The Two Mentalities

I was blessed early on by stumbling across excellent guides who helped me orient myself. One of these was Pitirim Sorokin (1889-1968), a Russian sociologist who later became a U.S. citizen. His defining work was Social & Cultural Dynamics in 4 volumes, but a single-volume abridgement is also available. Sorokin proposed two fundamental human mentalities, and he summarizes them as follows:

One extreme is a mentality for which reality is that which can be perceived by the organs of the sense; it does not see anything beyond the sensate being of the milieu (cosmic and social). Those who posses this sort of mentality try to adapt themselves to those conditions which appear to the sense organs, or more exactly to the exterior receptors of the nervous system. On the other extreme are persons who perceive and apprehend the same sensate phenomena in a very different way. For them they are mere appearance, a dream, or an illusion. True reality is not to be found here; it is something beyond, hidden by the appearance, different from this material and sensate veil which conceals it. Such persons do not try to adapt themselves to what now seems superficial, illusory, unreal. They strive to adapt themselves to the true reality which is beyond appearances. [Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics (abridged), p. 25]

The first mentality Sorokin calls sensate, the other ideational. He rightly asserts that the pure type probably does not exist, but he asserts that in most people one or the other will be predominant. He then proceeds to build a cyclic history from this in which Ideational eras are followed by Sensate eras, and in between will come a brief period where the two blend, of which an example is the Renaissance. Good enough, you might say, for sociological work. At the same time my own life’s experience (75 and still counting) totally confirms this classification.

Elaborating on this very basic classification (which brings to mind the introverted/extroverted pairing), Sorokin characterizes the ideational mentality by using negations. Such people are trying to negate the world—while the sensate embrace it.

My own experience suggests a more complex explanation. The real difference between these two extremes is actually a greater openness, in those labeled ideational, to the spiritual, intellectual, and subtle aspects of reality—which they feel to be higher. It’s not that they are negative toward the world. It is that they are much more positively drawn toward the higher—not because of virtue but because they sense it. Sorry about that word. But to the inwardly-oriented, intuition is just as keen a perception as the sensory. And it’s not as if those labeled sensate lack all awareness of the higher currents; they have them too. But they don’t perceive them quite so intensely and are therefore inclined, all things equal, to ignore them.

Vast domains of human conflict exist because these fundamental differences are not sharply and effectively understood by either side. They are therefore conflicts between those who see colors and those who’re colorblind. We cannot overcome a condition like colorblindness by logical discourse. Nor can the colorblind suddenly begin to see colors because they engage in acts of faith. Faith requires more than will. It requires cultivation of the intuitive nature enough so that it will yield an inner sensation of the truth of it; once that is present, faith is easy—indeed unavoidable. The human condition is very powerfully shaped by gifts. To see beyond the borderzone, indeed even to see it as existent, you have to see. And that power is not something that can be manufactured. We’re born with it. Conversely, those who are sensitive can also learn to act as if they do not really see—in order to conform at least behaviorally with the majority of the blind—but that’s just an adaptation. They still see, whether they like it or not.