From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Sep 17 2002 - 01:01:12 MDT
Phil writes
> 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.
Yes, but you say that this is true "if you evaluate
people by their ideas". No doubt this makes it even
stronger---Stirner's point, presumably---but wouldn't
you say that we *all* to some extent have an
emotional commitment to our ideas? I mean, even
a four year old hates it when someone says he's wrong.
> 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.
A valuable meme. This certainly does well describe
some who've given their all for "the cause".
> 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!!
Yup. You've nailed it here (not for all Mensans, of
course; some even pride themselves, I'm sure, by
being *above* that!). But that makes perfect sense.
I would suggest---as I think you do somewhere here---
that the bigger life one has *outside* his or her
political opinions, the less the ego needs be
involved.
> 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. ;)
Read about the history of the Spanish Conquistadors, e.g.
Gonzalo Pizarro; and then when you feel sufficiently bad,
really terrible, go back and read about the Aztecs. Here's
one little morsel to help: the Aztecs would take small
children and slowly torture them to death because they
believed that the Gods would see the tears of the little
children and be moved to provide rain.
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:06 MST