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Posted by: Angus Cunningham 11/14/2009, 08:09:35 (About author)
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What I actually wrote, DJ, was: To believe that one can never be sure of anything is, I think, one reason why we find ourselves preferring, at a certain stage in emotional development, to cling to certainties like, for example, the one that Flat Earth Society members (reputedly) do, when all available objective evidence refutes that "certainty" as impossible. This was as clear and precise a statement of an opinion of mine as I could, or even now can, make on the issue at hand. You shortened it to: To believe that one can never be sure of anything is one reason why we find ourselves preferring to cling to certainties like when all available objective evidence refutes that "certainty" as impossible. Well, that's a helpful shortening. Yet I have to observe also that your shortening what I wrote was followed by your stating the opinion that people are avoiding assimilating the evidence others consider relevant. You then became so enamoured with this simpler formulation of my observation above that you could even accuse such people who prefer to cling to a certainty when objective evidence is available of the impossibility of that certainty of cowardice. I recall following that logical path for a period of my life. But there is a more charitable conclusion, one that I think is actually rational. To avoid being upset, our evolutionarily inherited mindbody structure is such that we automatically ignore the prospectively upsetting evidence. I have seen this phenomenon occur very often between lovers, especially in my own life with my ex-wife, whom I once felt certain was deliberately ignoring relevant evidence, and who perhaps feels equally sure that I do that too. But after examining the evidence over a long time, I think the more charitable explanation is, at least sometimes, more true: to avoid the conscious mind becoming overwhelmed, the unconscious mind "leads" us away from face-to-face assimilation and re-cognition of upsetting evidence. Following, by the way, is a distinction between the meanings of the words "logical" and "rational" that many people have found helpful:
If it doesn't display, that's an Anyboard or Truth Tree glitch. It will display if you go to reply. In sum, courage is a matter of emotional development.
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