Episode 459 - The War on Empathy and Vertical Imagination in the Soul

Living Myth

Michael Meade

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode begins by examining the rise of "vertical morality" that appears in both Christian communities and conservative politics and has given rise to a "war on empathy." Whereas Jesus famously preached love, mercy and care for the oppressed, vertical morality measures righteousness, not by goodness to others, but rather by something more simplistic and more divisive.

Vertical morality declares that human behaviors are right or wrong based upon what the higher power says. As proponents put it: "Our ethics and behaviors have a duty to please God alone. We must obey by furthering the will of God, no matter the cost to other people." In a religious context, the higher power is God, in politics, it can become an authoritarian leader. As this viewpoint desensitizes people, true believers can justify demonizing all immigrants as criminals, defaming gay and trans people as predators, and condemning political opponents as, not just wrong, but evil.

In direct contrast to vertical morality, Michael Meade proposes vertical imagination as a mostly lost quality of the human soul that would reconnect us to the heights of inspiration, but also keep us connected to the depths of genuine feeling. For the issue is not simply making a steady ascent on the ladder of morality. Rather, the point is for the soul to fully awaken to the process of ascent and descent that keeps Heaven and Earth connected, while it also connects us to the suffering souls of other people and to the all-embracing Soul of the World.

When oriented from the deep sense of self and soul within us, our choices can become truly meaningful and our experiences genuinely unifying, rather than be divisive and traumatizing. In extraordinary times the soul expects to find extraordinary and enlivening experiences, not some final salvation based upon the ladders of morality, but rather many little redemptions found in moments when Heaven and Earth, the eternal and the time bound meet in the wisdom of our waking souls and merciful hearts.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Living Myth podcast with Michael Mead, where this shifting, changing world is looked at from a mythic perspective.
0:21.2	This episode begins by examining the rise of vertical morality that appears in both Christian
0:27.5	communities and conservative politics and has given rise to a war on empathy.
0:34.2	Whereas Jesus famously preached love, mercy, and care for the oppressed, vertical morality
0:40.3	measures righteousness, not by goodness to others, but rather by something more simplistic
0:46.3	and more divisive.
0:48.3	In direct contrast to vertical morality, Mead proposes vertical imagination as a mostly lost quality of the human soul
0:57.0	that would reconnect us to the heights of inspiration, but also keep us connected to the depths of genuine feeling.
1:06.0	For the issue is not simply making a steady ascent on the ladder of morality. Rather, the point is for the
1:12.6	soul to fully awaken to the process of ascent and descent that keeps heaven and earth
1:18.8	connected, while it also connects us to the suffering souls of other people and to the all-embracing
1:25.4	soul of the world.
1:42.7	Whoever doesn't have 300 years at their fingertips is simply living from hand to mouth,
1:46.5	wrote the romantic poet Gerta.
1:49.4	The idea is that we carry the past in our souls and that there is something wise and
1:57.6	preserving about that.
2:00.5	Gerta may have been using 300 years symbolically, and we may have to go
2:06.8	all the way back to the year 869 if we wish to understand what has slipped from our hands
2:15.0	when it comes to issues of cultural polarization and the painful loss
2:20.5	of any sense of genuine unity. Going back to the year 869 would bring us to the Church
2:28.6	Council of Constantinople, a gathering of Catholic bishops and theologians who decreed at that time that
2:37.6	humanity is composed of only two parts, that is to say, body and spirit. They rejected the ancient
	...

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