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A post from David R.
I just started studying the 'critical rationalism' of Karl Popper and
I'm amazed
to find another valid philosophical system which I was never aware of.
-
reminded me of another of my favorite passages from the Emerson essay
Self-Reliance. Once again, this is not the original text; I have
modernized the language. (C) 1997 Richard Brodie. All Rights Reserved.
Religious Doctrine
As prayers are a disease of the will, religious doctrines are a disease
of the intellect. They say, as those foolish Israelites did centuries
ago, "Don't let God speak to us, or we'll die! Tell us what to do-you,
anybody, and we will obey."
I can never meet God
in my brother,
because he's shut
his own temple doors
and recites fables
of his brother's-
or his brother's brother's-
God.
Every new mind is a new way of classifying the universe. If it turns
out to be a mind of unusual activity and power-a Freud, a Jung, a John
Locke, a William James, a Charles Darwin-it imposes its classification
on other men and-presto!-a new system. The deeper the thought, the more
of life's chaos it explains to the pupil, the greater the complacency.
This is most apparent in churches and support groups, which are also
classifications of some powerful mind acting on the simple thought of
man's duty and relationship to the Highest. Such is Christian
Fundamentalism, Scientology, Alcoholics Anonymous.
The Blinded Student
The student of a doctrine takes the same delight in subordinating
everything to the new terminology as a girl who has just learned botany
does in suddenly seeing a new earth and new seasons.
For a time, the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the
study of his master's mind.
But in all unbalanced minds
the classification is idolized.
It passes itself off as the end
and not for a quickly exhausted means.
The limits of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with
the limits of the universe; the very stars in heaven seem to them hung
on the arch their master built.
They can't imagine how you aliens have any right to see-how you can
see: "It must be somehow that you stole the light from us." They don't
yet perceive that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any
cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own.
If they are honest and do well, soon their neat new box will be too
small and confining, will crack, will bulge, will rot and vanish, and
the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed,
million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning.
Richard Brodie RBrodie@brodietech.com +1.206.688.8600
CEO, Brodie Technology Group, Inc., Bellevue, WA, USA
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie
Do you know what a "meme" is?
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm
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