Christianity - The hole in the Stairs

One can say that in the Mediterranean realm Christianity was the end-product of a long civilizing development and therefore became a spiritual and differentiated religious form – that on the basis of the Roman civilization it was possible for people to understand the Christian symbolism, and so, wherever Christianity was superimposed on a Romanized background there was the possibility of a transition.  In areas where Romanization was lacking, the historical continuity of evolution was interrupted and Christianity superseded something very different.  Using a metaphor, you could say that north of the Main, people have “a hole in the staircase” – a lower story and an upper story and in the middle an open space.  TPoPA 246

Africans who have been Christianized have that same hole in the stairs.  The problem exists also among the Americans who fell, when they went West as pioneers, into a primitive civilization, namely, that of the American Indians.  Survival in that primitive environment could only be achieved by becoming as tough and as primitive as the natives; on the other hand, the pioneers had a Victorian Christian past, and this explains why the North Americans have in many ways the same hole in the stairs (or a variation of it) that the Germans have. 

Such a hole is not only a disadvantage, however.  The inner polarity and tension which such a cultural situation creates makes people dynamic, efficient and active.  It can be said that if the electric plus and minus poles are very far apart and very strong, then the electricity is also much greater.  So it creates more dynamic and active personalities, with the drawback of a certain tendency to dissociate easily in mass movements, the nucleus of the personality and its balance being more easily disturbed.  TPoPA 251

Naturally, this hole in the stairs (…) is only relative.  It could only be said to be relatively different, and naturally when you make such sweeping statements about nations, there are many exceptions.  This is just an attempt to characterize it in a general way.  TPoPA 251