emulate and “Scapegoat” those we wish to deride. These are the draws we experience under the dominion of the World, that propel us via a lateral locus of value. With a recognition of this domination, we can use these terms to break the dominion of The World by shifting their relation from a simple lateral orientation to any random sphere (or set of spheres), to a lateral orientation to Christ, who transforms it into a transcendent orientation by his hypostatic union. We do this by paradoxically combining them through acknowledgment and an appropriation. First, we acknowledge Christ as Lord, or in modern terms as the summative influencer in our lives. Second, through his influence, we appropriate his role as scapegoat by a discipline of self-emptying love practiced through compassion.

Our first step to breaking the World’s domination is re orienting the corrupted draw of the scapegoat trope. To achieve this we must first recognize Christ as our sole influencer, by recognizing his effective fulfillment of the Scapegoat typology. The levitical scapegoat law is meant to be a cathartic experience of banishing sin and division. The death of Christ signifies both this banishment and the sin itself, in that his death is the direct result of human sin in toto; when we encounter God we violently reject God. We are trying to banish God because we consider God  “part of the problem” since his solution to the problems of the world doesn’t align with our own solutions. 

There is a paradox to unpack. Our violent rejection is met with expressive love that accepts us, forgives us (we know not what we do), and returns from our banishment to save us. The paradox is that we intend to banish God and by that banishment, he shows us what fidelity and love are. In the same way, he gives us a sign of the appropriate way to meet such banishment when it is visited on us. What was meant to be a divisive banishment becomes a tool for union and harmony.

The only way this will work is by recognizing the resurrection, that the Son returns to save us. That salvation prompts our response of appropriating his methodology of engagement. The thing we now see as needing to be banished is our self (to die to self). To begin this process we must stop lashing out at all of the symbolic scapegoats we have acquired under the dominion of The World. Signs only work if you accept, experience, and cooperate with them, so we must recognize Christ as our fulfilling sign of the Scapegoat. We must become mindful and conscious of every instance of wrathful or prideful scapegoating we engage in and neutralize it by recalling that all effective scapegoating has been achieved in Christ. If we can begin to recognize our misguided symbolic scapegoating and translate it into trust in the sign of the Scapegoat, the result will be assurance that such wrath and pride are sinful, because the only effective target of our wrath is the true scapegoat, Chris. The archetype has been fulfilled and our combative relationship with God has been exposed. By witnessing this we can hopefully accept that God is the solution to the problems we see, not “part of the problem” that only we can fix. This letting go is the first step in scapegoat appropriation.

Once we are free of the divisiveness of a corrupted scapegoat typology, we must completely break the influence of the world by means of a transcendent locus of value. By submitting to him as our Lord we place ourselves under his dominion and break the domination of The World. That is to say, by understanding that Christ is the only “influencer” that matters. We neutralize all lateral spheric influencers and break the dominion of The World. Again, the mediator for this is Christ, who we relate to laterally, and who transforms that lateral trajectory to a transcendent one. In every respect, we must familiarize ourselves with the way Christ presents himself to us. He does so in personal prayer, through the scriptures, through the church and its magisterium, tradition, its sacraments, the saints and their intercessions, and through the mystical body as we experience it every day in our neighbors. 

This manifold manifestation poses certain dangers because it leaves the subject free to choose and interpret who Christ is coming into relationship with us, thereby teaching us how to relate to others. There is a constant need for assessment of our relationship and our possible self interested misinterpretation. This is why “authority” in the church has been argued constantly since the beginning. Who has the ability to correct others on their relationship with Christ? It is not a useless question. At the same time, it sets up all the traps that lead the Dominion of the World ruling in the guise of religion. The Dominion of the World will assign meanings to Christ that can be used in all the divisive ways enumerated above. But that image is not Christ, just a fabrication of the World. We must be ever humble and ever mindful of Christ who is always both intimate with us and a mystery to us.

