(a). Background.
A historical irony unfolded before the world: While Russian society, having endured “God-pleasing suffering,” repented of its “atheist materialism,” American society simultaneously became the leading proponent of this materialism worldwide.
It was precisely during this period that self-proclaimed “Christians” in the United States staged grand performances of their “righteousness.” Just recently, the world witnessed a remarkable example of such a “prayer meeting” at the Pentagon, led by the Secretary of War during America’s war of aggression against Iran. Or there is the “Seven Mountain Mandate” of a group calling itself the “New Apostolic Reformation” (NAR) (discussed in post 7).
In the eyes of Russian Christianity, which has endured enormous suffering to return Russia to the Orthodox path, these Americans can accurately be described as “Christian-Satanists” whose path is profit. It is a central theme of this blog that the coming collapse of the Western “mechanical-capitalist” economic order will help (i.e., force) self-proclaimed “Christians” in the USA to “take the hyphen out of Christian-Satanist” and finally decide, which side are they really on (see post 18) – the side of God or the power of money?
For Orthodox Christians in Russia, the simplistic teaching of American self-proclaimed “evangelical Christians” that a “personal relationship with Christ” is all that matters is heretical, because this effectively denies the obligation to “love one’s neighbor as oneself.” Orthodox Christians teach that it is IMPOSSIBLE to have a “personal relationship with Christ” WITHOUT “loving one’s neighbor as oneself.” Attention is focused on the concept of “neighbor.” This concept is not limited to the “neighborhood.” In Orthodoxy, “neighbor” is absolutely any person with whom we come into contact in life, regardless of their nationality, religion, or relationship to us. This concept is fundamentally revealed in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10), where a neighbor is called the one who showed mercy and helped.
In the simple-minded evangelical Christian model, the American “cult of individualism” is GREAT. It gives everyone the opportunity to “express themselves” in accordance with their ego/personal relationship with Christ. This is widely accepted among Americans and paints an atheist-materialist model according to which “life is about creating yourself.” They can be whoever they want. And herein lies the diabolical genius of the economic order of the “Reagan economic miracle”: convincing people that they are who they want to be is an excellent means of increasing sales in support of society’s sole purpose—expanding the “economy.”
In the Orthodox Christian model, the American “cult of individualism” is a DISASTER. It inflicts a terrible spiritual wound on consumers, as the “natural” spiritual need for connection and the associated process of drawing from the collective spirit are suppressed by the material aspirations of the individual “creating himself.” This process occurs in a social context that is deliberately forced (by those at the top of the capitalist pyramid) to adopt the principle of “divide and conquer,” “every man for himself”—a context in which consumers have been “commercialized” as “impersonal modules” within a consumer-technological construct. This isolates the “spirit” from the “social fabric,” turning consumers into binary bodies and minds, rather than trinitarian individuals living in communion with each other.
The commercial success of this “cult of individualism,” already amplified by American personal automobile-based reality, became hyper-charged with the onset of smart phones, social media and personal web pages. It led eventually to a “mechanical” way of life, mass-produced, automated, cookie-cutter franchised, that minimizes human interactions within a conceptual framework of “time is money.”
Within this model, life itself became “mechanical.”
In the Orthodox Christian model, to render life itself to be “mechanical” is a spiritual catastrophe because life is NOT “mechanical” – life is HOLY.
Self-described “Christians” in the USA do not yet comprehend the magnitude of the spiritual harm which they have inflicted upon themselves in development of their “Reagan Economic Miracle” society. This is true even even for many (if not most) American self-described “Orthodox Christians,” who, by embracing the society of the “cult of individualism,” have effectively created a kind of oxymoron: “Orthodox individualism.” In my view, American consumers have been literally led like cows to the slaughterhouse, literally led to spiritual self-destruction, while their society is systematically dehumanized.
In my view, the root cause of self-proclaimed American “Christians”‘ blindness to the harm they have caused themselves (and attempted to inflict on the rest of the world) is a spiritual disease afflicting Americans as a whole— their “sense of personal space.”
(b). What is the American “sense of personal space?”
