wisdom

Man of all ages and cultures is confronted with the solution of one and the same question: the question of how to overcome separateness, how to achieve union, how to transcend one's own individual life and find at-atonement. The question is the same for primitive man in caves, for nomadic man taking care of his flocks, for the peasant in Egypt, the Phoenician trader, the Roman soldier, the medieval monk, the Japanese samurai, the modern clerk and factory hand.

The question can be answered by animal worship, by human sacrifice or military conquest, by indulgence in luxury, by ascetic renunciation, by obsessional work, by artistic creation, by the love of God, by artistic creation and by the love of Man. 

It becomes a desperate attempt to escape the anxiety engendered by separateness, and it results in an ever increasing sense of separateness, since the sexual act without love never bridges the gap between two human beings, except momentarily.