From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Sep 16 2002 - 20:04:53 MDT
Yet another set of reasons "Why..." is given in Max
Stirner's classic "The Ego and His Own." Leaving out
a lot of valuable detail, if you evaluate people by
their ideas, then, to be consistent, you have to
evaluate yourself by the ideas you hold (and visa
versa, of course). You have an emotional commitment
to those ideas as soon as you tie your ego to them.
This tends to lock you into a particular idea set -
the spooks or "wheels in the head" as Stirner calls
them. You become virtually a slave to your own ideas.
This could also, I suppose, be called "the Mensan
sickness." So many Mensans I've met have little
outside of the fact that they can get into Mensa to
give any distinction to their lives, so they play that
to the hilt. They have to be RIGHT!!
I try to combat this kind of trap with Zen sorts of
exercises - find something that makes me feel really
bad to even think about, and then think about just
that. Imagine worst case scenarios. Contemplate the
positive side of suicide. Consider that everything I
know might be wrong... Think of all the bad, ugly,
stupid! things I ever did. Feel free to suggest new
exercises - I'm always looking. ;)
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