[William Terrell]

It seems to me that people have a "normalizing mechanism". If something happens once, it's a miracle. If it happens twice or more it becomes "normal". That would mean that each and every detail of existence is composed of miracles, and the reason we don't twig on them is we see them more than once.

If we went through successive states of amnesia, we'd be filled with joy all the time, like children. Maybe that's what "Ye must become as children" means. That means I would have to give up cynicism to get joy.

*sigh*

[betty boop]

If we went through successive states of amnesia, we'd be filled with joy all the time, like children. Maybe that's what "Ye must become as children" means. That means I would have to give up cynicism to get joy.

Thank you for the wonderful insights, William Terrell. I've often wondered about the dictum, "Ye must become as children." Certainly children don't go through successive states of amnesia: They are vividly conscious of what's going on around them, perhaps more so than adults. I think the idea implicit in the dictum is that children have trust in spontaneous primary experience, the integrated totality of immediate experience -- they trust its authenticity, and have not yet learned how to "rationalize" it away. In a way, "the education process" is a process of rationalizing existence into whatever accepted categories may currently prevail. Doctrines take precedence over direct experience -- as if one can live in a doctrine! (We live in the world, and that fact is irreducible.)

If you consider yourself a cynic, perhaps it's because you have no taste for the currently fashionable doctrines (which, to use the language of Elizabeth Newman -- see link that unspun put up) are universalist and hegemonic. I have no use for them either, thank you. That must make me a cynic too!