This simple metaphor means alot to me as does this Chahta man, who politically I disagree with constantly. Even as we move around on the hoop, we still seem to always be at opposite spectrums, even seeming to switch sides in odd little ways. But our love for each other has been there from the beginning and it has never diminished over the years, even thru our most heated and loud political discussions.
I have to believe that it is impossible for humans to see both sides of any given issue at the same time. The first time I clearly saw the opposite side was when a particularly eloquent speaker made me see the full immorality of abortion. For a period of time, I saw it clearly, the morality issue dwarfing to insigificance over all other "freedom of choice" issues I had previously deemed so important. Yet it didn't last. I fell back to the "its not my place to judge how others must choose" view and have since been unable to shake that perspective.
Soon after that first experience, I started having more frequent glimpses of the "other side" for other issues and I ended up in a state of confusion that left my entire carefully constructed "non contradictory" platform of personal philosophy in ruin. I've not recovered and now I suspect that recovery of some new rigid perspective on the world is not a desirable goal, that maybe it is more important to try to see a greater number of different perspectives, in order to try to gain a better view of the truth.
--tully
On Monday 28 March 2005 01:49 pm, joanna bujes wrote:
>ravi wrote:
>>but it seems, there are other segments of the left that insist on
>> the primacy of their ideology, their analysis, sometimes to the
>> exclusion of all else. what are we to say of them?
>
>"Know thyself"? "Grow up"?
>
>The appreciation and love of ideas starts with adolescence and since
>many people never outgrow their adolescence, there they stay. It is
> far easier to love ideas than people because ideas come with
> ready-made distinct boundaries. But, as R.K. Narayan continually
> reminds us, life is almost never black and white; it is almost
> entirely gray. People who cannot accept or process gray, love ideas
> and fundamentally hate humanity and its messiness.
>
>Some of these people inhabit the "left"; others the "right."
> Whatever their differences, they share a similar kind of
> intolerance and self-righteousness.
>
>Joanna
>
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