“Symbiosis” is not an infantile stage of development. It is not it infantile; nor is it a stage of development. Symbiosis is our primal way of being in the world: the fantasy of “connection” to things “out there:” a world that seems greater than the self.

At  nearly every moment of our lives,  we imagine we are connected to a  world “out there;” the background object of identification. This world lurks on the circumference of our being, even as it penetrates through out skull to constitute a central element of our "inner life." 

Identification with one’s nation or culture involves negation of actual existence. Who can compete—compare—with the “great ones” out there? We become armchair warriors. The subjectivity of the self—concrete experience—is negated in the name of a great, symbolic world that seems hovering everywhere outside the self. Coming back to the self involves separation from the hysterical, shared fantasy: the “mass-media;” the stars; the people who really exist.

Fear of separation from the world is fear of separation from the "sacred realm" in which the idea of immortality is contained. In our imagination, Albert Einstein still exists. Charles Darwin still exists. Jackie Robinson still exists. It is difficult to imagine that these people do not exist  They are dust, but in our imagination they “live on” forever. They are “the lucky few:” eternally existing as symbolic objects in our minds (yet still, in actuality, “dust,” although we are forbidden say this).

A book on Chinese civilization comments upon Western man's "pathetic longing for the third dimension." Western civilization focuses not simply on concrete existence nor personal relationships—but on this third dimension:  a world “out there” or “up above.” Ernst Kantorowicz writes about the "king's second body." The King is dead, long live the King. One King dies and the next King replaces him. Not a moment’s separation between death and rebirth. Not a moment of actual death. The moment of death is the moment the King lives on.

Nationalism involves the dream of a center "out there:" what everyone reaches out for: to confirm the reality of existence. The domain of existence “out there” is  imagined to be far superior to the domain of reality in which one’s own life occurs.

 “Reach for the stars.” To become an “American Idol;" a star.  The “news” or mass-media lies at the core of contemporary cultural life: this is the organ that identifies the place in which real life if occurring. And thanks to the Internet, more and more people are able to find a place in this real life. “Nobody wants to be left out" (it's a family affair). Reality is “out there.”

The mind has become emptied out; evacuated. Mental life exists in the form of projected phantasies. So many phantasies. No wonder everything is so fucked up.

The human disease grows out of the quest for omnipotence;  to elevate a principle or idea or symbol into something seemingly more powerful or significant or real than one’s concrete existence.

Binding the self to a "principle of omnipotence" means one cannot imagine life in separation from this idea. One constantly seeks to “link up” with the omnipotent object or idea; the cultural phantasy. One’s actual existence is negated—as one struggles to connect with the omnipotent idea or principle or the “star.” One reaches for the unattainable: an idea of perfection or completeness imagined to be contained within an object outside the self.