Sincerity of the one relating to Christ is the key. It is the quest to follow Jesus’ command, that is, to Love as he loves. For this to happen, our recognition of Christ as Lord, as our summative influencer, must at times return to the scapegoat typology as a model for abidance in the World, without being dominated by the World. We must put off seeking to order the world according to our own (lack of) knowledge and desire. Rather we must recognize that the Logos, the ordering principle of the universe, has become incarnate and wishes intimacy with us. The Logos aslo wishes to instruct us, in accordance with our ability to learn, little by little, like a mustardseed growing to a tree. We must appropriate Christ’s methodology and become the scapegoat that is rejected in order to return with love. Again, this is tricky, because we don’t want to cultivate a martyr complex, where the more people are against us, the more correct we obviously are. There will be times when any of us need correction, and we must not build an impenetrable wall against such help. There are two ways we must do this, one is corrective, the other is demonstrative.

Taking Christ as our summative influencer and taking his Scapegoat role onto our self can be corrective. The scapegoat typology cannot be a self righteous defense against the hostile world. But it can also become a method of self correction. In this world we are never going to be completely healed. We will always have the urge to scapegoat others and lash out. Recognizing Christ as Lord allows us to halt in the midst of such judgment and remember our lord. Then we can be aware of our own tendencies. Far more often than not, the things we hate in others are the things we hate in ourselves. In as much as we recognize that we are scapegoating others we can use this urge as a potent examination and formation of conscience. Why am I so adamantly urged to lash out at this person? Why do they seem to be the center of the world’s problems for me? Is it because their problem is the center of my problems with myself? This is scapegoating “deserved”. Christ took on the hate of The World in order to destroy it. Once recognized, our buy-in to the operations of The World can be used as a sacrifice of part of our self, part of our “Flesh” that needs to pass away. We offer it up to the Father through the Son in the Spirit as we experience the Collect of the mass and give over our domination to Him. Since Christ's victory on the Cross, the scapegoat can no longer be an attack, not on others, not even on ourselves. But it can be a tool for recognizing Christ’s glory in that his Lordship takes the evil of the World away from us and destroys it. 

Thus the corrective scapegoat maneuver is a spiritual maneuver that recognizes in as much as we are scapegoating others we can use this urge to examine ourselves. When one places the ills of society upon an adversary, one must learn to shift the scapegoat from “the other” to one’s self, the evil we are trying to place on that person is actually a part of ourself we need to hand over and destroy. 

On the other hand, appropriating the scapegoat typology can also be a demonstration, a sign of Christ’s Glory as we play the role of the Alter Christus. When it comes to loving as Christ loves, those under the sway of the Dominion of the World will regard authentic expressions as foolishness, despicable, and even dangerous. To imitate Christ is to imitate his posture as he encountered the World, that is, to imitate his posture during his various trials during his passion. He did not demand war against his enemies. The whole point of the incarnation was to reconcile enemies, not instigate conflict. He did not lash out in complex syllogistic arguments. Rarely does his teaching reflect this manner of engagement. Instead he allows those who are filled with hate to show this hate upon him rather than upon others and takes such hate down to destruction with him.

When we show love for others, especially the outcast, oppressed, and marginal, we will draw the ire of those who cast out, oppress, and marginilize. Our job is not to point the finger at these oppressors and cast judgment. When employing a demonstrative scapegoat maneuver, our job is to take the wrath upon ourselves. When we stand up for the most derided of society, the derision we receive is only met with a reminder that Christ calls us to accompany and love. When we are derided, we respond equally in love, because love is expansive and inclusive. For one whose mind is over thrown by the Dominion of the World, this will be confusing, because such dominion only works by distinction and rancorous contrast.

To that end, a quick word about the “outcast” when considering The World. The maximal effect of siding with the outcast is illuminated in the scriptures and the most vulnerable of society, the poor, widows, orphans, and aliens. When operating on a macro scale, this is the immediate population to protect and for which one can most beautifully assume the scapegoat typology. However, on a micro scale, one may be in a community that sides with those populations against other populations. Once again, “against” implies antagonism and exclusion. The siding must be harmonious if it is reflective of love. In such a community a demonstrative scapegoat maneuver would be taken in defense of those society at large may deem worthy, but the micro community would oppress if they had the power. Such a scapegoat maneuver is an attempt to keep honest concerning the universal dignity of humanity. 

