Introspection

Introspection is not a skill taught in our culture.

We seek to challenge others, those whom we disagree with, those whom we believe are hurting our nation or interfering in our lives, those whom are making us miserable or causing our problems. We want them to stop, and we resent them. At the same time, we want peace, comfort, security. Good jobs, freedom from work, cool toys like big new tvs, the latest cell-phone and video game, or car. And when we get those things, there will be something else to get, soon enough. Perhaps we can watch the television in the meantime.

So this is how our society works; this is the American dream. Spending money, getting married, working your whole life, and spending more money. Perhaps we go to church, or perhaps we don't. Perhaps we take comfort in god, or perhaps we just don't think about it. We do basically the same things either way. We get along with our neighbors, our friends, our significant others, and on occasion we argue, but we solve those problems as we solve the endless small problems of life. And so it goes on. Until someday we die. And that is how the world has always been, and how it will always be. Politicians will filander, we will grow old, and someday we will die.

Is that it? Is that all we can aspire towards? Purchasing things and trying to forget everything that makes us miserable until we die? And must we always blame the politicians, the bosses, those whom we disagree with, for everything they do? Even if they are unintelligent or unwise, do we not share, in some small part, at the very least, some of the blame for being part of the society which gave rise to such peoples? Do we not do all the same things, even if in lesser quantities, as those whom torment us?

These are not popular thoughts. The most common reaction to these thoughts is 'you can't argue with an <explitive>' - and most people will simply go on explaining why their opponents are crazy. And whatever the rightness or wrongness of what they say, that accomplishes nothing, and the discussion ends.

I want to try something different. We've been trying to point out the flaws in our neighbors for thousands of years. It has -never worked-. Why go on doing something that doesn't work? I want to try something else. I want to try and point out, in as systematic and thorough and critical a fashion as possible, my own flaws, that I might expose them and deconstruct them, and try to change myself for the better.


The goal of this blog is not to discern why -we- as humans lie, or why we as humans do not feel compassionate, or what we can or should think about religion, or politics, or philosophy. It covers, however, all of those things. Instead, it is an attempt, in an imperfect way, to analyze the way I think that I might improve myself.

It is not an attempt to teach. Any such attempts are for my own instruction. I have no great intelligence or wisdom, and my only goal is to try and experiment with truth, to remake myself into a better person.

If I fail at such in this blog, or am hypocritical in any way, I apologize in advance. It is a difficult goal to analyze oneself, but relatively easy to analyze others.