From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun Aug 05 2001 - 00:16:30 MDT
Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> 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.
Or perhaps logic and reason is not the end and be all of ways to
fruitfully understand and make wise choices. There is not an
either/or here. Nor is facing dissonance an automatic guarantee
of any virtue except not flinching from the unpleasant. It is
certainly not a reliable sign one is on the right track.
>
> 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.
Do you really think this is an example of anything highly
admirable, especially of an example of the benefits of reason?
How so? I don't get it. Honest examination leads to the
conclusion for sure but was it really at all difficult to do?
>
> 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.)
I don't think in terms of "liberal" or "conservative". But I am
one who has embraced many intellectually, emotionally,
psychologically and spiritually painful positions in my life
when I believed that honesty and being fully alive required it.
How could I do anything else when I know what dishonesty brings
from trying that all together too many times?
I don't have "ideological opponents".
- samantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:09:28 MST