IMO American and universal metaphysical values are denied by socially encouraged metaphysical repression within media, education, and philosophy. Jacob Needleman describes his experience with metaphysical repression:
https://www.conversations.org/story.php?sid=1
Secularism prefers arguingI remember I was a freshman at Harvard, in one of my first philosophy classes there. The professor started by asking—like I do sometimes, like professors do—what do you expect to get out of philosophy? I put up my hand and said, "I want to know why I'm living, why we die. Does God exist? What are we here for?" I went on an on like that, and I could see around me that there was this silence. My throat got dry, and I just felt awful. At first I'd thought that I was going to speak for the whole human race. And the professor, of course, was saying, "Yes. Go on." He knew he had one. Finally I just couldn't go on any more. Then he said, "Yes. But you see, that's not philosophy. If you want to know those things, you have to see a psychiatrist or a priest. This is not philosophy." It was such a shock.
I recovered quite well, but I had to find a few other people who shared my hunger. It is the hunger you're speaking of. That is what Plato called eros—a word that's come down to us which has taken on a sexual association. But for Plato it had to do, in part, with a striving that is innate in us, a striving to participate with one's mind, one's consciousness, in something greater than oneself. A love of wisdom, if you like, a love of being.
Eros is depicted in Plato's text, The Symposium, as half man, half god, a kind of intermediate force between the gods and mortals. It is a very interesting idea. Eros is what gives birth to philosophy. Modern philosophy often translates the word "wonder" merely as "curiosity," the desire to figure things out, or to intellectually solve problems rather than confronting the depth of these questions, pondering, reflecting, being humbled by them. In this way, philosophy becomes an exercise in meaningless ingenuity.
I did learn to play that game, and then to avoid it.
My students at SF State were very hungry for what most of us, down deeply, really want from philosophy. When we honor those unanswerable questions and open them and deepen them, students are very happy about it, very interested in a deep quiet way.
RW: It is really very hard to find that, I believe.
JN: Some years ago I had a chance to teach a course in philosophy in high school. I got ten or twelve very gifted kids at this wonderful school, San Francisco University High School. In that first class I said, "Now just imagine, as if this was a fairy tale, imagine you are in front of the wisest person in the world, not me, but the wisest person there is and you can only ask one question. What would you ask?" At first they giggled and then they saw that I was very serious. So then they started writing. What came back was astonishing to me. I couldn't understand it at first. About half of the things that came back had little handwriting at the bottom or the sides of the paper in the margin. Questions like, Why do we live? Why do we die? What is the brain for? Questions of the heart. But they were written in the margins as though they were saying, do we really have permission to express these questions? We're not going to be laughed at? It was as though this was something that had been repressed.
RW: Fascinating.
JN: It's what I call metaphysical repression. It's in our culture and It's much worse than sexual repression. It represses eros and I think that maybe that's where art can be of help sometimes. Some art………..
Modern philosophy involves itself with meaningless ingenuity while secularism has the impossible goal of social justice. Both avoid the questions of the heart and the contemplation of what we ARE so repress eros. The love of wisdom the essence of philosophy are canceled in favor of indoctrinating the young into the impossible goal of changing the world resulting in tyranny.
The questions of the heart are repressed and the young are afraid to admit that they feel these questions as opposed to the usual indoctrination into social values.
What of the minority who feel the psychological harm being done on the young by metaphysical repression? What can they do to offer alternatives in a world that doesn't want it. what could provide the awakening impressions of what it means to become human before they are canceled by wokeism into oblivion?