The Incarnation and Encounter: Methods of becoming a Sign 

The effect of employing a demonstrative scapegoat maneuver is reception of wrath and derision from one population who would treat you just as the outcast or a fool who defends them. This builds empathy and compassion. We cannot live in another's shoes, but by a demonstrative scapegoat maneuver, we can take heat for them and respond with the Love of Christ so as to offer healing to the world through participation with his passion. This participation is the demonstration to those who heap derision and it is made effective through our participation in the summative sacrifice of Christ as we offer our trials through the liturgy.

The motion of the incarnation is the exact opposite of the motion of those under the Dominion of the World. Christ, who, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” The World consists of practically powerless humans trying to take all power to themselves and order God’s world in an effort to dominate their fellow persons. The incarnation consists of the ultimate power of the universe, the Logos, emptying himself in order to accompany humanity, edify and reconcile us with the Father and each other. 

The modality for this is not the imposition of a maco organization. Rather, Christ’s life is a template for intimacy. He is born into a family and struggles to attain a best friend (Peter), an inner circle (the Pillars, Peter James, and John), and a friend group (the Twelve Apostles). From there he moves out in concentric circles from disciples to followers, to “the crowd”. Though some are more intimate and some less, all are treated with ultimate dignity and love. 

That Jesus had best friends and others who were not as intimate as he walked this earth may be disconcerting for us, particularly because it seems like we could never attain such status two thousand years later and not in his physical presence. But the Glorified Christ, who is God and man has the ability to enter into intimate friendship with everyone who seeks him. John’s Gospel gives us the character of the Beloved disciple to help us realize that even though we may not attain to the role of Peter in the church, we have the ability to play our own intimate role with Christ (as was shown at the last supper) and that we can even respectfully surpass Peter’s zeal in that intimacy (the race to the tomb). At his death, Jesus imparts his Spirit upon Mary and the Beloved disciple, together signifying the macro and the individual in the church, that Christ’s relationship is both holistic and particular.

The specific structure of concentric circles of intimacy Jesus of Nazareth builds is a structure of intimacy that any human must to build. The struggle Christ goes through go find community is the same as our own struggle for intimacy. His patience, and even his impatience with his friends is a lesson in human interaction. He does not simply objectify people based on his first judgments. Rather he encounters people as they present themselves, and also patiently allows them to open themselves in a developmental way as he interacts with them. This is evidenced by his surprise at the Centurion's faith and his acquiescence to the syro-phonician’s request for aid. In each of these cases, Jesus' relationship develops as he interacts. 

This evidence of intimacy building is a model for all of us who wish to shine forth as an alter Christus. We will have to come into relationships with assumptions. As much as we try to extricate the effects of tribal objectification, we will still carry our assumptions about people based on the conditions of their lives. We must not be ruled by our assumptions, but allow them to develop from a macro prejudice that we cannot help to an impression attuned to the individual via encounter, empathy, and ultimatly intimacy. This is difficult because the World tells us that those who are different from us stand “opposed”. Though there may be personality or ideological conflict, Christ asks us to see those different from us as an opportunity to grow in love and friendship. The encounter is sparked by a sense of wonder in mystery. This is a gift one can be granted through prayer. The empathy is garnered by a clever use of the scapegoat typology as we have described, sowing yourself to take on the other. Through encounter and empathy a relationship of actual intimacy can be built. Intimacy is founded on actual knowledge of a person (rather that presumptive knowledge), trust in that persons motives, openness to what they have to teach us, and the desire to help them be their best version of themself. 

Understanding intimacy helps us better inderstant what it means when the narrator of John states, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. “  This passage reminds us that the goal of the incarnation is not some sort of divine invasion that imposes will, but is an invitation to friendship against the hostile stance of the World. This dynamic is a little shocking because when “World” is used in these passages, we instinctively perceive of “the world” as a contingency of acceptance and rejection and that the portion discussed here is the part of acceptance. This seems to be bolstered by the narrator who goes on to state “, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light because their works were evil.” 

