AL PARKER | 2006-10-04
NOT SPAM
How can something called "the basics" be so difficult? You have learned a skill which the rest of us need to develop, but it will take a lot of time and effort for us to be hit with this way of thinking until we get it. Most of us have been conditioned by television and the media to absorb information uncritically.
Comment by Al Parker
ME:
To a great extent, your last sentence answers the question posed in the first one.
Absorbing opinions uncritically has been what all of mankind before the white race normally did. That is an easy pattern to impose and a hard one to break.
We broke the pattern and went for the simple answers, but there is nothing EASY about that.
Simple is not easy.
It is not difficult to say that "Walter Cronkite said so and so" or "The Great God Kufu speaking through the High Priest" said so and so. It is EASY to try to find the final truth in quotes from the Old Testament.
When Newton noticed that things fall, he deduced a whole theory of the universe from that. The concept is simple, but when you go into it, your whole blackboard fills up with calculus equations. That is NOT easy.
Once you have decided not to compromise with reality, the world becomes very difficult to deal with. You can no longer say, "Well, Father X or Reverend Y or Justice Z must be compared with the words of ...." You don't even have to wake up to talk that crap.
But reality is a tough customer. You can't quit with a quote from Father Ignatius. You can't rest until you get the ANSWER. The one that WORKS. The one that couldn't care less whether it sounds good or not.
Simple becomes very, very hard. If you realize its importance AND you have a conscience and empathy, it becomes downright cruel.
But the only alternative is to be a herd beast.