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    Re: Dichotomous thinking can be dangerous
    Patricio · 03/08/03 at 6:22 ET

    Steven has a point.

    Every human mind or every human personality is piebald.

    Everyone on earth is a pastiche of incongruities.

    Nobody is perfectly consistent.

    What did I just write?

    I wrote that NOBODY is pefectly consistent.

    Now, repeat after me:

    Nobody (now you say it)

    is (now you say it)

    perfectly (now you say it)

    consistent (now you say it).

    Now let's make this simpler. Say after me:

    Nobody (you say it).

    is (you say it)

    EVER (you say)

    perfect (you say)

    IN ANY WAY (you say).

    Any "expert" on human minds or personalities should think about these statements for as long a time as it takes to be able to understood and acknowledge their truth.

    But these statements are still useless as guides to helping us become more accepting and understanding of the human condition unless we also understand that it means nothing to care that human beings are imperfect unless we accept that they may sometimes be imperfect in much more serious ways than at other times.

    Everyone is a mixture of contrasting and contradictory reactions to everything, all the time and even as the consequences of being creatures of incongruity are sometimes more serious than at other times.

    The sine qua non of mental and emotional maturity is an ablity to tolerate the large amounts of ambivalence and ambiguity that have to be tolerated in order to be able to cope with life realistically as we accept more and more placidly the incongruities that pervade everything.

    Life itself is an incongruous quest to stay enjoyably alive even as we are all on the same a bus travelling to our final execution of our death sentence, a sentence issued the moment we were conceived.

    Some people understand and acknoweldge the reality of our piebald human existence. Some people don't.

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