But the “already condemned” is the context of the incarnation, not the result. When “The World” is used in this passage, “The World” has already set itself up as the enemy of God. Our immediate bifurcation of a good portion and an evil portion is the operation of the Dominion of the World on our psyche. Christ himself testifies further to how he relates to the world, “if anyone hears my words and does not observe them, I do not condemn him, for I did not come to condemn the world but to save the world.” It is clear that The World he is speaking of is The World of rebellion. This World continues to rebel, up to and including killing the Son of God. But still, he comes back offering friendship.

This is the extent to which Christ seeks intimacy with us, and it is the model which we are supposed to follow in seeking intimacy with our enemies. We are to love one another as Christ loves us. That does not mean that Christ never has disagreements with people in the gospels, or that he doesn't point out the Truth at every turn. It does mean that his starting point is reconciliation, not domination. And this should be our starting point as well. With the paschal mystery complete, the only fact for whether or not we are reconciled to God is our own acceptance or rejection of that reconciliation. So too must our encounter with The World and our neighbors be. Secure in the knowledge that God came not to condemn but to save, we can acknowledge that our differences will ultimately be reconciled and brought into harmony by him. When encountering an enemy, it is anxiety provoking that they are doing actions we perceive as damaging and it is noble that we wish to stop the damage. The trust in God’s providence allows us to release our worry and do our best to come into harmony that resolves damage on all sides. The difference is an approach that seeks to end the harm via alternate harm and dominance, versus an end to harm by means of mutual edification. 

Modalities of Intimacy: Attraction, Humility and Community

Our observations on the life of Christ lead us to the major skills we need to practice in order to attune ourselves to abiding in the World but not of the World; attraction, humility, and community. The World seeks to unify itself against the true cosmic unity but paradoxically uses a method of repulsion that divides and differentiates in antagonism. This fundamental urge for unity cannot be escaped because the divine has invested us with an overwhelming sense of attraction. We are made to mirror the Trinity in harmonious existence, and the World cannot expel that urge. In its best manifestation, this attraction is driven by curiosity and by a desire to be accepted for the good people we are. We find it easy to associate with those similar to us. Similarities are the easiest stepping stones to communication and intimacy building. Since we are drawn to a community we look for similarities when we encounter people. Conversely, the old saying is that “opposites attract” and in as much as this is true, it is our urge to manifest compatible harmony of opposition so common in Christian paradox. We greatly desire to be a sign of the Trinitarian God who is simple and manifold at the same time. We greatly desire to express the mystery that is God’s infinite and all encompassing existence. In the New Jerusalem, we will be one people, “neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free.”  However, we will also be “a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue.” 

As we are drawn to by difference we seek similarities to find a foothold, establish connections, and build relationships. True friendship allows for the tension of difference in the harmony of community. The World cannot tolerate such harmony, only domination and assimilation. Thus the common trope of the World is to use attraction to manifest dominance. This can come in a sexual attraction, the most common connotation of “opposites attract”. Another example of opposites attracting is the similarity of enjoyment of debate. Debate can be an extremely enjoyable sport among friends. It can be an edifying way to express harmony in differentiation. However, the current mode of exchange on the digital continent is an excellent example of how the World overthrows our peace and harmony. There people are attracted to each other, not as an opportunity for harmonious community but as an adversary. The attraction isn’t seeking unity, it doesn’t open by establishing commonality. Rather debate is the sole attraction and methodology of engagement. The goal isn’t consonance. The goal is dominance. The World cannot destroy our attraction to community, so, typical of postlapsarian reality, it distorts it. So, for example, the current colloquialism “hot take” is just an invitation to this destructive tendency. 

