Emptiness Part II at New Ruskin College
www.NewRuskinCollege.com
08-07-05
Emptiness Part II
Was Hitler acting in good faith? Did he actually believe that he was doing something good, or at least great? Even here in this extreme case it does not matter. In law we hold the accused responsible only if they knew the nature of the act, and were not under an irresistible compulsion.
Yet we leave it for ourselves to decide these questions, not the accused. So it may be true that some in the dock acted with a full sense of self righteousness and yet because we judge their conduct to be so obviously wrongful that we will not credit their individual psychology of righteousness and condemn them none the less.
Irresistible compulsion seems a safer protection from the hangman’s noose. The mother desperately calling the police for help minutes before she strangles her baby is an example. I believe that it will be shown that such cases have a biological basis. It will be shown that portions of the victims brain compete for control. One half aware that it is loosing the struggle calls the police while the other half wrests control and does the crime.
Further I believe it will be shown that this situation is in no way unusual, other than the momentary self-awareness during the desperate phone call. For each of us is the result of the interaction of hundreds of neuron networks conveying memories, ideas, the visual field, to an ever evolving frontal lobe of the brain. Our personality, our being, developing as a composite of these interactions.
At any given moment anyone of us may be said to be the product of irresistible impulses beyond our conscious awareness. What we know about ourselves, our passing psychological states, may always be veiled in mystery.
Mr. Bush may know that his calling for a criminal investigation of the patient Schiavo’s husband, fifteen years after the fact, but conveniently during the news cycle of the release of the autopsy, was cynical, or at least manipulative, but he may well feel that given the unfairness of the media, the further good that can be achieved by his party in the State of Florida, or more importantly the good he can still do if he can avoid a voter backlash against him, etc., all these rationalizations and more may have come to Mr. Bush, and encouraged him in his public call for an investigation.
And this confluence of ratiocinations may be regarded as an irresistible impulse. Mr. Bush can be seen as a kind of machine, driven by his conditioning, (we call this type of conditioning ambition), and events, tries to obscure the facts of the autopsy in the mass media in furtherance of his goals which he feels are “good”. Imagine if you can that he is sincere.
Where then are any of us?
Where does the soul sit?
This is the Emptiness. I am all alone. Surrounded by empty psychological processes. Rationalizations. Biological machines without soul or heart, Left and Right.
www.NewRuskinCollege.com
08-07-05
Emptiness Part II
Was Hitler acting in good faith? Did he actually believe that he was doing something good, or at least great? Even here in this extreme case it does not matter. In law we hold the accused responsible only if they knew the nature of the act, and were not under an irresistible compulsion.
Yet we leave it for ourselves to decide these questions, not the accused. So it may be true that some in the dock acted with a full sense of self righteousness and yet because we judge their conduct to be so obviously wrongful that we will not credit their individual psychology of righteousness and condemn them none the less.
Irresistible compulsion seems a safer protection from the hangman’s noose. The mother desperately calling the police for help minutes before she strangles her baby is an example. I believe that it will be shown that such cases have a biological basis. It will be shown that portions of the victims brain compete for control. One half aware that it is loosing the struggle calls the police while the other half wrests control and does the crime.
Further I believe it will be shown that this situation is in no way unusual, other than the momentary self-awareness during the desperate phone call. For each of us is the result of the interaction of hundreds of neuron networks conveying memories, ideas, the visual field, to an ever evolving frontal lobe of the brain. Our personality, our being, developing as a composite of these interactions.
At any given moment anyone of us may be said to be the product of irresistible impulses beyond our conscious awareness. What we know about ourselves, our passing psychological states, may always be veiled in mystery.
Mr. Bush may know that his calling for a criminal investigation of the patient Schiavo’s husband, fifteen years after the fact, but conveniently during the news cycle of the release of the autopsy, was cynical, or at least manipulative, but he may well feel that given the unfairness of the media, the further good that can be achieved by his party in the State of Florida, or more importantly the good he can still do if he can avoid a voter backlash against him, etc., all these rationalizations and more may have come to Mr. Bush, and encouraged him in his public call for an investigation.
And this confluence of ratiocinations may be regarded as an irresistible impulse. Mr. Bush can be seen as a kind of machine, driven by his conditioning, (we call this type of conditioning ambition), and events, tries to obscure the facts of the autopsy in the mass media in furtherance of his goals which he feels are “good”. Imagine if you can that he is sincere.
Where then are any of us?
Where does the soul sit?
This is the Emptiness. I am all alone. Surrounded by empty psychological processes. Rationalizations. Biological machines without soul or heart, Left and Right.
www.NewRuskinCollege.com
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home