Orientation under dissolution is the capacity to keep a vertical direction while the surrounding environment loses its structure. Dissolution is not a future event. It is the present condition of the age. Forms of authority, of community, of meaning, and of limit continue to weaken. The man who still expects those forms to stabilize his orientation will find himself continuously displaced. The differentiated individual transfers the source of orientation to the interior axis that does not depend on their stability.
This transfer is not a single decision. It is the accumulated effect of the applications already practiced. Each day that the measure is applied under conditions of increasing formlessness strengthens the independence of the orientation. The man becomes less reactive to the latest collapse and less dependent on the next temporary structure that claims to replace what has been lost.
Young men who live inside the process of dissolution often experience a continuous low-level disorientation. The sensation is accurate. The response is usually either to seek a new temporary structure or to abandon the demand for orientation altogether. Both responses remain inside the horizontal movement of the age. The higher type accepts the dissolution as the given terrain. He continues to orient himself according to the permanent measure without requiring the terrain to change.
Maintain the applications with greater consistency as the surrounding forms grow less reliable. The orientation that survives under these conditions is the residual orientation that the cycle has not been able to extinguish. It is realized in the man who continues to stand when the supports that once held him have already fallen.