When our minds are overthrown by the Dominion of the World, this attraction manifests in a disordered desire to control rather than encounter and develop. We look to influencers and desire their clout so that we can control as they do. We assent to a point so that we can gain status and exert more influence ourselves. We look to objectified assets and desire to impose the totality of our view upon them. We look to those who we understand as our adversaries and we seek to dominate them or exterminate them. By these urges attraction is distorted and turned to repulsion. This turn happens because influencers and assets will never line up perfectly with our expectations. Absent the goal of mutual development, the rigid attitude of certainty and desire to impose that of which we are certain leads to conflicting disappointment and repulsion. Even more so with our perceived  adversaries, who will doubtless present as adversarial rather than converts. This repulsion is devastating when the divisions manifest between two minds overthrown by the Dominion of the World. It is even more tragic when a mind overthrown by the Dominion of the World rejects an open and attuning mind possessed of beatitude. 

The tragedy is that our compulsion to unity, our attraction, is based in a desire to be loved as who we are. But this desire is based on an incomplete human (due to postlapsarian effects) that is on the road to fulfillment. Our attraction is an invitation to a learning experience about the other and a growth within ourselves. That process of mutual fulfillment is necessary and completely compatible with our desire to be loved in who we are, because the end result of our fulfillment is what we are meant to be. Yet, when we deny the need for this process of fulfillment, the stagnation that results stymies attraction and transforms it to repulsion. The surest guard against this derangement of communion is an attitude of humility.

With humility, we can recall our need to grow and develop and we can be more open to authentic community, even with those we see as our adversaries. It takes a lot of trust to open oneself up to a relationship of inter development. First, we have to trust the motives of our companions. Even if this trust, which the World adamantly advises against, is established, there is a further obstacle. We assume both parties have things to teach and that both parties have deficiencies that need to be attended to. What if our process gets mixed up? Such fear assumes the necessity of a linear progression. God is more patient than us, and the process of building intimate communal connections is as much a virtue and goal as the result. So we have the added humility of having to be okay with our own ignorance of the process. This humility will definitely help us stay open to listening to our companion. 

All of the skills that we covered concerning appropriation of the scapegoat typology are extremely useful for the humility it takes to neutralize the toxicity of the World. Both corrective maneuvers where we realize that we are that which we wish to destroy and demonstrative maneuvers where we signify Christ by aligning with the most rejected of society will keep us aware of our need to be humble and open to development. 

A corrective scapegoat maneuver helps us empathize with our companion that we may at first see as an adversary. Whatever we see in them as adversarial is most likely, at least very generally, some manifestation of our own self loathing. A demonstrative scapegoat maneuver reminds us that this person is not well disposed to trust or accept us, thus we must be morally upright and worthy of trust and respect in order to gain a foothold for mutual development.

The World is itself a doomed process of totalitarian unification against God by dissection and division without ever actually reaching its goal. Its effect on us is a toxic desire mandated by the Dominion of the World to absolutely control the macro while destroying the relationships we have in our lives out of pride and self righteousness. The salve against dominion by the world is a process of building intimacy. The goal of building immediate intimacy as opposed to world domination is an oppositional maneuver to the world in the same manner as the incarnation. Again, the incarnation is the world ordering agent (God) taking on the situation of the servant in order to bring harmony, an opposite motion to the World's drive to make the children who are to follow rebel and rest control. With our own struggle against the world, we must run our course counter to the current the Dominion of the World drives us. The Dominion of the World drives us to grasp at the Macro in totalitarian control. The call of intimacy that Christ offers attracts us to the micro and an openness of mutual edification rather than control.

This micro level engagement is why Jesus focuses so much on the poor, dispossessed, and marginalized. They are most apt to understand because the systems of The World never worked for them anyway. They have to rely on the intimate immediate to survive because no one else cares. So what about the powerful? Can they achieve this micro view? Well, Jesus notes in Matthew 19 that “it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” When he said this the disciples were “astonished”. We all think it is going to be easy for the people who we look up to and want to be like to succeed. But salvation is not “success” it is acceptance. When his disciples ask, “Who then can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”

So is no one to wield macro level power and influence?  No. In society and in the church people need to do this. There are many parts but one body, and some parts have steering purposes. Those who fulfill such roles would do wise to monitor their attraction. Where is their desire pulling to?  Is it pulling to the self glorifying position they possess? Or is it pulling to the communion they share with those invested in their same task and in their life in general? One’s macro role does not necessitate an oppression of the Dominion of the World. Even as a macro influencer, one should still have an inner circle of Friends just as Jesus did. The question is, are they friends? Or are they assets to facilitate your desire driven by the dominion of the world and on the turn of a dime they turn out to be adversaries? Discernment and management of desire will help a person of means or authority navigate the peril of The World. 

