I paused this weekend to reflect upon my proposed project here, to make a better me by publicly defending myself from my past self, and I’m now inclined to think that this is not a constructive way to work toward self-improvement. (Which just goes to show that hey, it works! Re-thinking things does help make a better me.) By putting myself into a defensive posture, even toward the person I was before, what I was seeking was justification if not flat-out approval, which emphatically is not the same thing as personal betterment. If I’m justified, I don’t need to change, and if I’m applauded (or worse and more likely, applaud myself) for it that only reinforces my feeling of justification and I don’t need to keep working on myself. Eventually, through a mix of complacency, sanctimony and self-satisfaction, I’ll be right back where I was when I started, i.e. unhappy with who I’ve become and trying again to separate myself from my past self. The perceived cure reinforcing the disease is the very definition of a vicious cycle, and that’s what I am to avoid.
Instead, if I take aim at the thoughts and ideas themselves, abstracted away from the me who thought them, it becomes far less about proving myself to be right now and wrong then and therefore no longer a justification for why I believe the things I think and believe presently–which, I’ve proved in this very post, could in fact change as I go through the re-thinking process. Of course I still have to focus upon the matters that have dominated my mind (and my mouth and my writing, when I’ve put myself to it) in the past and up ’til today, not merely because they’re where my interests and/or passions lie and as such I’m more readily able to write about them, but because that’s the only honest way to proceed. At a later point, after I’ve read and interacted with other subject matter and other people who are passionate about it and whose passion generates interest on my part, then I’d be able to address new topics in a capable and honest manner. But for right now, I really have to talk about war. I imagine most of what I’ll have to say has been covered more ably and extensively by other thinkers, but I have to talk about them nonetheless.
