From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 08 2003 - 04:57:21 MDT
At 11:55 AM 7/8/2003 +1000, Damien Broderick wrote:
> >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.
Nice to have my speculations confirmed in this way - my education is far too
lacking about such things.
> >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.
This would be nice to know. I'd guess that whatever deep things they think
they learned, they ended up telling their "flock" mostly comforting illusions.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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