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This is http://www.essayz.com/a8806052.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %MYTH INTEGRATION REPRESSED MYSTERIES EXPERIENCES 880605 Powerful myths integrate the mysterious experiences of those who are lead by the myths. Myths point to integrative understandings which cannot be captured and contained in declarative statements. Through myths people deal with the essential mysteries of vital experiences; i.e., the experiences of being really alive. Scientists live according to the myth that through objectivity they can transcend the mysteries of the universe. They believe that there are objective truths which transcend their processes of discovering, knowing and transmitting knowledge to others. Their task is to discover those objective truths which have existed apart from them, and will exist apart from them. Their quest makes sense to them because it is a quest for eternal truths which are not conditioned by human finitude and biases. Those objective truths free men from the limitations of needless mysteries which have plagued mankind in the dark ages of ignorance. To scientists mysteries are due to ignorance. The scientific quest for knowledge is the way to eliminate mysteries and gain the understanding which is necessary to predict and control the forces of nature to satisfy human desires. Scientists do not seek to integrate their experiences of mystery, they seek to eliminate their experiences of mystery through the acquisition of knowledge. Those mysteries which cannot be eliminated through knowledge are set aside and ignored; and are ultimately repressed into the unconscious where ignorance of them is achieved through insensitivity. Not all kinds of knowledge help scientists to be comfortable with their myths. There is not enough time to learn everything. Scientists focus upon the really important kinds of knowledge. Non-objective realities are not real, and so are not important. It does not make sense to waste one's limited time on things which are not objectively real. Scientists do not seek to become integrated into the coherent structure of the natural world; they seek to draw back from it to understand, predict and control it. Separation between the scientist and the universe is essential to the fulfillment of the mythology of the scientist; the purpose of the mythology cannot be total integration. Scientists' mythology must make sense of compulsive analysis and reductionism. Scientists' myths hold out great promise of the ultimate fruits of compulsive analysis and reductionism. They are the tools of ultimate control and the elimination of tragedy. The scientists' myth holds out the promise of ultimate understanding and control of all mysterious processes. Scientists are very selective about which processes they focus upon, and they pay attention only to processes which yield to analysis and reductionist attitudes. Their successes are as much the fruit of careful initial selection, as they are of the power of their way of approaching situations. If they were not so careful in selecting what to pay attention to, they would not be so successful in eliminating the mysteries inherent in the things which they chose to study. People who seek to be integrative as persons with integrity can not be as as scientists are selective about what they pay attention to. Integrators seek to integrate all significant human experiences, including those which are essentially mysterious. The integration of all people of planet earth can not be achieved through careful selection of easy-to-analyze situations. The integration of all people of planet earth will involve the integration of a bewildering variety of human experiences and of different perceptions of those experiences. Such integration will involve more than scientific myths which focus human attention upon a very narrow range of human experiences. Conflicts among the peoples of planet earth will involve the integration of the variety of myths which people use in making sense of the experiences of their diverse lives. Central to such experiences are the experiences of disintegration and integration; both at the individual and at the communal level of life. The resolution of apparent conflicts among complementary aspects of life will be central to the integration of the peoples of planet earth into a coherent community living in balance with all life on planet earth. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================