There is a tendency in Western thinking to get too much into unrealities whether it's mathematical unrealities or social unrealities like gender dysphoria, etc. Graduates I have met over the years, you might say, all graduated from the university of Never Never Land.
Put another way, there is a gross under use of the right hemisphere of the brain and an over reliance on the left hemisphere. In our future, we may well slay the human race because we have prohibited the use of the right hemisphere of the brain.
"The more we rely on the left hemisphere alone, the more self-conscious we become; the intuitive, unconscious unspoken elements of experience are relatively discounted, and the interpreter begins to interpret — itself" (Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary).
Immersion into Zen Buddhism calls on us to turn to the right hemisphere of the brain for answers. The left hemisphere of the brain will not help the adept. It only keeps one in the great circle of samsara. However, the reliance on the right hemisphere is a difficult undertaking. It is like waking up from a trance in which you had no idea that you were in.
I can say about the 20th century that one of its greatest and most malevolent advances was in propagandizing the public, keeping them in a low level trance while feeding their brains with useless trivia and misinformation. This way the hegemony of the left hemisphere is maintained while ignoring the right. But this also explains why Zen Buddhism when it came to the West confused the outer form with Zen's essence which led to its decline if not it's popularity.
Briefly, Zen offered a ray of light that pierced through the dark mantle that was thrown over the Western mind. But it didn't last long because primarily the people who pushed Zen Buddhism in the West were charlatans.
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