Saturday 6 September 2008

on intellectual maturity


The mature position to embrace: life is unfair, but I'm okay with that." There are those who encounter things I've done, said or thought and take ideological issue with my views. These days, it almost always boils down to a misunderstanding concerning the question of life's fundamental fairness.
The problem that leads to misinterpretation so easily is embedded in the practical differences there are between an ideologue and an intellectual. For an ideologue, ideas are forms of corroboration of one's own righteousness, or else corroboration of the inherent mode of justice that is presumed to exist in the way things are or ought to be. An intellectual, however, has transcended their attachment to the just world fallacy.
A lot of what one says from an intellectual point of view is almost impossible for some people to understand who read an intellectual analysis of from the point of view of needing to believe in a "just world".
But what if I don't need to believe in a just world? What if I had given that belief up long ago, and never intended to convey an appeal to such a notion in my writings?
The overcoming of neurosis in transcending a compulsion to believe in a just world is the key element in the maturation process of the modern shaman.
There are all numbers of ways of learning that the world isn't inherently just, the prime of these must be via an experience of suffering that is prolonged or clearly unjust. The suffering of the future shaman thus humanizes her, as well as giving her insight into just how illusory are the faiths that humans commonly embrace, in order to give themselves dutch courage.
Right wingers, occasionally, read my stuff, and charge me with complaining about this or that. However, what I detect in this assessment is a cri de coeur concerning the fact that I am pulling too much of the wool away from their eyes, revealing to them that the world operates on principles other than justice.

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Cultural barriers to objectivity