DICHOTOMY

This world is nothing but one dichotomy after another if not a trichotomy or a multitomy: tome being a book or a volume or a separation. In fact some of these separations not only are as different as night and day but also set our whole mind frame, construct our whole world.

Now let’s forget for the moment the very important fact whether we are a dichotomy: body and soul, or a trichotomy: body, soul, and spirit which to some anyway is very important, the fact that both original words spirit AND soul BOTH mean air seems to tend to the first argument even though the second argument is good but hard to argue. What is a soul? What is a spirit? And more importantly what is the difference? And no I am not rereading Watchman Nee ever again! J

For something I wanted to forget for the moment I’ll say a little more Body and Soul is the equivalent to Earth and Air really missing the Water and Fire. Now some would argue that the Fire IS the spirit and we are left with water to explain even though our body really is more like mud: dust and water

Gen 3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Gen 18:27 And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes:

Job 34:15 All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust.

Ecc 3:20 All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

Ecc 12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

The human body is anywhere from 55% to 78% water depending on body size. -Wiki

So before I digress too much as I am known to do once in a while let’s go back to the two big dichotomies I had in mind when I started this.

First, it seems to me a huge divider of people whether you think that

A. A. People are intrinsically Good.

B. B. People are intrinsically Evil.

I tend to stick with B myself and it gives me a much different view of the world than people who stick with A. For one thing I have no idea where they get this HaHaHa! Maybe I read the Bible once too many or I took Zola’s Germinal too seriously but it seems to me that given the choice ignorance and violence and all sorts of wickedness will prevail with the MOB in general. Never count on Reason and Logic and Goodness to prevail as any good politician could tell you.

The Second issue is

A. A. One can exert control over is life

B. B. CONTROL IS AN ILLUSION! J

I’ll let you figure where I stand on this one! J

You might need to watch Days of Thunder

Dr. Claire Lewicki: Control is an illusion, you infantile egomaniac. Nobody knows what's gonna happen next: not on a freeway, not in an airplane, not inside our own bodies and certainly not on a racetrack with 40 other infantile egomaniacs.

Dr. Claire Lewicki: You and Rowdy have the same sickness, it's called denial and it's probably going to kill you both.

or read Wikipedia on Depressive Realism here, but it basically says that: ( and it is so bloody obvious to me)

Depressive realism is the proposition that people with depression actually have a more accurate perception of reality, specifically that they are less affected by positive illusions of illusory superiority, theillusion of control and optimism bias. The concept refers to people with borderline or moderate depression, suggesting that while normal people see things in an overly positive light and severely depressed people see things in overly negative light, the mildly discontented grey area in between in fact reflects the most accurate perception of reality.

So here we have it in a nutshell. No need to debate these positions endlessly, one knows right away where he or she stands on the subjects, and you can do the debate among yourselves. J