436 becoming more human by becoming more godlikeself to the opinions and desires of others: the derivative character of
desire and opinion, robbing us of a self in the very pro cess of creating a
self through personal connection. Th e pervasiveness of this taint on
our relations to one another becomes clear in the ambivalence that ac-
companies, as a shadow, the whole life of personal encounter.
To build a self, and to be freer and greater, is in part to diminish the
price that we must pay for connection. Once again, we must pursue the
goal both as collective project and as personal striving. As collective
project, it takes the form of the development of the institutions and
practices that favor deep freedom and the higher forms of cooperation.
As personal striving, it requires the pursuit of love, especially the high-
est form of love, love among equals, as well as the development of com-
munities of diff erence and the practice of kindness to strangers as the
outer circle of love. Both the inner and the outer circles depend on the
same requirements: the progress of our ability to imagine the experi-
ence of other people and the ac cep tance of heightened vulnerability.
Th e relation between these two sets of conditions of self- construction
is both intimate and confl icted. We must act on that relation if we are
to preserve and to use the legacy of the struggle with the world in the
ser vice of the religion of the future.
In principle and over biographical as well as historical time, these
two sets of conditions of self- assertion support each other. By making
ourselves bigger, as we change both the structures of society and of
thought and the nature of our engagement in them, we turn ourselves,
ever more, into the context- transcendent individuals that we imper-
fectly, incompletely, and disguisedly are. We are then able more fully
to recognize one another as the originals we both know ourselves to be
and desire to become. Strength— the strength that comes with the exer-
cise of the power of transcendence— may make us more able to give
ourselves to one another in personal love, in communities that do not
require sameness as their cement, and in the higher forms of coopera-
tion, which dispense with rigid hierarchy and specialization in the
shaping of our cooperative activities.
Conversely, each of these ways of attenuating the confl ict between
our need to connect and our desire to escape the dangers of connec-
tion, thus weakening, as well, the reasons for our ambivalence to one
another, may help inspire us to resist the context and equip us to change