| | Bill has answered an awful lot of questions and answered them well. In the final analysis, even the so-called "primary choice" of thinking or not thinking, Bill shows, rests on an antecedent desire or value: wanting to know something -- to understand clearly. What's more, he supports it with a quote from Rand -- the very quote that one of his opponents tried to use earlier to ~refute~ him! And yet, there is no concession. The mind boggles...
What Bill did not say is, I think, a crucial additional point: the desire to know and understand is a ~natural~ desire, part of every conscious living organism's drive for efficacy and control over its own life, to promote its survival and to avoid harm.
The question that Bill's opponents need to ask themselves is this: if the drive to know and understand (that antecedes choosing to think) does not always win out in human beings, why not? It must be that, in some cases, humans value something else more. But what something else?
I'll supply one example that I think plays an important role in this. For children and adults, there are situations where danger seems so imminent that pursuing mental clarity (by thinking, remaining perceptive, etc.) seems to undermine their survival and expose them to harm, rather than promoting their survival. (Branden has discussed this problem in some of his earlier post-Split writings.) Evading, blanking out, etc., seems to be a better survival tool -- at least, in that instance -- than focusing. For a child, this may be the case, and blanking out from time to time may in fact be necessary, if one's environment is sufficiently irrational. And this is enough to get many people started on the road to trying to juggle focusing with evading, as the situation seems to dictate, according to which better promotes their survival and well-being. But as adults, we don't need to blank out in order to survive, and many of us find ourselves saddled with a bad habit that is, for some, very hard to break. (Part of the role of psychotherapy, as Branden points out, is to educate clients to the fact that they ~no longer need~ to pursue a focus-dropping survival strategy.)
But note: the one, over-riding value, that is inborn in ~all~ conscious animals, is the drive to preserve one's survival and well-being. Humans, too, naturally seek to do this, whether by seeking clarity and understanding through focusing or by seeking mental shelter from threatening reality through evading or dropping focus. ~This value~, which pre-exists ~all~ instances of mental focusing, is what the choice to focus is based on. Knowledge (however flawed or misinterpreted) of a situation and the desire to use whatever strategy ~seems~ most likely to enhance survival and well-being and avoid harm. This is how we are built! We cannot ~not~ act in this manner. (Just try not to!)
So, before going off on another round of barraging Bill with attempts to defend your indefensible positions, please reflect (as above) on the human condition and human nature. We are not that different from the other animals in how we select from among alternatives. Our ~big~ difference and advantage is our ~conceptual~ faculties that allow us to envision alternatives to the concrete here-and-now. But that difference and advantage does ~not~ allow us to suspend our nature and natural desire: to pursue survival and well-being and avoid harm. We just have more expanded, nuanced ways of doing it -- including dropping focus, when/if a situation seems (or once seemed) to require it -- and including therapy to help us realize that dropping focus is no longer needed (if it ever was).
REB
|
|
