Monday, February 20, 2012

From David Dark

"This admission strikes us as counterintuitive in a culture that so often views staying the course as a virtue in itself. This is the madness that comedian Stephen Colbert lampoons with the term truthiness, that sense of what's true that trades the demands of critical discernment for what Colbert calls 'the gut brain' - go ahead with your gut no matter what and call it strength of purpose, improvising an insane justification for your own folly as you go. Against this all too common culture of insane self-assertion, the expressions 'as far as I can tell' and 'as far as I know' and 'to my knowledge' signal a vigilant awareness concerning our own limitations. I'd like to see this self-criticism more frequently displayed by pundits, politicians, and professional religious figures who confuse their gut feelings for integrity and a changed mind for weakness. What the pundits call wishy-washiness, the Bible calls repentance. I understand there's no salvation without it. While pride and self-satisfaction might play well on TV, the Lord detests the proud face [Proverbs 6]. It's the look of impenetrable ignorance. It doesn't ask questions. It has no reverse gear and won't admit to ever flip-flopping. When there is no soul-searching, is the soul still there?" (David Dark, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything)



1 comment:

Rick Savage said...

Awesome statement. I'm going to process this for a while day. He is right own. Thanks for posting it.