The Peripatetic Philosopher shares AN EXCHANGE BETWEEN FRIENDS

AN EXCHANGE BETWEEN FRIENDS



I HAD WRITTEN:


What motivates us may follow this formula: what we think we do, and what we do we become.

Now what complicates this, with all do apologies, is that what we think is not necessarily in our control.

A professor in the west several years ago came up with the idea that values govern our behavior. Values are another word for “culture.” The controlling factor, according to his thesis, was that values were a matter of when we were born.

Culture, in any case, greatly influences our thinking if it does not control it.

Young people today are addicted to their electronic devices. You and I were born during the great depression and the collapse of the world into WWII, which finds us (still) concerned with or preoccupied with among other things the survival of our fragile democratic culture.

Your “2-cent” pieces are precious and informative in that sense as you see institutional erosion at the government level whereas I see it at the corporate and societal level.

Ken Shelton, born after WWII, is empathetic with our views but has been bombarded in his life with different values, and therefore different thinking and has dedicated himself to preserving his (and our) heritage at the leadership level. He is also on a much bigger stage than we are.

That said, Ken’s essays are sprinkled with common sense and love, which unhappily is in short supply in this avaricious and anxious age. With this thinking, more is always better but more is never enough.

We have risen out of the swelter of our own particular cultural conditioning, as does everyone. Each of us, it might be said, are quasi-prisoners of our cultural inculcation and time.

Culture is a shadow in the mind, making it a wonder that we can relate to each other.

Our saving grace, it seems to me, is what each of us has going for us. That is, our sincerity which confirms the legitimacy of what we do and then become.

Peace and always be well,

Jim


MY FRIEND RESPONDS

Jim.

Fascinating formula:

What we think we do. What we do we become.

Off hand, this makes sense to me, but prudence tells me that I must ponder this before I cheer.

From neuroscience we know that the mind creates what we will be saying before we are consciously aware of what leaves our mouth.

Psychologists are wondering whether we are truly responsible for our actions.

Quantum physics tells us that "yes" is not the only companion of "no."

Experience tells us that neither the wave theory nor the particle theory adequately explain the behavior of electromagnetic radiation.

And so reality as we perceive it is merely part of some super-reality (maybe the one that has more than four dimensions). Like yes and no, true and false may not be the only players in their domain. As things stand, they are "constructs of the organically formed human mind."

Moreover, from birth onwards, our minds have been formed somewhat differently (possibly from before birth already), It is by arduous summation that people begin to understand one another in some sort of asymptotic endeavor.

The final answer will remain unattainable by us Earthlings.

But we can't help pondering.

Thanks you for your extensive two-finger email. I take it that you expect improvement in you manual capacity.

Best,

Henry 

 MY RESPONSE TO HENRY

Henry

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) writes in “Pensees”: We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart. This work has been an inspiration to me.
In any case, thank you for your insights and comments, and for the clarity of your views vis-a-vis those of my own. It is however apparent that we look at the same things differently, which is all right.

There is precedence as Pascal explains in his “Pensees” (Thoughts).

It was Pascal’s view that the body and its feelings took precedence over the mind and its reason. That had singular appeal to me as the rational failed to be fulfilling to me in my work and life.

You could conclude that sentiment and precedence is apparent from my writings.

Pascal differentiated between a scientific (rational) and intuitive (feeling) approach to the problem solving although he was very much an accomplished scientist in his own right. The impulse of love was prominent in his character and persuasion as it is apparent in the FISHER PARADIGM.

Writing about love, Pascal differentiated between two types of mind: the scientific mind that works with exact definitions (analysis) and abstractions and the intuitive mind that works with ideas and perceptions while not being restricted by exact definitions or necessarily repeatable conclusions. Each intuitive situation is complete within itself.

I was trained in the discipline of science but have drifted in my long career to being increasingly intuitive. Like Pascal, I am a Catholic thinker and believe in the eminence of the soul. Feelings, I have discovered, become facts in the most discriminating minds.

That said, the two minds (the rational and intuitive) do not refer to two different individuals but two directions that, hopefully, complement each other in a given mind.

Put another way, the scientific mind is not valid in all instances; nor is the intuitive mind. For me, the intuitive mind is responsible for much of my career and has even saved my life that I share in my writing.

The rage for certainty and the drive for unity in our time has often found science and scientists close to doctrinaire posturing rivaling the arrogance of religion.

This is apparent when analysis and abstraction produce theoretical constructs that are treated, not as theories, but as actual verities. Pascal saw this as a fallacy of science. It is also a fallacy of religion.

Pascal writes in Pensees, “The heart has its reasons that the reason does not know.”

The heart is not only the seat of love and affection it is the seat of desire and impulse to action.

In other words, it is not what we say we believe or claim to espouse, but what we do.

For example, intelligence is not a high SAT or IQ score or a college degree, but what a person does.

An intuitive approach studies actions, not words. Needs and motives come out in actions and are not products of reasoning although often treated as such. Yes, you are correct. We are often on automatic pilot.

Catholic Pascal did not espouse predestination nor the need of grace to obtain faith. I consider myself a renegade Catholic writer who attempts to practice the principles of morality taught to me as a child with no interest in the pomp and circumstance of the today’s Catholic Church.

Analysis and abstraction are not only limited to science but have become the obsession of sport (analytics), marketing, government (Polls) and the entertainment industry, among many others.

We have become caught up in the moment too busy to observe and reflect on our actions to intuit their insignificance preferring to react to what experts say it all means.

Pascal experienced this problem more than 300 years ago. Little has changed. Love and spirit were locked out then as they are today. 

Nearly 400 years ago (1621), English scholar Robert Burton (1577-1640) wrote “The Anatomy of Melancholy.” It reads as if written today.

Science has its place, as Pascal once said, he a scientist of the first rank, but science was not enough then or is it now. There is a need for more balance. It starts with a change of views like those that appear here.

Be always well,

Jim






PS Only my index finger and thumb work on my left hand while all my fingers work on my right hand. Doctors tell me it may take a year for this to be corrected with the possibility that my left hand may never return to normal usage. Thank you for asking.