The terrain of the present age is defined by the progressive elimination of every form that once expressed a higher order. Institutions, customs, symbols, and even the ordinary language of rank have been leveled or inverted. What remains is a field of forces that operate without reference to quality or to vertical hierarchy. The differentiated individual does not invent this diagnosis. He accepts it as the accurate description of the ground on which he must live.
Acceptance of the terrain is not the same as surrender to it. The man who refuses to see the character of the age will continually attempt to act as if the supports of Tradition still existed. Those attempts fail and produce only frustration or theatrical postures. The man who sees clearly adjusts his stance. He no longer expects the environment to confirm or to assist the higher orientation. He carries that orientation himself.
Clarity about the terrain also prevents certain errors. It prevents the hope that the age can be reformed by ordinary political or cultural means into something that once again supports the Traditional type. It prevents the despair that treats the absence of outer supports as the absence of any possible higher life. Both the false hope and the false despair are forms of participation in the dissolving process.
The differentiated individual studies the terrain in order to move across it without being dissolved. He learns where the pressures are strongest, where the claims of the age are most seductive, where the small surrenders begin. That knowledge is practical. It allows him to place his limited forces where they are most needed: in the continuous defense and intensification of the interior center.