I'm beginning to think that positivity is The Thing!
(Of course, it is vital to positive about the Right Thing - although honest positivity even about a wrong thing is self-correcting, and often a path to truth.)
I find myself often falling into a habit of negation; because, looked at objectively, there is just So Much that we need to reject!
Yet, for exactly that reason, rejection is endless, and therefore leads nowhere.
(Knowing what not to do is almost useless. If not, then what? - must always be the key question.)
So a habit of negation must be resisted; kept within-bounds - if it not to take-over and wreck everything...
An ounce of positivity will outweigh a ton of rejections in the scales of God.
As long as the positivity Really Is positive... And not (as is usual) in root and by motivation merely some version of a double-negativity. All of modern mainstream 'leftist' ideology is double-negative; but so is a great deal of religion, including traditional Christianity.
To do ourselves any Good; we must therefore be positive; but we must find that positive for ourselves and judge for ourselves that which we are positive about and its genuineness...
Also that positivity must come from us, and be endorsed by us; if it is be be any use as a motivator in this adverse, negative world!
4 comments:
There is a local Catholic radio station that frequently plays the quote "It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness" on air.
@MA - That's surely right, as an organizing principle - the problem is that it is particularly difficult these days to have a positive idea which is genuinely good and genuinely motivating. For instance; most people's idea of 'lighting a candle' (apparently) entails actively supporting the agenda of evil. And even when people have a genuinely Good light, for it to do them Good requires that it be a strong motivator (and not just any such ideal, adopted secondhand). It's not an impossibility, but honest positivity does seem to be more difficult than it at first sounds!
I say yes to the excessive pointing at the bad. the 'truther' scene has really collapsed in on itself in this regard.
I have a question re this...
"To do ourselves any Good; we must therefore be positive; but we must find that positive for ourselves and judge for ourselves that which we are positive about and its genuineness..."
Do you not think that this is quite Descartian? ie. authority is located in the self. it feels quite selfish to me to just limit that we should judge for ourselves and not allow ourselves to be judged.
@n - Not Descartian in the slightest degree!
To understand what I mean here, you would maybe need to do some word searches on this blog - try "real self", and "divine self"; and maybe the metaphysical posts - "beings relationships", "beings selves".
Also, everything I write needs to be put in the Christian context of Love as the primary value in divine creation - so potential selfishness is constrained by love.
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