At Tue, 16 Mar 1999 22:51:37 -0800 (PST), you wrote:
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>On Tue, 16 Mar 1999, David McFadzean wrote:
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>> Maybe that suggests where the conflict lies: some of us suggest
>> that we can and should be more than animals while others say
>> that we *are* animals and it is great to be animals. My use of
>> the word "animal" in this context is not meant to be derogatory
>> in any sense, and I don't think it really conveys what I'm
>> trying to say. Hopefully it provides enough clues for subscribers
>> willing to give it a charitable reading.
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>I think the words "more than" throw it off, but I understand what you're trying
>to say.
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>I think the dualities we keep coming back to over and over again here are simply
>the (not so) new expressions of a duality that goes back at least to the Greeks,
>and I expect much further than that. It is the seemingly eternal battle within
>mankind which seeks expression through our stories and songs. It is the
>struggle between Athena and the Furies, between Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy, between
>logic and emotion, feeling versus thinking, limbic vs neo-cortex. And it will
>never be resolved on the side of one over the other; at least so long as we are
>beings of flesh and blood with all the beautiful and unpredictable complexity
>that that encompasses.
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>But we can, if we so chose, merge the seemingly obvious duality into a oneness.
>By moving our frame of reference to a level that encompasses all three aspects of
>this duality -- both sides of it (1 & 2) and the interaction between the two (3)
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Are we regressing to the Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis Hegel meme here? Methinx so!
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>-- we can see the process as a single whole, composed of different aspects, each
>of them vital to our being.
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>And then we can move on from there. With the coin in our pocket, rather than
>just an image of a side or two held tightly in our minds.
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>Are you game for trying that game?
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>-Prof. Tim