We must properly understand and engage our attraction to communion with our fellow humans. We must not aim that attraction at the promises of the Synthetic World. We must not manifest our attraction as a possession or subjugation. Rather we must understand it as an opportunity for mutual growth toward fulfillment of our true nature. This takes humility because our concupiscent urge assume our personal superiority with certainty and compels us to dominate those we see as our adversaries. Intimacy is an encounter that hopes for mutual sharing. That sharing may be at the social margin or it may be in a boardroom. Either way, with the grace of Christ we can respect edifying differences that coexist harmoniously while at the same time compassionately healing each other by the mutual struggle of life. Our calibration for this endeavor is to laterally accept Jesus as our summative influencer. His mediation of the transcendent takes our focus beyond The World and offers the true union of pentecost. 

Conclusion 

In the first section of this treatise, we defined the World as used in the scriptures and honed in on its use as the world of human affairs. We contrasted this with the Hellenisticly synchronized tendency to see “The World” as the physical world, which is evil, as opposed to the spiritual world, which is good. We went on to distinguish between “The Synthetic World”, the self-defined world of human affairs that is generated by postlapsarian consciousness, and “The Dominion of the World”, which is a sub-dominion of what Paul calls “The Flesh”, that is, all spiritual vices and dispositions that must pass away like flesh. The Dominion of the World manifests when we find our locus of value laterally in The Synthetic world as opposed to transcendental in God’s proper order of creation. Lastly, we considered how the incarnation offered redemption of The Synthetic World and freedom from The Dominion of the World.

In the second section, we started by discussing the divisive nature of The World, noting the dualistic tendencies and the operation both socially and psycho-spiritually on the individual. Next, we discussed the moral assumptions of the World and the tropes by which the world ropes us into believing we are acting virtuously when, in reality, we are operating according to the moral assumptions of The World. These tropes involved both misidentification of virtues and misprioritization of virtues. We then illustrated how the interface of the Synthetic world and the Dominion of the World operates through a corruption of the scapegoat typology. Lastly, we analyzed the particular danger of our current context and the developing digital continent. We probed the synchronization of the spheres of the Synthetic World and the Dominion of the World and speculated on possible damaging psycho-spiritual as well as social impacts. 

In the last section, we discussed skills for neutralizing the effect of the Synthetic World and the oppression of the Dominion of the World. We started by dissecting the nature of attraction. We noted that attraction is an urge placed in us by the divine toward union. We then distinguished between attraction whose purpose is communion and attraction whose purpose is domination. We went on to discuss how humility helps us attune our attraction to the goal of communion. We finished by noting that immediate intimacy is the antidote to the ill effects of The World no matter one's status or authority.

The hope is that this treatise helped the reader form a framework for what Christ’s teachings about “the World” can mean in their life. Our rebellion against God has had an alienating and enslaving effect that can result in ripping the world apart under the promise of unifying the world without God’s grace. This is a self destrucive promise. Our basic skill was to start with prayer and union with Christ to free ourselves from the Dominion of the world over ourselves and to be open to encounters with others as a mystery of the Imago Dei. By this intimacy, the alienation fo the World can be mitigated. In the information age these skills are especially needed as the promise of complete totalitarian systemization seems ever nearer, yet the objective reality so an evergrowing alienation that tears us apart. The urge to Fix this problem ourselves is only a cog in the wheel of the process of destruction. The most effective strategy is wonder at the mystery of intimate encounter, trust that the Eschaton is implemented by God’s behest, and hope that our surrender to his behest allows for participation.