J. R. Molloy writes
> Insight is the elimination of the ignorance which is the
> very center of the self, the ignorance that self creates.
An odd word to describe this; but all right, I understand that you
are describing the momentary feeling when one's understanding and
perceptions change. Very well.
> Insight dispels that very center. With the ignorance, perception is
> not possible. It's blindness in a way. What next? I am an ordinary
> human, with all my animal instincts, pleasure and pain and reward
> and punishment and so on. I hear you [Eugene] say this, and I see
> what you are saying has some kind of reason, logic and order. It
> makes sense as far as we can see... Then how am I to have reason in
> my life? How am I to bring it about?
Who can say for sure? But I'll put my amateurish two cents in.
Our instincts (definitely including our emotions) foment in most
of us commendable rational processes of finding what's so and
what's not. Sometimes, of course, the results of this inquiry
are not welcome. One has uncomfortable feelings of dissonance,
incompleteness, and lack of harmony, and some people simply shut
the door on those feelings and thoughts at once. We, generally
speaking, are not such people. So what we can do is carefully
and repeatedly give internal voice to those unpleasant conclusions.
In my own case, to take a recent example, I must say over and
over, "The Fred Reed piece had some definite racist passages."
When I am comfortable saying that, I can then proceed to the
more difficult abridgment, "The Fred Reed piece was racist."
Now after I say it a few times, it gets a lot easier.
In just this way, we can employ our rationality to help ourselves
move forward. In this way, we can allow, as you put it, reason
into our lives.
Lee
P.S. Standing challenge to any of you liberals out there:
top that! Confess how you have articulated to yourself
something as explosive as "Fred Reed's piece is racist"
but with the shoe on the other foot, and how you, even
though it was exceedingly painful, had to give huge aid
and comfort to your ideological opponents. (P.P.S. I
don't think any of them will.)
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