Mental independence, thinking for yourself, getting all the information you can, that’s the way to create a human chorus of minds. But remember we need to temper it with humility. The more we learn, the less we know.
I’m slowly making my way through The Religion of Democracy by Amy Kittelstrom at around 25 pages an hour. I’m not sure I’m getting the whole picture, but glimpses of what she’s trying to say keep coming through, like those pictures in the 80’s that look like fuzz or random dots, but you can catch the image if you look at it just right.
And then…yesterday…I received in the mail my beautiful book order and thought, “You know, these books look way easier and more fun.”
No! I started this and it is interesting if a tad complicated. I WILL KEEP GOING!
I AM going to read something else at the same time, though. I have more than an hour a day to read and I can only sit in this for an hour before my brain hurts. I need a dessert book! Maybe the memoir I got yesterday!
Today, I have two quotes for you.
“The goal of mental independence, in which the moral agent resists the way of the herd and speaks freely with candor and humility, encouraged every individual to find and develop her or his own inner voice of the divine to join the human chorus for the sake of the common good.”
“The human chorus.” You know what’s great about a chorus? It’s made up of many different voices, singing many different notes. Think about that image in the world. If we all only copy what someone else is doing, we’re not joining the chorus. Life becomes dull and boring.
“Mental independence” is the way. Think for yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to stand out and alone forever, always going the opposite way of everyone around you. There is something to be said for more than one voice carrying the same note. But choose your note, your song, your dance. “Develop your own inner voice.”
And this one is something we really could use more of in the world right now.
“Our Fallibility and Shortness of our Knowledge should make us peaceable and gentle,” Whichcote explained. Given that “I may be Mistaken, I must not be dogmatical and confident, peremptory and imperious.”
It’s that old idea that the more you learn, the less you realize you know. If you think you are right and everyone else is wrong, you need to go back to the drawing board. I’m guilty of this often. My way is the right way for everyone. If everyone else just listened to me…yeah…probably not.
There’s a lot going on in the world, there always has been. There hasn’t been a time on this earth without suffering, hunger, war, disease, etc. But there has also always been peace, love, kindness, and joy at the same time. Decide what it is you want to hold on to. Be kind and love on.