From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Mon Jul 07 2003 - 19:55:43 MDT
At 05:42 PM 7/7/03 -0400, Robin Hanson wrote:
>This alternative hypothesis suggests that most literary journeys of
>self-discovery are really aids to self-delusion, helping people tell
>themselves comforting stories about themselves.
As usual.
>Real journeys of
>self-discovery would largely be dark affairs, wherein mounting evidence
>forced people to believe ignoble things about themselves that they would
>rather not tell others.
The classic mystical-tradition term for this is indeed the Dark Night of
the Soul. Of course the base things such people uncover might not be the
ones you have in mind, but they are said to feel really, really rotten
about themselves, nigh unto death.
>And those who do struggle over decades to learn
>the truth about what people want, and who are willing to tell others, would
>face largely indifferent or hostile audiences.
As seems to be the case with the gruesome experiences of such mystics. Of
course what they have to say when they come out the other side filled with
bliss (which is probably as self-serving and delusory as normalizing
`journey of self-discovery' narratives) also gets a generally hostile
reaction, except among devotees.
>Young optimists would have
>evolved to ignore the claims of old cynics, since the young optimists of
>the past who did not were less attractive as mates and associates.
It might be no accident that those in the western or at least Christian
tradition who followed this Dark Night path were celibate. I wonder how it
operated in, say, the equivalent Jewish tradition, where wise religious
[male] leaders were encouraged to have [father] many children.
Damien Broderick
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