“Okay buster, I’m a ‘——–‘ and proud of it!
“Well, I’m really more a ‘——-‘ and I don’t agree with you and don’t really know what your label means but I know it must be wrong and dangerous to our Country.”
“Listen buster, we ‘——‘ stand for truth, justice and the American way and no amount of your ‘—–‘ crap is gonna change that.”
“Oh yeah? Well I’m just as strong in my knowing stuff as you are and we’d all be better off if you just shut the hell up!”
“You people seem to think ….. ”
“I stand with all those Americans who blah blah blah”
Who you callin two-dimensional?
The glory in being able to discern what we see in a three-dimensional way is that we can not only perceive automatically the differences between “near” and “far,” but also perceive cubes and spheres quite differently from squares and circles. Obviously such is a consequence of our enjoyment of depth perception.
Were that such was so for mental images, conceptualizations and imagined realities. Which brings me to our notions of left and right in political and philosophical terms. Particularly in philosophical/political contexts we mostly attempt to apply two-dimensional labels to ourselves. Seems that we think in terms of our own intellectual prowess in seeing the world as it really is. Hence, left/right stuff does not reflect intellectual depth perception, rather two-dimensional thinking that lacks depth or breadth.
Two-dimensional thinking is nothing more than either/or thinking on any subject. Today the subject is political philosophy which, in this country is dominated by either/or mindsets with their standard of comparisons that break behavior into right or wrong choices.
Either/or uses extreme extensions to praise or vilify other folks. For example, liberal is implied to be firmly entrenched next to communism via the socialist tendency. Conservatism lies dangerously next to fascism via the authoritarian route. Another way of expressing this is the label-mindedness considers the left wing or right wing enemies of Democracy depending on how an individual is living up to his chosen label.
Don’t label yourself. You will have less to live up to that does not belong to you and more freedom to be who you are.
Be genuinely surprised then when you react in a way that surprises who you thought you were …. or who you thought you were supposed to be.
rugerac.com 