I found 536 articles in an academic database presenting “scientific” studies about “personal space,” including a specialized sub-field of Anthropology that calls itself “proxemics.” (77) American psychologists assert that “personal space is vital for our well-being.” “The discomfort we feel in packed elevators or when someone stands too close highlights the significance of respecting physical boundaries.” (78)
“Personal space is the ‘bubble’ around us that defines how much proximity we allow …. (another neighbor to get)…It acts as a shield that protects our sense of individuality and security. Often referred to as a ‘second skin,’ this boundary can expand or contract depending on who we interact with, our cultural norms, and the context.” (78)
It is not a joke but a direct quote from this same American article that, in terms of “physical space,” “personal space” can be divided into four zones: “Intimate Zone (0–18 inches): Reserved for close family, partners, and best friends. Personal Zone (18 inches–4 feet): Used for casual acquaintances, colleagues, and distant relatives. Social Zone (4–12 feet): Appropriate for strangers or formal interactions. Public Zone (12+ feet): Maintained in speeches, presentations, or crowded public areas.” (78)
Fundamentally at issue is who, exactly, is this “I” whose “individuality” needs to be “shielded” by their “bubble” of “personal space?” What Americans mean, of course, is the “I” that they are in the process of “creating,” in accordance with the atheist-materialist model of identity. Americans in this context of course do NOT refer to the transcendental “I” of the repentant sinner, recognizing their true essence through harmoniuous unity of spirit, soul and body “in Christ,” which realization is possible only through conscious and often painful effort to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Regarding the metaphorical model of the human organism being applied, it is well worth considering what, exactly, is happening when a consumer perceives that someone “is standing too close.” In the “biomedical model,” where “I am my body,” there is no suggestion of actual physical energies that interact between persons. Thus, the “biomedical model” attributes the sense of “personal space” being “invaded” to some biochemical phenomenon within the consumer’s “amygdala.” (79)
However, the “Orthodox Christian model” paints a completely different picture. In this model, “real I is a unity of spirit, soul and body.” Physical, interpersonal energies associated with the “heaviness of the flesh” (that is, the source of the “discomfort” we feel when someone “stands too close”) are understood as emanating from the “passions of the flesh,” from which we actively seek to free ourselves. As discussed in post 21, in my metaphorical construct, the energies animating our presence as individuals in the body include both the energies of the flesh, “black,” which operate interpersonally, imparting a sense of “heaviness” to the presence of others, and spiritual love, “blue.”
By our biological nature, the “passions of the flesh” and the associated “gravity of flesh” works itself out differently depending on whether we are male or female and whether the people we encounter are male or female. “The blue” can transform “the black.” In everyday life, we often encounter what seem to us unpleasant manifestations of others. But through conscious spiritual work, while simultaneously overcoming our own “passions of the flesh,” we “create space” for the presence of our neighbor, using “blue” to “love our neighbor as ourselves.”
This is exactly, precisely the same spiritual work that Orthodox Christians do to assemble as the Mystical Body of Christ in the sacrament of the assembly.
The result of the conscious spiritual work to “make room” for the manifestation of others is NOT that “individuality” is left “unprotected.” On the contrary, through this work, a person connects in communion with others and is enriched by them, transcending their ordinary circumstances, entering a place where their triune being is not alone. “Spirit”, “mind” and “body” are typically far from harmonious in everyday life where any of literally hundreds of different “personality states” might be “in charge” as “I-of-the moment” as they rush about their business in “time-is-money” time. The experience of “making room” is similar to the exhilirating experience that we get in the Orthodox liturgy as we pass from the level of awareness dominated by “passions of the flesh” into the sublime state of “unity in Christ” – the condition that I refer to as “liturgical time.”
According to the “Orthodox Christian model,” the American “sense of personal space” is a kind of spiritual illness whereby consumers do not even attempt to “make room” for the emergence of others like themselves. Instead, by embracing the materialistic “biomedical model” of the human organism and the simple-minded evangelical model where “life is self-creation,” most American consumers live in denial of their collective status. Instead of acknowledging how deeply their “cult of individualism” has harmed them spiritually, they have “doubled down” on it, transforming their own debilitating illness into something “vital to well-being”—a “shield” of “personal space” that “protects” their “sense of individuality.”
(c). Why is the American “sense of personal space” inherently at odds with “loving thy neighbor as thyself?”
This “shield” of “personal space” that protects” one’s “sense of individuality” would not hold up for one minute in the Saint Petersburg metro, which carries some 3 million riders per day. And rightly so! Russians do not suffer from this uniquely American illness. The inevitable, repeated encounter with many other persons “invading” your “personal space” on the metro regularly presents an opportunity to undertake the intentional suffering that is involved in “loving thy neighbor as thyself.” Here, a certain spiritual work is necessary, which we also perform in the Orthodox liturgy, to gather “in Christ,” conquering our own ego in order to “make room” for others. Thus, experiencing, even if only briefly, “the peace of Christ, which is not of this world” (John 14:27) and “the kingdom of God, which is within you” (Luke 17:20-21). Because of the continued existence of “sobornost” in Russian society (discussed in post 21), one does not have to work very hard to get to the “blessed middle,” from which vantage point, one readily appreciates that God does, indeed, love everyone sitting in the metro car with you – and that they are all beautiful receptacles of the Creator’s love. It is only by refusing to succomb to the sense of “personal space” being “invaded” that one can hope to achieve this comprehension.
