"The longest journey is from the head to the heart." (12step saying)

Lance


> -----Original Message-----
> From: nathaniel_branden@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:nathaniel_branden@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris
> Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2007 11:54
> To: nathaniel_branden@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [nathaniel_branden] "Objectivist Ethics" revisited
>
> Within the first article from The Virtue of Selfishness, I
> found a suprising psychological insight by Rand: (paraphrasing)
>
> "What [man] will consider good or evil... depends upon his
> standard of value... If a man desires and pursues
> contradictions... he disintegrates his consciousness; he
> turns his inner life into a civil war of blind forces engaged
> in dark, incoherent, pointless, meaningless conflicts."
>
> Rand had it dead-on in terms of value-conflict: conscious
> disintegraton, inner life engaged in meaningless conflict between
> (literally) blind forces. However, these contradictions lay
> not necessarily within one's consciousness, but rather
> throughout a fragmented mind. Unfortunately, Rand was not
> aware that one cannot remove contradictions in the mind
> without first unearthing the conflicted fragments.
>
> Speaking for myself and how I experienced the effects of
> Rand's straight philosophy as a form of psychology: I
> developed a conscious set of values, burying deeply any
> contradictory emotions, perceptions, and the like. I was
> thus able to create a fairly robust integrated set of
> values... in a small fraction of my mind.
> The rest I left fragmented and did not much care to unearth.
> After all, who would want to? It's a huge accomplishment to
> create such a set of integrated conscious values... damned if
> I was going to let my disowned aspects threaten it.
>
> Unfortunately, I was plagued with "pointless, meaningless
> conflicts." 60% of the time, I lived a life of ecstasy and
> fiercely successful energy; the other 40% of the time I felt
> numb, controlled, and patient for the period to pass so that
> I could go back to being "me." ... my approach has since changed.
>
> Simply put: when an individual begins to create a set of
> values, those values are established only within the area of
> the mind that is presently conscious; they are not
> universally accepted internally. Rand understood that value
> systems maintain integration or cause disintegration within
> the mind; but it took a true psychologist like Dr. Branden to
> understand that a value system unto itself does not
> automatically cause reintegration.
>
> Christopher
>
>
>
> Visit Nathaniel Branden's web site at:
> http://www.nathanielbranden.com/
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>