Sunday, December 08, 2002

Radical Honesty: Seriousness "Our minds are always working. This ceaseless mental activity will continue to occur whether we take it seriously or not. But the practice of taking it less seriously can't be taken too seriously or we are back in our minds again." 6:31:35 PM    comment []

Radical Honesty: Becoming "We have to strut and pose and try on lots of roles and tell a lot of lies and do a good job ob it before giving it up. But if we continue to grow, we will give the roles up. Eventually we can joke about what used to be serious work in learning how to represent ourselves to others. That ability to joke about who we are comes only after we have developed the basic identify (the fundamental lie) we think we are. Then, despite all that work, we have to give up all our attachment to that identity. If we don't, we'll never be free from its restrictions. "Here is another way of saying it. We have to go through adolescence and develop an identity, and answer the question, 'Who am I?' Having established that identity, we have to give up our attachment to it, and remember who we were at the beginning, before we developed that identity." 5:41:47 PM    comment []

Good Points from Radical Honesty: As cultures burn out "As a culture burns out or fails to renew itself through change, its educational and political leaders are often the least creative members -- the ones who cling hysterically to old methods simply because they once worked. The best people in a dying culture are the outcasts considered crazy by the leaders; the ones most disillusioned by their own culture. In Yests' phrase 'The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate insensity.'" 5:15:24 PM    comment []