In the Orthodox model of the unity of spirit, soul, and body, consumers collaborate in the divine liturgy to achieve unity “in Christ” through spiritual prayer work, which the Church Fathers described as “the struggle of the spirit with the flesh.”
In the liturgy, consumers from “the world” concentrate on prayer to receive the Creator’s love, but at the same time, they are also, of course, affected by the “gravity of flesh” of others (i.e. the “discomfort” we feel when someone “stands too close”) – the predictable and indeed inevitable “heaviness” of interpersonal energies of the flesh. These “black” “interpersonal energies” will pull you down, and you will be overwhelmed by negative emotions and the like, fall out of unity within yourself, and, at least for a time, lose the ability to continue to receive the Creator’s love if you do not undertake in the assembly the “struggle of the spirit with the flesh” so as to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
This spiritual work that we undertake in the liturgy can be undertaken exactly the same in everyday life. The physical volume of our bodies are defined quite specifically and literally by their physical contours. But the “presence” that we “project” is actually quite variable, including “blue” and “black” energies in various relative proportions. At any given moment, each of us has a sense of “presence,” which I call our “perceptual volume.” Furthermore, our sense of “presence” as a person occupying a “perceptual volume” is related to what I will call a “vibrational density,” or a sense of “perceptual weight.”
Encounters with people, in general and also specifically in the liturgy, involve an attempt to reach a common “perceptual volume” and a related common “vibrational density of perceptual volume.” The act of “loving your neighbor as yourself” can be seen as the difference between a passing projection of one’s presence and an active feeling of “I love you.” And if there is an unpleasant manifestation of a person next to you, this requires saying “this is not I” to everything inside you that does NOT love this person (even to the point that it sometimes actively “hurts”). This is “making room” for the presence of other people in a common “perceptual volume” having a shared “vibrational density.”
During the course of the liturgy, there is always a change in our “vibrational density of perceptual volume.” The level of awareness dominated by “passions of the flesh” is associated with the “gravity of the flesh,” that is, with a certain “heaviness” in terms of “vibrational density of perceptual volume.” As the level of awareness changes into the sublime state of “unity in Christ,” our “blue” transforms our “black” and this is definitely associated with a sense of liberation from this “heaviness,” that is, with a distinctly lighter “vibrational density of perceptual volume.”
The task for the sinner struggling to BE their prayer, not only in the liturgy but in everyday life, according to the Orthodox teaching, is to learn how to BOTH maintain a prayerful disposition and at the same time “love thy neighbor as thyself.” The effort required is of course DIFFERENT depending on whether “thy neighbor” is male or female. At the level of awareness dominated by “passions of the flesh” encounters between “men” and “women” are, to a first approximation, essentially complementary within the “gravity of the flesh.” But passing from this level, through the work to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” we reach “unity in Christ,” where “the distinction between male and female has passed away” (Galatians 3:28).
It is not possible to fit into a “one size fits all” exposition what each person needs to do to “love thy male neighbor as thyself” versus “loving thy female neighbor as thyself.” But what can be stated categorically is that projecting one’s presence, demanding that other people stay out of your “personal space,” is precisely, and by definition, NOT “loving thy neighbor as thyself.”
(d). How did the illness of “personal space” become so hyper-aggressive in the USA?
The psychology of “personal space” in the USA unquestionably relates to a perceived need to “protect” the “sense of individuality.” One can find dozens of “cross cultural” studies which compare the objectively measured average distance that people keep between each other in different cultures. But merely measuring these objective distances does not provide any insight into the inner psychological issues. For example, Romania, a collectivist, Orthodox country, is said to have an objective “personal space” distance that is as large as that in the USA. Yet the reasons for this distance amongst Romanians do not, and could not possibly, have anything to do with a perceived need to “protect” their “sense of individuality.” The origins of the phenomenon in Romania more likely relate to the fact that it is the poorest country in the European Union. Perhaps the underlying psychological issue is concern about pickpockets or body odors?
The term “personal space” was popularized in the USA by the anthropologist Edward Hall in 1966 (77). This date was at a point where social life in the USA had dramatically changed in the period after World War II. The widespread dismantling of intra-city and inter-city train networks in America was already essentially complete by 1966 (80). This mass transporation system was replaced with mass adoption of personal automobiles as a way of life, with car ownership per household nearly doubling from 0.9 to 1.7 between 1950 and 1966 (81). The massive, government-subsidized US interstate highway system was largely complete by 1966, providing a completely new cultural framework for a personal automobile-based reality with associated new concepts of urban and suburban planning including little IF ANY public transport (82).
