I think this is going to be the last post in this sequence, and it may be the reason, thanks be to God, that I started writing again.<\/p>\n
Building on the idea of my last post \u2013 that I have a motte-and-bailey mind \u2013 I’ve been thinking further about how I have been interacting with people, both in real life and especially on-line. I have a highly trained speculative intellect, and I am accustomed to playing with ideas that I am not emotionally attached to \u2013 I am a ‘high-decoupler’ to use some modish language<\/a>. I enjoy the innocence of a lamb gambolling in the green fields seeing a new thing and responding ‘ooh, shiny’. <\/p>\n I think this is a good thing on the whole (well I would…); most especially I think that it is a gift, and the cultivation of emotional detachment is an essential part of the spiritual journey. In classical Christian terms it is about developing the virtue of apatheia<\/a>, and I write about how it is the spiritual foundation of the scientific method in my book<\/a>, where I talk about the apathistic stance as the epistemological prerequisite for seeking any truth.<\/p>\n However, there is a time and a place for such speculation. Not everyone is able to ‘decouple’ in the way described; not everyone is able to play with ideas, to enjoy the ‘stress-testing’ of them in public, to not be disturbed by the truth or falsity of what may be conjured up (and I use such language deliberately). If nothing else, the events in Washington on 6th January show what can happen when bad speculation takes root in unhealthy soil. What I have been considering is whether my ponderings about electoral fraud<\/a> are less an innocent gambolling <\/em>and more a negligent and culpable gambling<\/em>. We have entered into a fraught time, when we need to be more careful with our language \u2013 and I think I need on many levels to become more cautious with my own language. I am at heart a prudent, conservative and cautious person, and that is not what comes across from my gambolling in the bailiwick. I do not want to sound like a crazy person.<\/p>\n To adopt a metaphor that I first came across in Pirsig I have come to see my mind as like a river that has burst its banks, and the water has flooded into all sorts of strange areas. I need to work on deepening my intellectual channels, spending less time exploring \u2013 gambolling \u2013 and more time developing the elements of my understanding that I am seriously committed to. I need to spend more time in the motte and less in the bailey \u2013 and the time I spend in the bailey needs to become more private, so that my public facing writings are more secure and firmly rooted. <\/p>\n In short, it’s time for me to do my PhD.<\/p>\n Watch this space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I think this is going to be the last post in this sequence, and it may be the reason, thanks be to God, that I started writing again. Building on the idea of my last post \u2013 that I have … Continue reading