But the publication of Hall’s work only marked the formal, “official” beginning of Americans’ “sense of personal space.” From that point onward, their insatiable thirst for “personal space” just kept growing. Average home size in the USA kept expanding, even as average family size kept falling to where, by 2024, living space per person had literally more than tripled compared with 1950, from 290 to 890 square feet (83). Personal automobile ownership per capita during this same period increased to 0.85 (84). (In contrast, per capita automobile ownership in Russia is only just now in 2026 at 0.322 – about the level of the US in 1950 (85))
The onset of the “Reagan Economic Miracle” in 1980 marked the beginning of debt-fueled hyper-consumption as the way of life in America. Consumers were encouraged to celebrate their egos, instead of fighting to become free of them. Personal automobiles, upon which the social infrastructure was based, became more and more technologically advanced – ego isolation chambers in which consumers could project their sense of themselves without having to contend with the “invasion” of their “personal space” that they would have experienced on public transport, if this had existed.
Consumers became accustomed to thinking of themselves in terms of their presence from within their moving automobile. That is, they projected “spirit” in their own presence inside their own vehicle, but did not experience any kind of reciprocal “spiritual connection” with other people such as occurs in public transport. (Note that this tendency for spiritual dis-harmony is further exacerbated by the tendency of “Reagan Economic Miracle” society to “excise” “spiritual interaction” from the “social fabric”). Outside their vehicles, their sense of themselves became very “large,” and their need for “personal space” was accordingly amplified. The aisles in grocery stores became hugely wide, to accommodate two consumers with shopping carts passing each other without “invading” the other’s “personal space.” Remarkably, one will regularly hear American consumers apologize for passing within an arm’s length of your shopping cart!
(e). What is the cure for this American spiritual illness?
“The cure” for Americans’ “personal space” illness is theoretically quite simple, notwithstanding the implausibility of its widespread actualization: Consumers need simply say “this is not I” to the thing in themselves that seeks to “protect” its “sense of individuality” through the “shield” of “personal space.” Instead, when the perception of someone “standing too close” arises, fight against it by projecting your attention, which is your love, so as to “push back” against the unpleasant sense of the “gravity of flesh” of this other person, holding in your mind the thought about this person that “I know that the Lord loves you and so do I,” even if it hurts.
I will forever remember a turning point in my life when I did this work on the metro in Hamburg with one person whose manifestation was, initially, unpleasant for me, essentially “pressing” me. Through this work, I experienced thereafter the definite sense of “liturgical time” and genuine compassion for this person and also for everyone else in the metro car.
After this event, which I call my “Hamburg revelation,” I realized that the work of the liturgy can and indeed MUST be done everywhere, not just in church. This is the work to BE your prayer, which is only possible to maintain by “loving thy neighbor as thyself.” Obviously the societal context can make this undertaking either more or less difficult and either more or less “spiritually productive.” For example, this is readily possible in contemporary Russia, because of the continued existence of “sobornost” in society (discussed in post 21). (It is for this reason that I live in Russia). And in contrast, in the contemporary USA, the work to BE your prayer, according to the Orthodox teaching, requires “swimming upstream” in society, which is (at least for now) a sisyphean undertaking (discussed in post 5).
But all bets are off as to what will happen in the USA after the coming fall of the “Reagan Economic Miracle.” No doubt there will be plenty of well-armed Christian-Satanists whose focus will be protecting themselves. But crisis can also bring out the best in people. Perhaps carless consumers, forced to huddle in shelters, will quickly recover from their illness and learn to “love their neighbor as themselves?
77. “Proxemics 101: Understanding Personal Space Across Cultures,” R. Kreuz and R. Roberts, MIT Press Reader, Dec 22 2019.
78. “Personal Space: The Invisible Boundary That Shapes Our Lives,” G. Kleygrewe, Me Time Healing Dec. 20, 2024.
79. “Personal space regulation by the human amygdala,” D. Kennedy et al., Nature Neuroscience 12:1226 (2009)
80. “Goodbye to the interurban,” W. Middleton, American Heritage 17(3), April 1966
81. “Transportation Deployment Casebook/History of the Automobile: Ownership per Household in U.S.,” S. Tang Wikibooks May 17, 2026.
82. “American highway shifts: the course of the Interstate highway machine from 1956 to 1973,” K. Kusawa, 2001, Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin
83. “Americans have tripled their living space per person since 1950,” Wall-Y, Warp New March 21, 2026
84. “How Many Cars Are in the U.S.? 2026 [2026]” ConsumerAffairs.com. May. 12, 2026, https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/how-many-cars-are-in-the-us.html
85. See www.autostat.ru
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